The bird is looking at new Mac laptop, so I thought it was time I updated my PC from the current Athlon 800 ...

Having read some reviews and looking at lab tests for a few days and really want to get a new PC. I have been looking at Carrera PCs, Dell PCs, PCWorld offerings, and then decided to have a crack building (on paper for now) my own spec, initally the budget was £1000 but I stretched it a little ....

Motherboard
- Asus A7N8X Deluxe Revision 2

Processor
- AMD Athlon XP3000+ 400Mhz FSB 512 L2 Cache Barton CPU

Heatsink & Fan
- Coolermaster CP5-8JD1F-0L Upto XP3200+ Silent Skt A Heatsink & Fan

Memory
- 2x Corsair 256MB DDR400 PC3200 Memory modules

Cables
- 2x Akasa Rounded Ultra ATA133/100/66 IDE Cable (0.45m)
- 1x Akasa Serial ATA 45cm Silver Data Cable

Hard Disk
- 1x 120Gb Samsung SpinPoint SP1213C (Serial ATA)

Optical Drives
- Sony DWU-14A DVD+/-RW
- Asus CRW-5232AS 52X/32X/52X CD-ReWriter

Case
- AOpen H600B Super Tower Black Pearl Windowed Side Panel 350W PSU

Soundcard
- Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Zs Platinum Pro

Graphics Card
- Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB DDR AGP RP DVI VO

Monitor
- Iiyama Prolite E431S 17ins TFT 0.26 80khz Multimedia Black


This all comes to around £1300 all together, and still excludes speakers, keyboard+mouse so far. I already have a decent keyboard and mouse, and for speakers I have my trusty Sony System, so not too concerned at the moment.


Your thoughts, advice, criticism ?

~ Jon

 

Nice spec.
I am after one of those monitors but they are like rocking horse do do at the the moment

 

Hmm,

Personally I would get XP2500 Barton then overclock it to 3200 speeds,if you are lucky you can find an unlocked 2500 for circa £60(the 3000 and 3200 are all based on the 2500).

I might go a bit different on the memory but everything else seems pretty good.Probably a 1gig of Twinmos and some heat spreaders LOL


Hope that helps


Steve

 

Nice set up, I have the first generation of that board, which hasn't caused me any problems so far. The only thing I would change is get a seagate silent running hard-drive, but that's just my prefrence, sure the one you've chosen will be good. As for ram really, really search around, prices really vary on ram, personally I normally go to crucial.com/uk if you can afford it, try and get a gig... If you need any online shop URL's give me a shout, I kept them all in my favourites from my build a while back.

Good luck with the build...Hopefully you won't hear beeps when you start it up

 

I went for Asus as the board I have now is the A7V and it has been bombproof so far.

I am also getting a bit confused over all the graphics cards around, I know which is the preferred Radeon card (well I think I do!) but can't seem to figure out the nVidia card of choice.

I would like to keep the cost < £1500, and was originally aiming for < £1000!

- Jon

 

Why do you want a DVD writer and a CD writer ?? Id go for a faster DVD writer like the MSI DR8-a which has 8x DVD write speed and 40x CD write speed and a CD Rom.
Also the Motherboard youve chosen has hardware on board sound, not software like the old onboard sound cards so it wont slow your system down and to be honest unless your doing professional music stuff you probably wont notice the difference so you can dump the sound card and put the money into getting 1gig of ram.
As for the CPU, hmmmm Ive just bought an XP3000 but the same day I was given a XP2500 and it runs at XP3200 speeds (11x200) without any problems and they cost half the price of a XP3000 and about £200 less than a XP3200.

Andy

[Edited by Attu - 1/3/2004 1:08:54 PM]

 

Can't really add much. Sysytem sounds like it's gonna be a good 'un. My current system runs off a A7V8X and it's superb. Deffo go for the XP2500 - otherwise you're throwin monry away..

 

Do you really need 120gb hd?!!!

 

Revised to:

Case
AOpen H600B Super Tower Black Pearl Windowed Side Panel 350W PSU

PSU
Enermax EG465AX-VE(G)(FMA) 460W ATX Power Supply

Monitor
Iiyama Prolite E431S 17ins TFT 0.26 80khz Multimedia Black

Cables
2x Akasa Rounded Ultra ATA133/100/66 IDE Cable (0.45m)
1x Akasa Serial ATA 45cm Silver Data Cable

Hard Disk
1x 120Gb Samsung SpinPoint SP1213C (Serial ATA)

Motherboard
Asus A7N8X Deluxe Revision 2

Processor
AMD Athlon XP 2800 Barton Socket A CPU 333 FSB

Heatsink & Fan
Coolermaster CP5-8JD1F-0L Upto XP3200+ Silent Skt A Heatsink & Fan

Memory
2x Corsair 256MB DDR400 PC3200 Memory modules


Optical Drives
Asus CRW-5232AS 52X/32X/52X CD-ReWriter
Sony DWU-14A DVD+/-RW

Graphics Card
Aopen GeForce FX5700 Ultra 128MB DDR AGP DVI VO

Soundcard
Creative Audigy 2 ZS PCI

Comes to just under £1200, and £300 of that is the screen.

- Jon

 

seems to be a bit more sensible now
definite overkill before

in my opinion the 5700 graphics card is not a good choice
it has been surpassed by the new 5900se or 5900xt
which is 150 quid
check this link for the card
http://www.hothardware.com/hh_files/S&V/gffx_5900xt(7).shtml
alternatively the radeon 9600s are only 100 quid and are good

you could argue the audigy2 is not worth it
i have one
as long as the card is 5.1 that is the main thing really
there are much cheaper ones out there
the sound quality doesnt seem better than my cheapo card.
as long as u have decent speakers..

[Edited by kamikaze - 1/3/2004 5:16:59 PM]

 

Finally upgrading then eh Jon? Im doing mine bit by bit at the mo. Got a Radeon 9600 Pro this time and it works fine (unlike the 9500 Pro I tried back in Cambridge).

Si.

 

Yeah decided to take the plunge, will have to mail you for some assistance most likely!

- Jon