My 1st PC Build (Review and Help wanted)

irishgeo

I am planning my first PC build.I intend to use this as a test run for perhaps a side job in Building them.
I am wondering could people review the stuff i intend to buy and let me know
i missing something important.I would like it fairly future proof as well.

I have left out the following because i am going to use them off the old computer until i can afford the rest of the stuff.

Not Buying
Hard Drive - Getting 250GB from Aldi this week.
56K Modem- Using old one
DVD/CDRW - Using old ones
Graphics Card - Hope to use old Nvidia Geforce MX400 if its fits on new motherboard.
Have a montior and keyboard all the other extras.

Buying From Komplett (Please review and let me know if i need anything else, and that everything is compatabile)
Do i need case fans?

MSI K8N NEO Platinum Edition S754 nForce3 250GB,SATA,GbLAN,ATX,Raid
€109

AMD Athlon 64 2800+ 1.8 GHz Socket 754, 512 KB cache, OEM €116.99

Crucial PC3200 BallistiX DDR 512MB CL2 Non-parity, 2.8V, 64Meg x 64, 184pin
€120

Zalman CNPS7000B-Cu CPU-Cooler Socket A/478/754/939/940
€39

Q-Tec Midi tower ATX L-MD02, Black w/350W AMD/P4
€39

Arctic Silver Ceramique XL Thermal Compound 22 Gram
€9

Total Price €432.99


Thanks Guys.

ChRoMe

The old geforce card and only 512 ram are going to be serious bottlenecks in the machine. A ati radeon 9600 is only like 120quid

zilog_jones

Personally, I think this is a really bad time to be building a new PC - there are so many new standards being introduced, like PCI-Express (which is replacing PCI and AGP), SATA, ATX12V 2.0 (new power supply standard), the imminant death of the ISA bus (you won't be seeing any more PS/2, Parallel or serial ports at all soon!), and so on. I also don't see much of a future for the socket 754 Athlons.

If you want something really "future-proof", you should probably wait a few months (possibly the summer), and get one of the new socket 939 Athlon64 boards with PCI-X and all the other new fancy stuff. That would mean you'll also need a new graphics card, but you're well overdue for one anyway!

RicardoSmith

You can't make a future proof PC. They change too fast. The best you could do is 939 and a 3000+ at the moment. AGP will be around for a while yet, but for future proofing you'd have to get PCI-E (PCI-X is not for graphics). Intel is changing too fast at the moment, socket 754 will be around for a while though too, though the fastest chips will be on 939.

Infini

ChRoMe wrote:

The old geforce card and only 512 ram are going to be serious bottlenecks in the machine. A ati radeon 9600 is only like 120quid

The 9200 SE is down to 55 quid in Itdirect. In anycase its better to wait until you have a good load of cash in your pocket before you go buying your parts for your PC. And when you do its best to get all the parts as up to date as possible as it'll save you having to replace them for at least 2 years.

Nukem

Did you check the bundles 3000+ package with mobo and 512 Ram also Qtec PSU :eek: ,bad idea give problems try this Antec with 350w

Total 402 euro

EDIT:

If your looking to upgrade the gfx for less than 100euro idea 1 & idea 2

tman

/edit
ignore this. i didn't read the original post properly...

ChRoMe

The 9200 SE is down to 55 quid in Itdirect. Eh WTF?

The whole reason behind my 9600 suggestion is that he needs a card that WONT create a bottleneck in the machine. The 9200 wouldnt be much better than his old geforce hence same problem arises.

Also earlyier comments are correct no such thing as future proof machine. The minute your finished building it there will be something else welcome to the wounderful world of pc manufacturing

ChRoMe

jessy

zilog_jones wrote:

Personally, I think this is a really bad time to be building a new PC - there are so many new standards being introduced, like PCI-Express (which is replacing PCI and AGP), SATA, ATX12V 2.0 (new power supply standard), the imminant death of the ISA bus (you won't be seeing any more PS/2, Parallel or serial ports at all soon!), and so on. I also don't see much of a future for the socket 754 Athlons.

If you want something really "future-proof", you should probably wait a few months (possibly the summer), and get one of the new socket 939 Athlon64 boards with PCI-X and all the other new fancy stuff. That would mean you'll also need a new graphics card, but you're well overdue for one anyway!

Wtf, he's spending €450 not his life saving! Why wait till the summer?

ChRoMe wrote:

The old geforce card and only 512 ram are going to be serious bottlenecks in the machine. A ati radeon 9600 is only like 120quid

512mb is not a serious bottleneck on the Machine he's building,(its obviously not a gaming Machine he’s trying to build).

ShiverinEskimo

Just one thing, I was looking at parts to build meself over the last few days and a friend highlighted to me that if you buy a boxed athlon you don't need to buy a CPU fan or paste or any of that. cuts out a bit of time building it too. Just look out for the word BOXED in the description of the chip, will save you time (dunno if it'll save you cash) and has the added advantage that you wont make a mess of pasting the cooler to the cpu.

irishgeo

Taken all your notes in. But all i really want to do is build a PC. I will change the case to the one nuken recommends and i will go with a boxed verison of the processor.

Finally i will upgrade for out on a ATi Graphics Card recommend above. I will the guage my the price and may if able upgrade to 1GB of RAM.

*************
Hows is this.
Antec SLK1650B Miditower, Black
- w/350W PSU
79
304764 PowerColor Radeon 9600PRO 256MB DDR
- AGP, ATI 9600PRO, DVI-I, TV-Out, Retail 102.85
112188 Upgrade Kit AMD 64 3000+, 323
* 300492 - AMD Athlon 64 3000+ 2.0 GHz Socket 754, 512 KB cache, BOXED

* 300050 - MSI K8N NEO Platinum Edition

* 113518 - TwinMOS PC3200 DDR-DIMM 512MB CL2.5 Memory184-P (for DDR-PC400MHz)

Total Price €504.

Cant really afford the Extra RAM considering i am buying the Hard drive from Aldi.

RicardoSmith

Get a 128mb 9600xt, it would be a lot better. Or one of the 9700pro from OcUK. better again. Get a 120gb disk instead and save some money. You can always add another one later.

Khannie

Yeah, defo wouldn't get a 256MB 9600. The extra memory beyond 128MB is wasted on it.

Having said that, it is quite cheap, and it's not the worst graphics card in the world. If you're not going to be doing any gaming on it, then it's grand.

I would disagree with ricardo on the HDD front though. I think you can never have too much hdd space. The best way to add longevity to a non-gaming machine is to have a big fat hard drive and plenty of ram in it (though I would say the ram can be added later, more easily than a hdd upgrade).

RicardoSmith

True but you can uninstall and reinstall games as you need them but if you don't have a decent gfx card you won't be able to play them at all.