Building New PC, Need a bit of Advice

Hello Everybody!

I am building my pc in the very near future myself. I have'nt built a pc for about 2 years now, so I thought I had better ask for some advice before I order all the parts

Here is my spec, the prices(in british £) and the site,Shop I am going to buy them from.
Soltek SL-75DRV4 AMD Athlon or Duron Chipset VIA KT266A FSB266,200 5 PCI 1AGP PRO 1CNR USB 4 ATA133 (£76)(www.oemprices.co.uk)(Got 91% and Gold in PCformat)


AMD Athlon XP1800+Boxed Inc Heatsink & Fan (£75.98)(www.ebuyer.co.uk)

Inno3D GeForce4 Ti4200 128Mb DDR DVI TV-Out AGP(£129)(www.ebuyer.co.uk)

128mb DDR 2100 (£23)(www.ebuyer.co.uk)(If I have any money left I will get 2700 instead)

IBM Deskstar 120GXP 60GB IDE 7200RPM Hard Disk(£61)(www.ebuyer.co.uk)

Floppy drive(£6)(Pcworld)

Cd rom (about 25)(PCworld)

Case(Set aside 40 Still looking might try PCWorld)

IDE Cables I was thinking of using Rounded Cables around about 3quid


I think thats most of it(if not all). The sound card is a rubbish AC97 built into the motherboard, I am going to save up for a sound blaster Audigy after. I do not need a monitor or speakers at the moment. I also already have a 56kb modem. I am thinking of using Windows 2000/Xp on the hard disk alongside linux Mandrake. I also have a spare 6gb hard disk laying around for windows 98 because try as I might I can not play Final Fantasy 7 PC on NT based machines, I also use old dos programs which access the hardware direct.
I have a budget of about 450 but I might be able to go abit higher but not a lot.

Anyway What do you think of my spec? Am I missing anything? or is there anything better I can get within my budget.

Anyway thanks for any help

cheesegoduk

Looks good to me. My only advice is to pop it up to 256 MB RAM, instead of going to 2700. Your 128 may be a slowing point on that fast of a system.

i would buy 256 mb ram instead of 128 mb ram and if there is some money left i would buy a 80 GB HDD instead of the 60 GB, because today there is only a little difference. all other things look good!

Thanks folks, Just realised I forgot to add something, What power supply strength should I use for this motherboard and processer?

For a power supply, see what the motherboard and processor require and purchase accordingly. Many cases already come with power supplies, so you probably don't need to worry about it. Make sure, however, that you get at least a 300 W setup because anything less and you may run into trouble down the road if you want to add more hard drives, a cd-rw, etc.

AJ

Uhm... you're getting a KT266A board, right? Not a KT333 chipset? I had throught that the PC2700 ram wouldn't help you that much unless you decide to upgrade your motherboard in the future.

For cases, are you thinking of sturdiness, looks, gimmics (front panel yada yada or motherboard tray) or what?

Ah yes I had'nt thought of that, Thanks for telling me, I would have wasted my money otherwise. I will upgrade to 256mb instead. As for the case I am looking for somethine strong and spacius, So I have plenty of room to upgrade.

I have a recommendation for you

Go visit a few computer fairs, the prices are pretty low, and you get to checkout the stuff before buying. Also you find many of the stall holders know their stuff, and will give fairly good advice.

You often find some real gems there as well (I bought a 21" ex display monitor for £50, and i got a 6 month guarantee.)

Steer clear of the software tho, there is still a problem with copied disks etc there.

Other than that the spec looks ok at first glance, but go with the 256Mb of RAM

Hope this helps

I would also reccomend 256mb ram atleast, even for Linux it will help

256 megs, DEFINITELY..also make sure your power supply is AMD approved. the only other suggestion I would make would be a burner instead of a CD-Rom. An 8X or 12X is pretty cheap these days. Food for thought!

I have bad news for you. If you intend to use Win2000 and Mandrake you will need more RAM to keep them working at a decent pace. I use both (80% Mandrake/ 20% Win2000) and my concern nowadays is RAM, I use 256 but when you have a fully equipped win2000 that value is very low... I would bet more on mem than in cpu speed, but that's your choice I am just advising based on my experience. Even Mandrake can require a lot of mem but that depends (on both OS) of which kind of soft you will use. Good Luck with your new PC.

I think it's better a slow 1200 Duron and 512Mb of Ram... :)

Question: Have you ever considered the time your CPU remains idle?

I have to agree with the others on the ram, I have 780mb and still not enough for compiling large animation sequences, I would also consider removable drive trays so you can put linux on one drive and win2k on another, I just plug in the drive with the OS of my choice, I tried a dual boot and win 2k ate my linux...:(

You could probably pick up a low-end DVD rom for a couple bucks more than your CD-ROM, and you may want to upgrade your RAM to 512. Also make sure your case has a 400+ power supply... that is about it I guess...

-> point to ponder: You may want to check documentation for your components, because i think that heat/cooling issues can be affected by your overall case size-etc. My AMD set-up was running a little hotter than it should have been in another case. Just a thought. Other wise, the system w/256 sounds great.

i would recomment 350w psu because the Amds require alot of power to work properly and 300watts wont cut it

Athlon's or Durons LOVE 512 of RAM due to the thoroughput of bus speed make sure you buy good chips though, I had bad luck with no-names with bad sectors of memory. Your combo sounds decent although make sure the onboard audio can be disabled, otherwise expect the exstacy not to work due to irq and dma problems. other then that if the bios has the ability to set agp aperture size, keep that to a minimum as well; because basically you are telling the system to "steal" that percentage of memory for the card so lower it to 16 MB--trust me your PC will love it because the video you have has enough memory on it to support almost anything you throw at it. Good Luck and have fun!!!


Wanted to add to this yes--use a 350-400 watt supply or the system will be slow due to the power hit from the video and cpu or crash consistently!!!!

Hey Thanks folks for all your help, I am hoping to order the parts today. I have decided that I will now use 256mb of ddr 2100 ram and a CD rewriter. I might also use the other 6gb hard disk for linux instead of windows 98, Because A friends says he as found a way to play the game I wanted windows 98 for
Anyway thanks again for all your help

well if you thinking of building your own PC, which i think its great!! but i have this advice for ya, er0k posted a good post on that, probably it might help you.


http://www.antionline.com/showthread.php? s=&threadid=231871&perpage=10&pagenumber=1

http://www.antionline.com/showthread...0&pagenumber=1

some thing is wrong with my browser ****, i cant really copt and paste the link, damm am dooped

Ok thanks folks,
My final spec is the same except
Soltek SL-75DRV5 VIA KT333(because its a 333chipset)
and 256mb 2700ddr ram

Got one last question, I had heard that Geforce 4's have a problem with voltage i got a message saying that it needs 3.3v, does this mean the power on the AGP(which is an AGP pro slot) because that can go to 1.7 I think. This is the only thing thats putting me off ordering, A friend has tried a geforce 4 on a 733mhz board and it works fine.
Thanks again for your help

hmmm .... well .. there's something major u should take in consederation ... what will be running on ur pc ( graphic design, programming, normal use , word processing )
the main issue here is the CPU ... check a compareson on the net between Intel & AMD.

and choose what most sute ur needs.