Hi,
I am thinking of building a new pc with the following main components :
Intel Pentium 4 Processor 2.8GHz FSB800 512KB H. Threading
Good choice. That's an excellent cpu at a reasonable price.
512MB or 1024 MB DDR400 PC3200 Memory (not sure what brand to pick)
Guys on this group are very partial to Crucial, Mushkin and Corsair.
For that sake, and the fact they're the big names, they would be my
first recommendations.
But I've never gone wrong with cheap ram yet. Samsung, TwinMos,
Kingston value. Just make sure you can exchange your ram stick for
another at your dealer, if it doesn't work right in your mobo.
I don't know if good casing and power supply will have any impact on the
performance or durability of the system? Can someone tell me this? If so,
how I do know if it's a good casing / power supply or not?
Well, I can't advice you much on this. Ever since my 100MHz Pentium
burned, I've been using filthy expensive PSUs myself.
But Antec is a cheap brand that has a very good rep at this group. (So
good rep, I originally assumed it was an expensive brand
).
They do cases as well, so you don't have to discard the PSU that
usually comes with the case ;-).
Otherwise, I'd suggest Seasonic. Don't use them myself, but they're
moderately priced, silent and good rep.
Another question, in one of the thousand postings, I read that Windows XP
installation will not recognize SATA hard drive, is that true?
Any suggestion on mobo, hard drives (not raptors), optical drives and
graphic card? My budget is around $1000 ... Help me please..
Intel 865PE chipset.
Asus P4P800 (no additional letters!) is a nice cheap ($110) 865PE
board for dual DDR400. Only supports udma100 though. You can probably
find better features, if you spend more. Like Asus P4P800 deluxe.
HD, 7200rpm, 8MB cache.
Western Digital, Seagate and Samsung seem to be fairly reliable hds.
(Me, I've crashed so many hds, I'm not concerned anymore, getting used
to it
. I consider hd reliability an illusion, whatever I do. I'd
buy a Maxtor 8MB cache udma133.)
Samsung, LG or LiteOn optical drives. All cheap and dependable.
From about $130 stepping up to $220, ATI 9600pro, ATI 9600XT,
ATI9700pro and nVidia FX5900XT, FX5900 are my choices for chip sets
for video cards. Good manufacturers are Sapphire, Asus, MSI and
Gigabyte.
(Please note that 'XT' is used as a designation for a downrated budget
version by nVidia. While 'XT' is used as a designation for top end
high performance versions by ATI. Both also use 'SE' as budget
designation.)
If you're a gamer, I think you should rather consider around, or above
$200 for your videocard. FX5900XT, FX5900SE, FX5900, ATI 9700pro, ATI
9800SE or even ATI 9800. That would sort of be fitting for a 2.8GHz
P4C.
Methinks you could squeeze in all that on $800-$900, haven't done the
arithmetic, sorry. Keep it at $800 and you'll squeeze in a monitor
inside your budget as well. Don't know if you intended that, though?
I'd expect you to be able to shave off $100, by going AMD instead, but
you'll not get the same media and memory performance. On a whole
system cost like this, lower CPU and mobo prices don't mean as much,
as when upgrading.
So by all means, stick to your choice.
ancra
