Help! Saving for a new rig.

[majistic]

Most people here are whores for DFI and 6600GT's. Those are the main recommendations for everyone. MSI also offers some good boards. From what I hear the TWINMOS RAM is good.

 

[Nitestick]

i always though venice was a bad name for a core comon venice is huge canals. anyway your better off with an amd if you want a gaming computer. basically all the stuff these guys said is true. if you want a multitasking more software geared computer youre probably better off with a p4. like these guys said msi would be good for a mother board, dunno what prices are like outside of australia but round here they are cheap and good quality

 

[geekster]

I think I want to spend 500-600 dollars .

 

[Hacp]

Ok, lol here is my take on this. Do you want to be doing some gaming? Are you going to be overclocking? Do you have a monitor? I assume that all these answers are no. So, what you want is the best bang for your buck that won't cost you a fortune. First thing is first. AGP is going to be dead. Ati did it with its x??? line. Nivida is doing it now by not releasing AGP for its new line of Graphic cards. SO you def want PCI-E. But, you don't want to sepend a single dime on a video card. The best way to do that is by going integrated video! Blah blah, I can hear it now. But, the Radeon Xpress 200 chipset isn't that bad, and your on a tight budget. You can always upgrade later. For now, get the Jetway micro ATX motherboard with integrated video based on the x300 chipset. Since that is a socket 939 motherboard, you need a socket 939 processor. Obviously, the choice would be a venice 3000. If you want high performance, you can always op for the higher end models. Ram makes almost no difference if you don't plan on overclocking. That being said, get 1gb of mushkin ram. They cost 80 bucks on newegg, and can go to 220fsb if you do plan on doing some very light ocing. Finally, go with SATA 150 Hard drives, and you basic NEC Cd/dvd burner. In total the board will cost you around 95 dollars, the processor is around 150, the ram will cost you 80, the hard drive/cd buner will cost you around 100(80gb hd). That brings your grand total total of 430. 600-430 is 170. That 170 should go into a crt monitor,mouse,keyboard, and antec case/power supply(350-380watts). Should be around 585 w/o shipping. If you have a monitor already, then get graphics card or cpu.

 

[dhw200]

AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Venice
DFI Lanparty nForce4 Ultra-D
Thermaltake Silent Purepower 420watter
eVGA 6600 GT
DVD burner
pick a case
1 gig of twinMOS RAM

Get all the stuff from newegg it should cost under $1000

 

[dario03]

Is the budget just for the tower and internals?

You could get something like I posted for about $510 with a regular case and good PSU and cables. Then if you do just want a tower and internals you could upgrade to a gig and different mobo and still be under $600.

The ati x200 chipset looks good on paper and I almost got one but then I found out they only have 2 pipelines so if you want to be gaming I wouldn't even recommend starting with that. Since a board with a seperate video card but with intergrated graphics generally score lower and aren't as stable as a regular non intergrated graphics board.