Review my computer

[Lesalius]

I'm a newbie to building custom PC's, and this is my first attempt. I've been reading several threads on this forum about what parts to purchase, ect. Ill list what I've come up with below. (Buying from www.newegg.com)

Computer Case:
Raidmax Black 10-bay Case w/ 420Watt Power Supply, Model ATX-868WBP - Retail


Floppy Drive:
PANASONIC 1.44 MB 3.5 INCH HIGH DENSITY FLOPPY DISK DRIVE, MODEL # JU-256A798P - OEM, DRIVE ONLY

Hard Drive:
WD WESTERN DIGITAL "SPECIAL EDITION" 80GB 7200RPM EIDE HARD DRIVE (8 mb cache)


Memory:
CORSAIR MEMORY XMS Extreme Memory Speed Series, Low Latency (Twin Pack) 512MB(2 x 256MB) 2x(32MX64) PC-2700LLPT With Platinum - Silver Heat Spreader. (I had a difficult time choosing between the PC-2700 and PC-3200, if you have any good suggestions on this please say so.)

Motherboard:
Asus Motherboard for AMD Athlon XP/Duron Processors, Model# A7N8X Deluxe Retail

Network Card:
ARCHTEK SMARTLINK PCI ETHERNET CARD (Davicom Chipset) COMPAQ'S OEM MANUFACTURER Life Time Warranty

Processor:
AMD ATHLON XP 2600+ Barton 333MHz FSB PROCESSOR CPU- RETAIL (Heatsink and Fan included) (Also had a difficult time choosing between the barton 2500+ and 2600+)

Video Card:
VGA CHAINTECH GEFORCE4 TI4800SE128MB VGA & TV-OUT, DVI OUT. RETAIL BOX

Everything else im pulling off of my old system, here are the details on that:

CD-ROM/DVD Drives:
Philips 8X/4X/32X CD-R/RW R2
Panasonic 16X DVD-ROM Drive
(not sure if these need to be better?)

Monitor, speakers, keyboard, and mouse are all coming off of the old system.


Since im pretty newbish at this I wasn't sure whether to get another cooling system, since the memory and processors both come with cooling heatsinks/fans or whatnot. If im missing anything please tell me, and id like opinions on all the stuff here... Also I plan on overclocking but im not quite sure as of how to do it, (since this is my first time). I plan on getting some professional help with that if nobody else can help. Oh, and if you were wondering, the cost of the parts came to $651.74 USD with shipping/handling.

[Daede]

My advice:

*Replace your case for an Antec brand (of course, this will cost a lot more; but power so SOOO important).
*Buy your memory form Crucial.com (they will NOT wrong you, of course, this too will cost more).
*Get a Combo Drive from Plextor (CD-RW/DVD), this way you won't have to canibalize the old system and you'll have a FAST CD drive (which I highly recommend). Note: I own a PlexCombo drive, it IS the quietest CD drive EVER! And it has never missed a beat burning CDs, even while I burn data from a network resource while playing a video game. Okay, enough boasting...

Ultimately, I think if you want to be happy in the long run, and not be faced with problems with the hardware in the future, you should purchase more well known brand names.

I am quite suprised you were able to come up with that very low price however. It might just be worth it.

[Lesalius]

I personally don't see anything wrong with the RAIDMAX case, in fact a case with a 420Watt power supply for $56 is a good deal I believe. Many of the Antec cases hit the $100 price range for only 400Watts, and unfortunately I cant sacrifice cost for a brand name in this case.

Because im limited on cost, I think ill stick with the Corsair Memory XMS, i've heard numerous good reviews for it and yet again im basically building a bargain system, so I can't really sacrifice cost for brand.

As for the CD Drives, im still debating this with myself. I'm not really big into burning many CD's so I'm kinda looking for a drive that works well at a low cost. Because im taking the monitor, speakers, keyboard, and mouse from my old computer I basically won't be using any other part of it so I figured I could salvage the CD Drives from it which seem to have worked well for me thus far. If I can find a decent drive at a fairly low cost, I would most likely go with that.

I'm trying to keep the price low, because my budget is somewhat limited at the moment and this will be the first system i've built. Because of that I don't think I can sacrifice cost for brand names.

Thanks for the input, I wish I could recieve some more especially with anything about overclocking or anything I could be missing. I'm also still not sure about what I should do with the cooling system.

[InuTrunks]

When buying computer parts keep this in mind, price is the LAST thing you want to judge. In terms of computers, you pay for what you get.

I bought a 15$ 500w powersuppy... Guess what, it couldn't handle my computer load and died in 3 hours.

[InuTrunks]

Re: How's this for a computer?

Computer Case:
Raidmax Black 10-bay Case w/ 420Watt Power Supply, Model ATX-868WBP - Retail

*Good, but, what you should be careful of is my post uptop, what you pay for is what you get*


Floppy Drive:
PANASONIC 1.44 MB 3.5 INCH HIGH DENSITY FLOPPY DISK DRIVE, MODEL # JU-256A798P - OEM, DRIVE ONLY

*BLah! don't buy this, take the one from your old computer out*


Hard Drive:
WD WESTERN DIGITAL "SPECIAL EDITION" 80GB 7200RPM EIDE HARD DRIVE (8 mb cache)
*good choice, make sure to partition it with XP / Storage drives *2 partitions*

Memory:
CORSAIR MEMORY XMS Extreme Memory Speed Series, Low Latency (Twin Pack) 512MB(2 x 256MB) 2x(32MX64) PC-2700LLPT With Platinum - Silver Heat Spreader. (I had a difficult time choosing between the PC-2700 and PC-3200, if you have any good suggestions on this please say so.)

*Don't get DDR400, you can't use it, your fsb is only a 333, you'll just be wasting cash*

Motherboard:
Asus Motherboard for AMD Athlon XP/Duron Processors, Model# A7N8X Deluxe Retail
*I'd get an nforce2 sv2 motherboard for dual channel ram, a little more expensive, but hellvualot better gameplay*

Network Card:
ARCHTEK SMARTLINK PCI ETHERNET CARD (Davicom Chipset) COMPAQ'S OEM MANUFACTURER Life Time Warranty

Processor:
AMD ATHLON XP 2600+ Barton 333MHz FSB PROCESSOR CPU- RETAIL (Heatsink and Fan included) (Also had a difficult time choosing between the barton 2500+ and 2600+)



Video Card:
VGA CHAINTECH GEFORCE4 TI4800SE128MB VGA & TV-OUT, DVI OUT. RETAIL BOX



Everything else im pulling off of my old system, here are the details on that:

CD-ROM/DVD Drives:
Philips 8X/4X/32X CD-R/RW R2
Panasonic 16X DVD-ROM Drive
(not sure if these need to be better?)

Monitor, speakers, keyboard, and mouse are all coming off of the old system.

[Daede]

Okay. If price is your problem. Just buy a baseline Dell and put a new Grahpics Card in it. You'll have a warrented machine that you KNOW will work for years to come. Besides, they 'can' beat your existing price for the parts you are looking at buying.

But, if you are insistant on learning how to build computers, take it from someone who has done it for years (like me); don't buy cheap parts.

[Lesalius]

Maybe its just me but... I can't seem to find a decent computer on Dell's website for anything near $650... but maybe im doing something wrong?

I would like to build my own system... and it seems as though most of the major parts I am buying should be okay... (with the exception of the case and maybe the motherboard)

Computer Case:
Raidmax Black 10-bay Case w/ 420Watt Power Supply, Model ATX-868WBP - Retail

*Good, but, what you should be careful of is my post uptop, what you pay for is what you get*

**I'll search for an Antec brand case for a little more cash.

Hard Drive:
WD WESTERN DIGITAL "SPECIAL EDITION" 80GB 7200RPM EIDE HARD DRIVE (8 mb cache)
*good choice, make sure to partition it with XP / Storage drives *2 partitions*

Memory:
CORSAIR MEMORY XMS Extreme Memory Speed Series, Low Latency (Twin Pack) 512MB(2 x 256MB) 2x(32MX64) PC-2700LLPT With Platinum - Silver Heat Spreader. (I had a difficult time choosing between the PC-2700 and PC-3200, if you have any good suggestions on this please say so.)

*Don't get DDR400, you can't use it, your fsb is only a 333, you'll just be wasting cash*

**You're referring to the PC-3200? The PC-2700 I have listed above is DDR333

Motherboard:
Asus Motherboard for AMD Athlon XP/Duron Processors, Model# A7N8X Deluxe Retail
*I'd get an nforce2 sv2 motherboard for dual channel ram, a little more expensive, but hellvualot better gameplay*

**I looked for the mobo you listed but couldnt find the specific one on neweggs.com, maybe some help?

I began building this system by reading into this topic: http://www.ffxionline.com/forums/sho...threadid=23129

A lot of the parts I'm looking at here were mentioned in that topic.
If I had more money I'd definately buy from all of the brand names, but I will have to take some risk it seems. One of my friends makes his computers and if I have any major hardware problems I could probably go to him.

I can't thank you enough for replying, you've helped me in many of my decisions! Thank you! I will continue to look further into this before I make my purchase, and hopefully with a little influence from others who are experienced.

[InuTrunks]

The case dosn't matter, you can get yourself a cheep 15$ case as that has nothing to do with system specs. Buy the Case and the Powersupply sepperatly (sp)

About the ram, I was taking about where you mentioned deciding about pc2700 vs 3200.

the motherboard is abit I think, with nforce 2 and sv2 I think. ::tries to remember::

just search for nforce2 on newegg

[Lesalius]

I looked up that mobo and here's the closest thing I found:

ABIT NF7-S nForce2 SPP chipset Support AMD Socket A with 200/266/333/400 FSB 8X AGP SATA 150 ATX motherboard Retail
400Mhz FSB
Supported CPU:AMD-K7 Duron/Athlon/Athlon XP Socket A
Chipset: NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400 with MCP-T
FSB:266/333/400MHz
RAM:3x184Pin DDR Support 3 DIMM DDR 200/266/333 (Max. 3GB) or
2 DIMM DDR 400 (Max. 2GB)
IDE:2 x Ultra DMA 33/66/100/133 (up to 4 Devices)
Slots:1 x AGP8X/4X, 5 x PCI
Ports:1xFDD, 2xSATA,2xUSB2,2xPS2,2xCOM,1xLPT & Audio Ports
Onboard Serial ATA: Supports transfer rates 150MB/s (1.5G bps)
Onboard Audio:6-Channel AC 97 CODEC
Onboard LAN: 10/100Mb Operation supports ACPI & Wake on LAN
Onboard Firewire: IEEE 1394a at 100/200/400MB/s transfer rate
Yellow or Red PCB


This one is cheaper than the Asus one though, I couldn't find an Abit board that was more expensive then the Asus.

Oh, and If you have any good brandnames for just power supply, I could buy one in case the power supply included with the Raidmax case is crap.

Since the board has built in audio, should I still buy an audio card? I'm not huge into playing that much music over the computer, thats what my stereo is for but I'm wondering if it would still play music off of FFXI at normal quality...

[Lesalius]

Well, ive pretty much decided what all im going to purchase. I went to the local computer workshop and had a nice little chit-chat about all of the hardware ive been looking at. They were able to show me the light on a few things, and here's what I came up with:

Cases (Computer Cases, ATX Form)
Enermax X- Point CS-5281S (Silver) Mid ATX Tower Case with Enermax 300W PS and LargeSide widow.

*Decided on this after I was unsure of the quality on the Raidmax brand. I read some reviews and this is a nice, sturdy case with a reliable 300w power supply. (It also looks cool!)

Hard Drive
WD WESTERN DIGITAL "SPECIAL EDITION" 120GB 7200RPM EIDE HARD DRIVE

*Decided that $18 for another 40 gigs wasn't bad so I hooked myself up with this HD.

Memory (System Memory)
CORSAIR MEMORY 512MB PC2700 VALUE SELECT. DDR RAM - OEM

*The talk with the computer tech guys convinced me to just go with a single stick of 512, and get another later when I have more money. He was convinced that more RAM makes much more of a difference then having dual RAM. He was also convinced me to not read much into hype, instead just buy what you need. I got rid of the XMS extreme series and went with a normal Corsair 512MB RAM.

Motherboards - AMD
Asus Motherboard for AMD Athlon XP/Duron Processors, Model# A7N8X Deluxe Retail

*I went back to this because Im not going to use dual RAM (Even though it supports it if I want it later), and it has so many positive reviews that I had to chose it. The tech guy said that Abit and Asus are great brands to purchase a good base mobo from.

Network - Interface Cards
Archtek Smartlink PCI Ethernet Card (Davicom Chipset) COMPAQ'S OEM MANUFACTURER Life Time Warranty

*Network card. Plain and simple.

Processors
AMD ATHLON XP 2600+ Barton 333MHz FSB PROCESSOR CPU- RETAIL

*I've pretty much stuck with this processor throughout the whole ordeal.

Video Cards
VGA CHAINTECH GEFORCE4 TI4800SE128MB VGA & TV-OUT, DVI OUT. RETAIL BOX

*The tech guy showed my some purdy water effects with this puppy on DAoC. Definately made me want to get one.

Everything Else
Monitor, mouse, keyboard, speakers, CD/DVD ROM drives, and floppy drive all coming from the old PC.

Ill be taking the final listing into the Computer Workshop before I purchase, but this is pretty much it. Oh, and final pricing comes to
(drumroll)
$660.29 (with shipping/handling and sales tax)

I'm still looking for any more last minute input if you guys have any... your responses helped me a lot in picking out hardware for the first time.