OT: If You Were Going To Build A New PC

[Atrocities]

Limit your funds to say $500.00

I want to build a nice Intel P4 system, 3.0ghz but I don't know what type of CPU to get other than I know that I do not want a celeron. What type of memory to buy for the cpu type and why. What is the best motherboard to get for a P4 3.0 ghz CPU and the memory that best works with that CPU.

I want to rebuild my blue box, and that does mean getting a new case. I want a case that is 450 watts, and has superb cooling.

I already have the HD and the drives that I am going to use along with the Sound Card.

I also was wondering... my old PII 400 died and I recently picked up a working P2 400 HP... and I want to put my old HD into the working p2 but I cannot find my 98 disk. So I guess I will have to swap out Power supplies to see if that was what killed the old P2. I don't know... I should just take all of the old parts and put them into the blue box and toss the old tower. Then keep the new p2 and use it as a server or something..... Choices.

[Ragnarok-X]

My suggestion is to use a Athlon XP cpu, no Pentium. The one Gig ram i mentioned costs about 100 €, which is about 120 US if im right. HD costs about 140 US...oh well...500 bucks isnt that much..

[Suicide Junkie]

Why do you need the CD to put your old drive in?

Wouldn't you already have at least one HD with the OS on it?

[Thermodyne]

$500 will get you this. Reliable name brand board, gig of ram, reuse your disk readers/burners-case-PSU-. New PSU, add $30. Very mid level, but good foundation and decent 8X vid card. Add 2 new case fans to make it $500.



Qty Product Description Unit Price Extended Price
Hard Drives

Hitachi 80GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive, Model HDS728080PLA380, OEM Drive Only
Item# N82E16822145082
Status: In Stock

Save to Buy Later
Remove Item

$63.00

$63.00

Memory (System Memory)

BUFFALO B-Line 184-Pin 512MB DDR PC-3200, Model MS4002-512MB - OEM
Item# N82E16820150619
Status: In Stock

Save to Buy Later
Remove Item

$39.49

$78.98

Motherboards - Intel

ASUS "P4P800 SE" i865PE Chipset Motherboard for Intel Socket 478 CPU -RETAIL
Item# N82E16813131484
Status: In Stock

Save to Buy Later
Remove Item




$97.00

$97.00

**This item is warranted through the product manufacturer only. what's this?
Processors

One Day Sale, Ends 4/5/2005 5:30 PM PST
Intel Pentium 4/ 3.0E GHz 800MHz FSB, 1MB L2 Cache, Hyper Threading Technology - Retail
Item# N82E16819116171
Status: In Stock

Save to Buy Later
Remove Item

$180.99

$180.99

**This item is warranted through the product manufacturer only. what's this?
Video Cards

Sapphire ATI RADEON 9250 Video Card, 256MB DDR, 64-Bit, DVI/TV-Out, 8X AGP, Model "579" -OEM
Item# N82E16814102392
Status: In Stock

Save to Buy Later
Remove Item

$59.00

$59.00

Product total: $478.97

[Sivran]

Not bad Thermodyne. That Radeon 9250 though, they didn't have anything better? The 9250's rather old. Then again.. video cards are a helluva racket..

[Thermodyne]

Nothing better in that budget range, unless you catch a promo. IMHO, the vid card is easy to update, so is a place to cut cost on an initial build. Also, he could get a comparable NVIDIA card if he prefers that flavor. I put most of the money in the CPU and Main board, as they are the parts that tend to stay in service the longest. One of the biggest mistakes many people make is skimping on the main board. They save $50, but end up with an unstable system. If I was going to push it a little higher, then I’d add another SATA drive and set the pair up as a stripe set. That would give him a noticeable increase in performance. The Vid card only comes into play with a few high end games, and certainly is not needed for SE. If he has concerns about rendering, then we need to have a talk about Vid cards that would break his budget twice over all by themselves.

[NullAshton]

I'd like to put my computer inside a refrigerator. Think of how fast I can overclock it

[Thermodyne]

The fridge can’t deal with the amount of heat that an OC’s pc puts out. Outside in the dead of winter works, just keep the hard drive warm. Liquid polypropylene pre chilled to around 0c works, and is cheap. Fan and dryer duct to winter air works too. But NO2 is the Boss http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20031230/index.html Some real serious OCing going on with these guys. My personal best is 2.9GHz out of a 2GHz Northwood chip air cooled with a Swifty. Just couldn’t get it stable at 3.0 for the coveted 50% OC/air.

I havn’t done any Oc’ing since the Fall of 03, I’m still using the system I built then. But this old box put some serious numbers up for back then. It’s cooled with the stock cooler that AMD shipped with the sample CPU. Couldn’t get anything else back then. All I did was over volt the fan.

http://groups.msn.com/ThermodynesPlace/fx51244ghz.msnw

[Sivran]

I have an Athlon XP and a Sempron running on ECS (ie cheapo) mobos. Gotta love them mobo/cpu combos at Fry's. Neither one is unstable, so either ECS is better than people think or I have insane luck--I'm the guy who gets month-plus uptimes out of Win98SE, after all.

Then again, I don't overclock.