Help on parts for new PC

[Vaughn]

Have just decided to build another PC, for gamming for the kids, so trying
to keep the cost down, but still get them a good performance Pc to run all
the games they want to play.

the list I have is below:

Part Quantity Price Total
AMD Sempron 2400+ CPU, (SDA2400DUT3D) 1 £34.75 £34.75
Abit NF7 V2.0 nForce2 Socket A MB 1 £41.87 £41.87
Radeon 9250 256MB AGP 1 £46.61 £46.61
Deluxworld M9512 4-1 Case kit 1 £37.59 £37.59
Viking 256mb DDR 400MHz Ram 1 £24.48 £24.48
Lieon 4x DVD +R/RW 1 £23.49 £23.49


Please give nay recommendations on any of the above components, especially
compatibility, and reliability if possible.

Will probably be using win 2000, I know this is soon going out of MS favour,
but can I use XP with my other Win 98/2K PCs, on a network?

many thanks in advice for any help you can all give.

Vaughn in UK

 

[SteveH]

Have just decided to build another PC, for gamming for the kids, so trying
to keep the cost down, but still get them a good performance Pc to run all
the games they want to play.

the list I have is below:

Part Quantity Price Total
AMD Sempron 2400+ CPU, (SDA2400DUT3D) 1 £34.75 £34.75
Abit NF7 V2.0 nForce2 Socket A MB 1 £41.87 £41.87
Radeon 9250 256MB AGP 1 £46.61 £46.61
Deluxworld M9512 4-1 Case kit 1 £37.59 £37.59
Viking 256mb DDR 400MHz Ram 1 £24.48 £24.48
Lieon 4x DVD +R/RW 1 £23.49 £23.49


Please give nay recommendations on any of the above components, especially
compatibility, and reliability if possible.

Will probably be using win 2000, I know this is soon going out of MS
favour,
but can I use XP with my other Win 98/2K PCs, on a network?

many thanks in advice for any help you can all give.

Vaughn in UK

If you are thinking of running XP on this spec, bear in mind that 256Mb is
the bare minimum memory to run XP on. It runs better on 512Mb. Personally I
would go for Crucial memory, for the guarantees etc.
You shouldn't have any real problems getting XP to talk on your existing
network.
When you say 'gaming machine', you don't say what sort of games, but if you
are talking about any of the major 3d games, like FarCry, HL2 or Doom3, then
this PC is going to be towards the bottom end of the spec required to run
them well.

HTH
SteveH

 

[BarryNL]

If you are thinking of running XP on this spec, bear in mind that 256Mb is
the bare minimum memory to run XP on. It runs better on 512Mb. Personally I
would go for Crucial memory, for the guarantees etc.
You shouldn't have any real problems getting XP to talk on your existing
network.
When you say 'gaming machine', you don't say what sort of games, but if you
are talking about any of the major 3d games, like FarCry, HL2 or Doom3, then
this PC is going to be towards the bottom end of the spec required to run
them well.

Agreed, for a gaming machine I'd seriously consider going with 512Mb
memory and getting perhaps a 9600 Pro video card instead of the 9250.

 

[petermcmillan_uk]

You will probably need a CPU cooler, and maybe a case fan (although the
case may include one). For £34.75 I think the Sempron would be an
OEM, with no cooler. A hard disk is also kinda important, have you
considered that? You'll also need a PSU, unless the case comes with
one. As other people have mentioned, I think 512Mb is would be better,
particularly for games.

 

[John Doe]

Have just decided to build another PC, for gamming for the kids, so
trying to keep the cost down, but still get them a good performance
Pc to run all the games they want to play.

the list I have is below:

Part Quantity Price Total
AMD Sempron 2400+ CPU, (SDA2400DUT3D) 1 £34.75 £34.75
Abit NF7 V2.0 nForce2 Socket A MB 1 £41.87 £41.87
Radeon 9250 256MB AGP 1 £46.61 £46.61
Deluxworld M9512 4-1 Case kit 1 £37.59 £37.59
Viking 256mb DDR 400MHz Ram 1 £24.48 £24.48
Lieon 4x DVD +R/RW 1 £23.49 £23.49
[Windows 2000]

Please give nay recommendations on any of the above components,

I would recommend 512MB of RAM and Windows XP.

Also. Get a disk manager and learn how to use it. Make incremental
backup copies of your Windows XP installation. It will make life
easier. I have heard, not confirmed, that a Maxtor utility called
MaxBlast will make backup copies of Windows XP partitions.
Successfully restoring the OS partition would be neat trick with
Windows XP. Doing that makes a world of difference using a personal
computer.

 

[Vaughn]

If you are thinking of running XP on this spec, bear in mind that 256Mb is
the bare minimum memory to run XP on. It runs better on 512Mb. Personally I
would go for Crucial memory, for the guarantees etc.

This I had not considered, I knew Win2000 needs 128, but had not looked up
XP thanks

You shouldn't have any real problems getting XP to talk on your existing
network.

Again thanks

When you say 'gaming machine', you don't say what sort of games, but if you
are talking about any of the major 3d games, like FarCry, HL2 or Doom3, then
this PC is going to be towards the bottom end of the spec required to run
them well.

Here I had considered the more resource demanding of eth PC games, but cost
is of an issue so went for, what I hoped, was system that would run them,
but may be a little slow.

hope that's what I've found.

many thanks for the very speedy reply.

Vaughn

 

[Vaughn]

Agreed, for a gaming machine I'd seriously consider going with 512Mb
memory and getting perhaps a 9600 Pro video card instead of the 9250.

Last comment on cost really applies here as with post above.

Again many thanks for the speedy reply

Vaughn

 

[Vaughn]

You will probably need a CPU cooler, and maybe a case fan (although the
case may include one). For £34.75 I think the Sempron would be an
OEM, with no cooler.



Most correct



A hard disk is also kinda important, have you
considered that?



Yes, steeling this from previous machine. Middle of the range 80GB disk
recently purchased. Hoped it would solve a few problems, but I was being
very naive.



You'll also need a PSU, unless the case comes with
one.



This it does, a 400W size



As other people have mentioned, I think 512Mb is would be better,
particularly for games.



Again as posts above, but thanks for mentioning the parts missed.



Would have been better of ME to say that these were already sorted. Sorry
for the bad posting on MY behalf.



Again many thanks



Vaughn

 

[Vaughn]

Have just decided to build another PC, for gamming for the kids, so
trying to keep the cost down, but still get them a good performance
Pc to run all the games they want to play.

the list I have is below:

Part Quantity Price Total
AMD Sempron 2400+ CPU, (SDA2400DUT3D) 1 £34.75 £34.75
Abit NF7 V2.0 nForce2 Socket A MB 1 £41.87 £41.87
Radeon 9250 256MB AGP 1 £46.61 £46.61
Deluxworld M9512 4-1 Case kit 1 £37.59 £37.59
Viking 256mb DDR 400MHz Ram 1 £24.48 £24.48
Lieon 4x DVD +R/RW 1 £23.49 £23.49
[Windows 2000]

Please give nay recommendations on any of the above components,

I would recommend 512MB of RAM and Windows XP.

Also. Get a disk manager and learn how to use it. Make incremental
backup copies of your Windows XP installation. It will make life
easier. I have heard, not confirmed, that a Maxtor utility called
MaxBlast will make backup copies of Windows XP partitions.
Successfully restoring the OS partition would be neat trick with
Windows XP. Doing that makes a world of difference using a personal
computer.

Again thanks for the advice, will defiantly look into one of these disk
managers. Any recommendations?

Again many thanks for the help

Vaughn

 

[Mac Cool]

Vaughn:

Have just decided to build another PC, for gamming for the kids
AMD Sempron 2400+ CPU, (SDA2400DUT3D) 1 £34.75 £34.75
Abit NF7 V2.0 nForce2 Socket A MB 1 £41.87 £41.87
Radeon 9250 256MB AGP 1 £46.61 £46.61
Deluxworld M9512 4-1 Case kit 1 £37.59 £37.59
Viking 256mb DDR 400MHz Ram 1 £24.48 £24.48
Lieon 4x DVD +R/RW 1 £23.49 £23.49

This is a very low spec system. I can't comment on the pricing but overall
the system is underpowered for many games.

A Sempron 2600+ shouldn't cost much more. I would choose a Geforce
FX5700LE as a minimum, a Radeon 9600 Pro would be ideal. Generic RAM isn't
worth the few dollars you save, buy Crucial, Mushkin or Corsair. I'm not
familiar with the quality of the Deluxeworld M9512, but based on the price
and all the accessories that are included, it's probably junk.

better case
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?
action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=72293

better video
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?
action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=74653

Best of luck.

 

[John Doe]

....


Again thanks for the advice, will defiantly look into one of these
disk managers.

It almost doubles the usefulness of the operating system, in my
opinion.

Any recommendations?

That is a timely question. I use PartitionMagic 8 with Windows XP.
If you have < Windows XP, not recommended for stability reasons,
then PartitionMagic 4 or greater will work.

PartitionMagic is problematic in Windows XP for making backup copies
of the operating system partition. I have to boot to the original CD
in order to work the partitions. I also have to delete the contents
of BOOT.INI. It probably would be a mess for most people.

If I had any more trouble using PartitionMagic for copying/restoring
Windows XP partitions, I would definitely look for something else.

I think the storage group is the best resource for the question.

comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage

I just asked under the subject "Utility for copying/restoring
Windows XP partitions?"

Good luck and have fun.

 

[Matt]

If you are thinking of running XP on this spec, bear in mind that 256Mb is
the bare minimum memory to run XP on. It runs better on 512Mb.

I bought a Dell with XP with 128MB.

 

[John Doe]

I bought a Dell with XP with 128MB.

I agree it's not the bare minimum, but I'm not sure that Dell knows
better, or maybe Dell doesn't emphasize performance.

Up to a point, the system is hobbled by hard disk access when memory
is low. I think 128MB would be too low for Windows XP. But I haven't
run with anything less than 512MB in at least five years. At the
moment, my XP system is using almost half out of 1GB, and I'm not
running any games. Games do suck resources. I have seen it use over
512MB.

 

[Bob Davis]

I agree it's not the bare minimum, but I'm not sure that Dell knows
better, or maybe Dell doesn't emphasize performance.

Up to a point, the system is hobbled by hard disk access when memory
is low. I think 128MB would be too low for Windows XP. But I haven't
run with anything less than 512MB in at least five years. At the
moment, my XP system is using almost half out of 1GB, and I'm not
running any games. Games do suck resources. I have seen it use over
512MB.

The minimum is listed as 128mb, although parenthetically says "64 MB minimum
supported; may limit performance and some features."

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/upgrading/sysreqs.mspx

I wouldn't want less than 512mb, personally.

 

[Matt]

the list I have is below:

Part Quantity Price Total
AMD Sempron 2400+ CPU, (SDA2400DUT3D) 1 £34.75 £34.75
Abit NF7 V2.0 nForce2 Socket A MB 1 £41.87 £41.87
Radeon 9250 256MB AGP 1 £46.61 £46.61
Deluxworld M9512 4-1 Case kit 1 £37.59 £37.59
Viking 256mb DDR 400MHz Ram 1 £24.48 £24.48
Lieon 4x DVD +R/RW 1 £23.49 £23.49
[Windows 2000]

You will need a power supply.

Again thanks for the advice, will defiantly look into one of these disk ^^^^^^^^^
managers.

Alright now, simmer down ...