I'm building a box

Ok, as the title say's...I'm building a new box.... but I have some questions...
This is my first build and I was wondering if the following Spec's are any good.....keep in mind...I'm on a budget. (All part's ahve been put in..If i'v left something out...please tell me)

1.44 Mb Floppy drive (Euro 19)
CD-ROM Lite-on 52x IDE (Euro 32)
Samsund DVD/CD-RW Combo (Free! coz I already have it :D)
Casefan 8Cm (Euro 10)
Gigabyte GS-7VAXP VIA KT400 Socket A U133 Sound/USB 2.0/RAID/FW/LAN DDR (Motherboard) (Euro 135)
DDR RAM 256MB PC2700 (Euro 109)
Western Digital 40Gb 7200p U100 (Euro 111)
AMD Athlon XP 2100+ (1733Mhz) 266Mhz SockA Tray (Euro 139)
999A/828A Bigtower 300W (Tower and Powersource that will support P4 so it should support and AMD) (Euro 39)
NVIDIA GeForce 4 MX440 64Mb TV-Out/Retail (Euro 83)

Special Quiet CPU Heatsink Cooler from QuietPC.com (The orange thing on the right) (About 38 Euros)

Comes to a total of about 700 euro's.... Plus maby some more for special silver based Conductive paste and Round IDE cables adn such...

Is this good value for money...

Also I was thinking of changing one of the sides out with Plexiglas and Insert some Blue Neon Light's....
Has any one ever had any problem with Plexiglas sides? or Neon light's??

Any way...I'm all happy 'n' stuff......any feedback would be great

- Noia

Hey Noia,

Go For It! Trust me the look is awesome. I personally don't have it, but a friend does and it rules. There's also a processor fan that has lights you *could* get. It's idle color is blue and during processing it's red (like the access light on the front of the case)

Your setup is similar to mine. One word of advice, if you get trouble with the Viatech chipsets, try installing without the 4-in-1 drivers. It seems to run better without those drivers.

Do you plan on purchasing some sorta soundcard (for heavy gaming?) the chip is not bad, but I'd suggest a soundcard later on. (especially for newer games)

Besides that, everything else sound good (although I know little about the Euro difference :))

I'm planning on uprgeadin once I get some more money...the CPU thingy sounds cool, although I'm not sure I'd be able to see it with the HUGE heatsink....
A sound card comes built in with the Motherboard...but I think I'll get a 5.1 chan system once I get some money...
I havn't got a clue wot the 4-in-1 Driver system is, I'll ask my Tech teacher who's helpiong me build it...

tanx for the feed back :D
- Noia

Currently, I would advice you to put 512 Mo of RAM in your new computer. Think to the future.
What is the speed of your DVD reader for CDs? Maybe you don't need to buy a specific CD-rom reader.
I personally advice Asus motherboards with AMD Athlons, but VIA is also good.
As for the RAM, your hdd could be bigger (understand 80 Go): the prices of the memory decrease again and again.
Where is the network card?
The screen? It's not an element without importance. I know you have a restricted budget, but you should use a screen of a well known company (lliama's are the best, but I use a Nokia and I'm happy of it).

Yeap everything seems fine, Although maybe you might want to get a better graphics card, the geforce 4 mx is really a slightly faster version of the geforce 2 just with the new name, It is only a direct x 7 based card. Try having a look for the geforce ti range instead I think the ti4200 is only about 100euros. You get a much faster card, and it's also a direct x 8 based card.
But other than that everything is fine, I wish you luck with your pc building, Have you though of a name for it yet? :-)

I'v looked around at the graphic's card...and this one seemed good value for money...since I'm on a tight budget...
I know that 256 Mb ram isn't much, I have 320 on my current box but that's SD, and I'm also selling that one.....I'm planing on buying an Extra 523 Mb once it's built though.

The DVD/CD-RW is fast enough for all my need's, but I take alot of music with me on travel and to school and stuff, and I don't like to bring the origionals because they get stolen or scratched....

Does any one know if a Plexiglas panel could cause any problem's?
or the Neon light's?

- Noia

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I personally advice Asus motherboards with AMD Athlons, but VIA is also good.

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I haven't looked at motherboards in a little while, but don't most Asus AMD boards use a VIA chipset? At any rate, VIA used to have some problems with their chipsets (speaking as an owner of said problematic chipset :D), but they're really quite good now.

One note about hard drives, and this is purely personal preference. I used to be big on Western Digital hard drives, but I quit buying them years ago because I found that they had a higher than average failure rate in the first couple of years. I had about 3 go bad in the span of a couple of years. These days, I find Seagate to be a better drive, but that's just me.

Problemchild: yea..Id rather have a Maxtor, but the problem with budget comes in again..I think I'm gona go a bit over budget (Not like I havn't already :D) and get a 60Gb maxtor

Quote:

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I haven't looked at motherboards in a little while, but don't most Asus AMD boards use a VIA chipset?

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Depends on the board. Asus does and doesn't, with some of the newer boards coming out and scheduled to come out, some users prefer the AMD chipsets, but the VIA ones are available.

I would go for the Maxtor or a Seagate, back in the days I woudl have said go for Quantum, but they are now Maxtor. People seem to like or dislike a HDD brand for a particular reason... I'm not a "Western Digital" person, but perhaps others are, I mean it's not that you are going to purchase something awfull ;)
Adding more ram in the future is not a bad idea...
Think about the fans, don't spend a lot of Euro and save on the fans. They are vital for your systems health (and your ears). Make sure they provide enough cooling.
Speaking about graphic cards the MX version you mention is indeed a low range card. A Ti is way better but costs way more. You can also consider a Prophet 9000 with 128 DDR ram they are worth their money unless your against all that's not GeForce / Nvidia ;)

I think you have a very good box there... not the fastest or the biggest but yet a very performant box without going over budget restrictions.

I'd recommend going for a Western Digital SE Drive, as the HDD manufacturers recently decided that people don't like long warranties* on their standard drives, and have changed the HDD warranties to 12 months from 3 year warranty.... The WD SE Drives however, have retained their 3 year warranty...
Read the Rant @ THG

Most of them kept the long warranty on their SCSI Drives, but since october, most ATA HDD's have only a 1 year warranty...

My work sells a lot of maxtor drives, and we don't see many faulty units coming back in, but I'd prefer the risk of the disk dying if I could get a replacement for 3 years.....
Not to mention that HDD manufacturers in their warranty replacement can try to retrieve data from the dead drive....


* I'd really like to know how they came to this conclusion.. with the extremely high rate of failure on Fujitsu's MPG3 model HDD's, people want their damn warranty to be as long as possible...
You can read more in this article on The Register

While browsing and searching for some help for you, I found this interesting tutorial on Building your own Box. I read it and found it very informative and helpful. Please let me know how everything goes and how successful it is! :)

cool, tanx....I didn't think I'd get so much feedback.... :D
I'v decided to get a 60Gb Maxstor instead, and one or two cold-cathode Fluresent blue Light's...about 30cm in length... :)

hmmm, matty, do you really thin they would try to get data of EVERY drive?? that seems like alot of work....

- Noia

Noia: here are are a few suggestions that I have...

First I highly recommend going with WD's drives for 2 reasons...1 being the reason that Matty Cross stated and 2 being that at the moment, WD makes the ONLY ultra ATA drives that have a wopping 8 mb of cache! That's right that's not a typo 8 mb. its only the standard 7200 RPM, but do to the 8 mb of cache that certain models that they make have, they're so damn fast, they beat out most SCSI hard drives even...I upgraded my setup recently and got their smallest 8 mb cache model that they make (80 gb)...I haven't had any problems with it and the performance of the drive is amazing, not to mention it only cost me like $10 more dollars (from what I hear, the euro has about the same value as the dollar) than the standard 80 gb model ;)

My second suggestion is since RAM is not at all expensive right now and since I do believe that moterboard will support up to 1 gb of RAM...(I'm sure you know where I'm going with this) I highly recommend buying a 1 gb RAM stick for it from either Kingston or Crucial...wait a minute sorry a 1 gb RAM stick isn't a stick, that's a friggin BRANCH! HAHA (I could pick up a 2700 RPM DDR 1 gb RAM stick here at a local pc shop for about $150)

Well peace out and good luck with whatever you choose...

Just out of intrest what o.s. are you going to run on it?

Noia:
cool specs. but remember it all depends on what u are working with ur PC ... what OS, Applications .. bla bla etc.

but in general, it's a good specs. Good Luck :)

Well, I'm first gona install XP proffesional, and once I get another drive I'm gona install a *nix system to play around with....I'm mostly gona use the Machine for.....every thing...gaming, Work, Internet etc etc....I know the spec's arn't amazing....yet....but I'm making sure I have room to upgrade....

Has any one checked out the Flower heatsink...it's AMAZING!!!

- Noia

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Originally posted here by Noia


hmmm, matty, do you really thin they would try to get data of EVERY drive?? that seems like alot of work....

- Noia

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No, I doubt that they would. But they can do it... here is an extract from one of the communications with one party, however, this was in regards to data security on returns..

Quote:

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Drives are sent to #### to be processed as follows:

* To be determined if drives are to be repaired or scrapped
* If the drives are to be scrapped then they are destroyed and no data can be recovered.
* If the drives are to be repaired then the drives will proceed to be tested
* Part of the test is to perform a write test on the drives: any data on the drives will be erased and cannot be recovered.
* If the drives fails the test: then they are sent to a Repair center where they will be repaired and retested

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Now, as you can see, they have the ability to access the disk, so they would be able to recover the data.....

Matty, yes the 8MB cache disks are very 'hot' but difficult to get in Europe. Almost all stores have a shortage on these disks (sometimes you have to wait 3 weeks). Anyway the Cache boosts some things up (serious!).

Noia do not forget a quality screen for instance a Eizo DVI FlatPanel ;)

lol Vk... I Wish I could get that screen, but I'm on a budget....one that's VERY VERY thin....so I'm gona use my old screen, which is enough for now, I hope one day though to get a flatscreen and a beamer set up...then I'll have a 2 meter Screen :D Amazing gaming....
We have one i school.....it's da bomb when you'r playing GTA3...

- Noia