Components list for my new computer - Please give opinions

[Retro]

Hey,

I've compiled a list of components for my first build computer.

Please tell me what you think and suggest any improvements, baring in mind I have quite a tight budget and still need to find a monitor (Looking for a TFT between £200 - £300, USD $370 - $550).

Currently the following components come to around £700 (USD - $1,285) and I'm looking at my total budget to be no more than £1,000 (USD - $1,835), including a monitor.



Intel Pentium 4 "Prescott" 3.0GHz (800FSB) with HT Technology

Abit IS7-E 'Springdale' (Socket 478) Motherboard

Corsair 512MB DDR XMS2700LLPT TwinX (2x256MB) Platinum CAS2

Maxtor DiamondMax Plus9 Serial ATA 80GB 8MB Cache

Connect3D ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB TV-Out/DVI

Sony CRX320E 52x32x52x16 CDRW/DVD Combi Drive (Silver)

OcUK (company which I plan to get it from) Value Floppy Drive - Silver

CoolerMaster Centurion - Silver (No PSU, See below)

Q-Tec 550W Dual Fan Gold PSU

Zalman CNPS7000A-AlCu Ultra-Quiet CPU Cooler

2 x Zalman ZMF1 80mm Silent Case fan - 3 pin

Keyboard + mouse - Creative Desktop 6000

Total - £696.85 (USD - $1,279.90)

Thanks

 

[hercules_upw]

you should go with PC3200 RAM. PC2700 only runs at 333MHz so you would only utilize 666MHz of the 800MHz on your chip. Kind of a waste. PC3200 runs at 400MHz which, if you run your RAM in dual mode, will utilize all of the band width.

 

[Retro]

Thanks for that. I've removed the PC2700 and put PC3200 in my shopping cart, at extra expense though, but thats what you would expect.

Is the graphics card any good? My knowledge of graphics cards isnt that good as I've never really been a PC gamer before. I noticed you using the ATI 9800 pro 128mb and was wondering whether you could give me your opinion on it.

Thanks

 

[The Merlin]

The graphics card is great....

You might want to go for the Northwood rather than the Prescott if your a gamer

To save abit of money you could get a smaller PSU...instead of 550watts go for 450watts or so

 

[WQ87]

The graphics card is great....

You might want to go for the Northwood rather than the Prescott if your a gamer

To save abit of money you could get a smaller PSU...instead of 550watts go for 450watts or so

Whats wrong with 550w?

 

[beedubaya]

My gaming PC I am getting ready to build is going to cost me about $1900. The specs are below in my signature. You might want to think about getting a Radeon X800 of some sort. It doesn't cost all that much more and it is much better than the 9800 Pro. If you are going to get 9800, get the XT version, not the Pro.

 

[modemide]

Unless you are overclocking you can get cheaper CAS 2 memory, corsair memory is very expensive.

Also, from what I see (quiet fans) It seems you want this computer to be quiet. However, with a 550 watt PSU it's not going to be (unless you can manually control the fan) so you may want to consider stepping down a bit.

Instead of getting one Sony Combo drive, get two liteons, heck, you could probably get a DVD-RW liteon instead of a sony. Don't let the name and price fool you. These are quality optical drives. Recently I burned 100 cd's in succession and the drive went through them all with ease (both reading DVD liteon and writing liteon CD-RW).

While you can get a decent LCD monitor for 500 American. If you have the space I'd suggest a high end CRT over a mid range LCD any day. You can get a much better CRT than LCD at the same price.

Finally, this is a big change, and if you are an intel person you may not want to do this. But I suggest an Athlon 64 system rather than a p4 system. Mainly for it's 64 bit capabilities. which may be used later on when windows xp 64 bit version comes out. With that in mind, it may increase the longetivity of your system.

That's all I have to say :-D

 

[modemide]

My gaming PC I am getting ready to build is going to cost me about $1900. The specs are below in my signature. You might want to think about getting a Radeon X800 of some sort. It doesn't cost all that much more and it is much better than the 9800 Pro. If you are going to get 9800, get the XT version, not the Pro.

beedubaya, you should get an SATA hard drive, you've already spent so much as it is :-D

 

[beedubaya]

How much advantage would I get with SATA over ATA-133? The person at my local computer store says that the advantages of SATA isn't worth the extra costs.

 

[modemide]

How much advantage would I get with SATA over ATA-133? The person at my local computer store says that the advantages of SATA isn't worth the extra costs.

5 - 10 dollars more + the cable is small if you have a window it may look nice :-D