keeping up with the technology.. some questions

[zmatt]

I'm going to have to disagree with that one. That's a 750i. Nothing beats the value, stability and performance on the P45 chipset for socket 775. The Nvidia boards are plagued with issues. They are also overpriced. Your paying $220 for the motherboard. That's a terrible deal. Any P45 would cream it. And some p35s would too.

 

[Nagasama]

..word..

 

[eyeCpc]

I'm going to have to disagree with that one. That's a 750i. Nothing beats the value, stability and performance on the P45 chipset for socket 775. The Nvidia boards are plagued with issues. They are also overpriced. Your paying $220 for the motherboard. That's a terrible deal. Any P45 would cream it. And some p35s would too.

That's wasn't any recommendation but the only board+cpu bundle seen for Intel at the moment. TigerDirect and other vendors generally see higher prices when compared to newegg anyways.

Once you select a board for $100 then you need the cpu by itself for...? plus video card?, case, supply, hard drive, and anything else.

 

[zmatt]

You don't need to have a bundle to make a purchase. most of the time the bundles aren't very good anyways.

 

[eyeCpc]

The main reason many look for bundles is seeing a discount over shopping separately for each item even going between different vendors. With a $300 max budget paying $100 and adding a new hard drive into the mix along with cpu and memory alone will chew that up fast.

The questions now would be how large a drive is needed sata or ide? How fast a cpu? How much memory for which OS? 2gb is a good start for both XP and Vista alike with most adding more for Vista.

 

[zmatt]

I'm not bashing the merits of bundles, I'm just saying few are good ones. I know the reasoning behind them.

ide? Your kidding I hope. Nobody should be using ide by this point. They have had enough time to switch to sata. Officially P45s and P35s don't even support ide, they have the ability through of chip ide controllers.

 

[eyeCpc]

Besides the hard drive preferably sata over ide you also have to consider the optical drive that will needed since those also come in ide or sata. Bundles can be price savers when you are not fussy about which model board or cpu is in the mix.

Your goal is simply see a matched pair of items to toss into a quick build instead of trying to decide which is best but simply want to slap a quick case together. For a specific model this or that then you shop around for the lowest price seen on each thing by itself which will take longer where you can then be stiff necked about just what goes in there.

For $200-$300 you can't afford to be pick and choose but take what you can just to get something together.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

My advice regarding using ide on a p35 or p45 is don't. My ip35-E doesn't even have an option to boot from a IDE optical drive so you have to have a sata optical drive to be able to install windows. There is no reason to get IDE anymore, there is almost no price difference between it and sata.

This is the best build I could get close to your budget. It comes to $322 before mail in rebates. If you don't plan on gaming you can drop the hD 3450 and just use the motherboards integrated graphics.

Newegg.com - GIGABYTE GZ-X2BPD-500 Black 0.6mm SECC Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Computer Cases

Newegg.com - SAMSUNG SpinPoint T Series HD501LJ 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - Internal Hard Drives

Newegg.com - BIOSTAR A780G M2+ SE AM2+/AM2 AMD 780G Micro ATX AMD Motherboard - AMD Motherboards

Newegg.com - ASUS EAH3450/DI/256M Radeon HD 3450 256MB 64-bit GDDR2 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Low Profile Video Card - Desktop Graphics / Video Cards (used in hybrid crossfire with the motherboards HD 3200 integrated video)

Newegg.com - Rosewill RP500-2 500W ATX12V v2.01 Power Supply - Power Supplies

Newegg.com - OCZ SLI-Ready 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory - Desktop Memory

Newegg.com - AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ Brisbane 2.7GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM2 65W Dual-Core Processor - Processors - Desktops

 

[ropeadopa]

My advice regarding using ide on a p35 or p45 is don't. My ip35-E doesn't even have an option to boot from a IDE optical drive so you have to have a sata optical drive to be able to install windows. There is no reason to get IDE anymore, there is almost no price difference between it and sata.

This is the best build I could get close to your budget. It comes to $322 before mail in rebates. If you don't plan on gaming you can drop the hD 3450 and just use the motherboards integrated graphics.

Newegg.com - GIGABYTE GZ-X2BPD-500 Black 0.6mm SECC Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Computer Cases

Newegg.com - SAMSUNG SpinPoint T Series HD501LJ 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - Internal Hard Drives

Newegg.com - BIOSTAR A780G M2+ SE AM2+/AM2 AMD 780G Micro ATX AMD Motherboard - AMD Motherboards

Newegg.com - ASUS EAH3450/DI/256M Radeon HD 3450 256MB 64-bit GDDR2 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Low Profile Video Card - Desktop Graphics / Video Cards (used in hybrid crossfire with the motherboards HD 3200 integrated video)

Newegg.com - Rosewill RP500-2 500W ATX12V v2.01 Power Supply - Power Supplies

Newegg.com - OCZ SLI-Ready 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory - Desktop Memory

Newegg.com - AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ Brisbane 2.7GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM2 65W Dual-Core Processor - Processors - Desktops

wow thanks a lot for the help. i hear you all on the benefits of certain boards, but this is a budget build.

one last question though. is there really a big difference between core 2 duo and dual core AMD's. AMD seems much less expensive.

you guys have been great thanks!!

 

[zmatt]

As far as performance yes there is. Just look at some benchmarks in your free time. It has been beaten into the ground many times and there are a lot of people with hurt feelings over it.

But long story short, yes Core 2s are faster than the AMDs. They also overlcock better.