Input on a temporary build.

[r00x23]

Ok so here's the deal. I've been without a desktop for a year now. I've been using my IBM Thinkpad X23 as my main PC and I have been using it for everthing including gaming! Yes gaming ona PIII 866MHz laptop. Well... only CS1.6 but still. I'm pretty much a poor college student, I have absolutely no money, so this is what I plan on doing.

First of all there was a computer surplus sale at my college, they were getting rid of all the old PC's they had. The deal was $35 for a box, monitor, keyboard and mouse, didn't matter what. Well I ended up coming home with two Celeron 433MHz machines with 2 NICs each (I plan on making a firewall/router out of) and two MASSIVE Flat 19" CRT sony/dell trinitron monitors. So I have these two black beasts sitting in front of me with nothing to use them with.

I was also given a Foxconn s478 board by a good friend of mine, brand new, unopened alont with a ATI 9250 unopened... I know dated, but it was free. I'm not much of a gamer but I do miss playing CS:S every now and then along with some BF2.

What 478 CPU should I get that I can OC and get the most power out of? I do plan on spending some money on Water cooling / Case / PSU / RAM and Vid card, basically everything that I can still use when I upgrade later to a dual core system.

Any input helps. Thanks for reading.

 

[Xilikon]

What is the budget ?? No budget = no suggestions.

 

[engiNURD]

What 478 CPU should I get that I can OC and get the most power out of? I do plan on spending some money on Water cooling / Case / PSU / RAM and Vid card, basically everything that I can still use when I upgrade later to a dual core system.

Any input helps. Thanks for reading.

Any Northwood is a good s478 OC'er, but you're about a year or two late if you wanted these parts brand new. If you plan to upgrade to a brand new, current CPU of the future, your DDR ram won't be compatible, nor will your vidcard. Unfortunately, your parts are near their end of life, if not already there.

A good northwood on ebay 2.4ghz will run you nearly $100, and so will 1gb ddr400 ram. A good PSU costs at least $40, and you can get away with a $30 case, though it wont be the best. Vidcard for CS:S should be, at the least, a 6600GT which is another $75-$100. If you want to keep that s478 mobo, look to spend at least $350... and thats on USED parts. Hopefully, you can find those parts cheaper. Otherwise, you're better off saving up for a better brand new build and selling off that mobo and vidcard.

So you got two 19" trinitron crt's for <$35?!?!? nice! i hope they're flat screens (i still love CRTs).

If you can, save up for this (~$650 including tax and shipping if you upgrade the vidcard to GT):
$70 - AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Orleans 1.8GHz Socket AM2
$85 - ASUS M2NPV-VM Socket AM2 NVIDIA GeForce 6150 Micro ATX
$130 - G.SKILL 1GB (2x512MB) DDR2 800 (F2-6400CL5D-1GBNQ)
$90 - 3D Fuzion 3DFR76256GSE Geforce 7600GS ($90 - $20MIR)
$30 - NEC 16X DVD±R DVD Burner Black IDE/ATAPI Model ND-3550A
$43 - HITACHI 7K160 HDS721680PLA380 80GB SATA 3.0Gb/s
$42 - FSP Group AX400-PN 400W PSU
$30 - Rosewill R103A Black Steel ATX Mid Tower
========
$520+ tax and shipping - $20MIR

DDR2-667 will save you $15, but I think that little extra money is worth the performance gain, especially with a64 am2 systems. CS:S will perform better on a GT, so if you have $50 more, the GT is worth the upgrade as well.

 

[upriverpaddler]

ebay has a sub-category for s478 procs. 2.4 is plenty for temporary. Read your BF2 box to see the minimum and recommended specs. That will save you some money.