Imagine my surprise when I got home from work (yeh that is 16 hours in today) and saw 34 posts! Not too sure about the kangaroo/hamster thing, but decided to volunteer a little more personal info to address some of the posts.
I am:
1. Definitely not rich, but low house payment, no car payments, and no real credit card debt with nice year end bonus means we can spring for a pretty cool computer that we expect to last at least 3 years.
2. Way past 40, and yes I have a good job (Director of Engineering in a small software firm) but that involves 60-90 hours of work every week. I try never to think about what I actually make per hour especially after the government takes theirs.
3. Everybody says and sometimes even believes that they have great kids, but my kid is polite, hardworking, gets almost straight A's (in 8th grade doing Geometry, Intro to Physics, Intro to Java, Honors History, English, Strings, Art, PE with A's but struggled to get a B- in third year French), does everything we ask him to (okay we are having a small issue about taking regular showers lately), and he does more housework than I do and does it better than his father.
4. He knows that he is a lucky kid, and is genuinely appreciative of the fact
5. And yes I am an awesome mom, aren't I! ;-)
Now back to this build thing.
There is relatively little price difference between the two mobos ($70?), but obviously a lot of strong feelings out there. Researched the DFI some more and read on their forums that this video card will touch the fan when on that board. That and the fact that ASUS happens to be a company with whom I have interacted in the past leads me to pick that board. All the other advice seems to be pretty consistent, so this is what I am going with now:
AMD A8N32-SLI Deluxe
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ Dual-Core 1MB Per Core 90nm (939)
ZALMAN CNPS9500 LED 92mm 2 Ball Cooling Fan/Heatsink
Thermaltake Tsunami Dream Tower Series w/No PS Black
Enermax Noisetaker EG701AX-VE-SFMA ATX 2.01 w/SLI 600W
OCZ Dual Channel Platinum 2 GB (2 pcs 1GB) DDR (400) PC-3200
BFG Tech Geforce 7800GTX BFGR78512GTXOC Video Card
Western Digital 36 GB SATA 10K Raptor (OS drive)
Western Digital Caviar RE 250 GB SATA 8MB Cache 7200 RPM
LG (GSA4167BB) DVD±RW Dual Layer Burner
Mitsumi Floppy 7-in-1 USB Card Reader/Smart Media Drive
This is actually a savings of $90 over my initial attempt (now $2360 without shipping), so thank you all for helping me create a better system and saving me money very much. Not too sure I need another burner, but for no more money what the heck. Also not too sure I am going to be able to find one of these 512G boards in stock, but I can always drop down to the 256G board and save some more money. Read too much good stuff about the Enermax to care about going a little cheaper on the PSU. The case is one of the few things I am still iffy on. DonÂ’t really care what it looks like, but I really care that this thing be quiet and big with lots of room to work in. Kind of just picked the first decent full size black tower that I found on Monarch and that others seemed to be buying. I listen to noisy servers all day and donÂ’t want to come home to a jet engine. Is there a more quiet case? Is there something else I can add to help? I saw some kind of matting somewhere? Nobody mentioned better or necessary cables and that is still on my mind.
All of the links and info on building is most appreciated, especially apokalipseÂ’s link-just what I need! With a little final feedback and the bonus check in hand, I will start ordering this stuff in the next couple of weeks. As I want to build this with my son, it will be early February before it actually happens and I only hope I am not back here looking for help! I might post how it turns out though, so you can all get a warm fuzzy about helping an old lady. ;-)
