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System critique

B

BB Gun

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jan 14, 2004
Messages
1,551
http://secure.newegg.com/app/WishR.asp?ID=604674

Building it for a friend, he's busting his budget as it is to get the NEC 17" LCD. I'm trying to give him at least a mildly overclockable midrange gaming system. I did have the Epox 8KRAI kT600 chipset board in there, but saw there were no overclocking options at all in the BIOS. So I stretched his budges another 30 bucks and gave him the 8RDA3+.

Any suggestions that don't pump the price up welcome. Suggestions that reduce the price but keep it close in performance are especially welcome.

Thanks,

BB
 
save your self a few bucks by getting a cheaper floppy, i mean come on, a floppy is a floppy.

get an abit nf7-s for only a few more dollars, instead of the epox, i think its a better board.
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-127-166&depa=0

get 2 sticks of ram (2x256) corsair value pc-3200 seems to be the cheapest, and runs well, i think they are the same price, and makes for dual channel goodness
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=20-145-477&depa=0

just my opinion. everything else looks good
 
I recommend the DFI Infinity boards over that. I also would recommend 512MB of Kingmax PC3500 - it will be cheaper than your current ram.
 
doh! dual channel. Forgot to swap out the single 512 for dual 256 when I changed from the KT600 to the nforce board.

NF-7_S or Infinity, eh? Will pitch the extra 10 bucks to him. I've been happy with my Epox so far, but I know there's a lot of you happy DFI/Abit guys out there, too.

I don't think he can go wrong with any of them.

Thanks for the inputs.

BB
 
Originally posted by fallsincluded
save your self a few bucks by getting a cheaper floppy, i mean come on, a floppy is a floppy.
Click to expand...

:D best advise so far ... find a used one if you can .... MicroCenter had some used one's for $5.00 so I stocked up ...
 
Most people brought up the issues I was questionable about except one thing...

Why a 40 gig HD? You should be able to get twice that size for about 10 bucks more. It hardly seems worth the savings. If you look around, you can find Seagate 80 gig drives for a little over 70 bucks.
 
Originally posted by Banukab
Honestly do you even need a floppy drive anymore? XP will boot from cd-rom and other than that i can't think of any reason to have one...
Click to expand...

*Smacks forehead*

It's not the OS that determines if a PC can boot from a CD or not. Considering that's done before any OS is even loaded, how would one even think the PS controlled booting????
 
I never said the OS controlled booting from CD. I simply noticed he is putting XP on the system and it is in fact bootable from CD. I realize the sytem determines whether it can boot from cd, is there any new system that wont?
 
:)

I pitched this system to him - only a hundred extra bucks, but 80 GB HD, radeon9700Pro and Mushkin PC3500 level I RAM.

http://secure.newegg.com/app/WishR.asp?ID=606188

A lot more system for only a hundred bucks more. But like I said, we were already pushing his pricing envelope.

... and they both determine if the system boots from CDROM Drive. I mean, it doesn't do any good to have a bootable CD drive set in the BIOS if the OS disk isn't bootable, now is it? You two go play nice now. :D

BB
 
It's that monitor killing him. 17lcd? Comon. Could get a 19" crt, and have a couple hundred to upgrade hdd, video card, processor.
 
I would agree with slash, can save a hell of a lot on a CRT.

That setup is a lot better than anything he could buy off the shelf, I think he will enjoy it. :)
 
Unless he's like me where looking at a CRT for more than an hour gives me massive headaches. Then an LCD may be the only option. That for me would be the one non-negotiable part.
 
System looks good to me. I would consider telling your friend to look around at OfficeMax, Staples, Best Buy etc. to find the CDRW/DVD drive and the hard drive. Won't save huge amounts, but OfficeMax just recently had the 80GB WD drive for $20 after rebates. On a tight budget every little bit helps.
 
Yeah, we know that's killing the price point, but space is an issue more than anything else, that and the cool factor. And 15" LCD's are only a hundred bucks less anymore. No point in going that small.

Good point wmbjr - I'l mention that to him - though he's getting pretty hot to trot now, not sure if he can wait around for the sales. :)

BB
 
Just make sure a hd that cheap dosen't have a 2mb buffer. Yeah thats a good idea to try and catch a combo drive on sale, drives are like blank cd-r's, someone has always got something on sale.
 
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