advice on motherboards and processors

[apsey8014]

Hi, I need some advice on what to buy and what is cheap but what will still work for me, I'm looking for a motherboard and a processor that will let me download at a fast speed and information on other type of parts I would need to build this computer would be helpful. this is what I have so far. this is my first custom computer. please help.

-200 GB hard drive 7200 RPMs
-the tower
-a 400w ata power supply
-logitech 5.1 530 surround sound

any other ideas would be helpful. Thanks

 

[Me__2001]

first what make is the PSU ? what is the PC for, general use or CPU intensive tasks ? also what is your budget ?

 

[apsey8014]

the PSU is PoWork 400 Watts-Max Silent ATX power supply and this PC would be used for gaming and downloading and at the same time I would be connecting it to my home entainment center and I would guess that would run a little strong on the computer in dealing with the intensivity of the cpu. I'm working on a bugdet and when I get extra money I would be buying the parts. so cheap parts that I can buy over the next months but I will be working with right now about $300 USD.

 

[Me__2001]

i dont know what the prices are like in the states but i can recoomend some parts to look into

get a motherboard from Asus like the A8N-SLI or A8N-E or one of the DFI lanparty boards (AMD 939 ones), if you get one of those boards get either an Athlon64 3000 or 3200 (939 pin) whatever you can afford, for RAM some Corsair value or Geil value as minimum i would recommend would be 512MB, a reasonable graphics card would be a Leadtek 6600GT (PCI-E)

 

[Kenny]

Downloading isnt really dependent on the computer...the internet connection decides that for you. More memory might help if you want to game and connect to your entertainment centre

Kenny

 

[Dr Freudstein]

any other ideas would be helpful. Thanks

Hi Apsey,

Without offering specific advice on components, one rule of thumb to maximise your budget is to spend a little less on your CPU and get as much RAM as possible. RAM is still quite cheap just now, but top of the line CPUs from both AMD and Intel are seriously over priced in terms of value and performance. Dropping down just a couple of models will save you $$$ and free up cash for RAM, while the loss in performance will be more than offset by having more RAM to multitask with (as seems important to you) and avoid too much disk swapping.

Cheers, Steve