In need of advice - building pc

[diesoft]

I plan on building a pc with the main interest for gaming. Im pretty much a hardware noob, the only experience I have is installing a few pci cards and adding some extra ram.

Here is a list of what I have come up with so far. I was hoping to get some advice or opinions on this setup ( performance, compatibility, prices..)

Case:
Apex - 9-Bay Mid-Tower Thermally Enhanced Case with 400W Power Supply - Supports ATX and MATX mainboards - $80.00

Motherboard:
A7N8X Deluxe nForce2 AMD Athlon XP/Duron, Socket A, ATX, 3GB DDR-SDRAM, 333MHz FSB - $126.00

Processor:
Athlon XP 3000+ (2.16GHz, 512KB, 333MHz, Socket A) - $260.00

Ram:
512MB (DDR PC3200 • CL=3 • Unbuffered • Non-parity • 5ns • 2.5V • 64Meg x 64) - $86.00 (possibly 1024MB?)

HD:
Barracuda 80GB (EIDE, Serial ATA, 7200 RPM) - $124.00

DVD/CD-ROM:
Sony 16X DVD / 40X CD-ROM DDU1621 INT IDE - $32.00

Video Card:
RADEON 9800 Pro 128MB DDR - $376.00

OS:
Windows XP Home Edition - $160.00



I still have some studying on the subject left to do before I begin purchasing, but I am 100% serious about this and would really appreciate it if I could get some advice .

 

[imation]

some advice??? well. some advice is that you buy those parts and address them to me!!!! haha!

*cough
ok.. well seriously. the only thing i see wrong with what youve written above is the motherboard type. You are taking a gamble when buying a motherboard that has the nforce2 on it, as there have been quite a few problems with it. But never the less, you could be one of the lucky ones

good luck with it all, my address is.. .

 

[darthparth]

CAS3 Ram? .... stick with the CAS2 or CAS2.5, those are the best for gaming naturally, and you can get like a good Kingston stick for much cheaper than $80. The case I think is a bit on the steep side but whatever floats your boat . personally I would pay like $40 for the case (many good cases are only $40) and spend the remaining $40 on more RAM (2 gig). Overall good system i think

 

[diesoft]

Thanks alot for the feedback

imation: hehe, no way. I can barely scrape up the extra cash for my own stuff .

MicroBell: Thanks for the link, thats definitely something I want to check into more before I make a purchase.

darthparth: Thanks for the info on the ram.

 

[darthparth]

LOL diesoft, i meant spend it on 1 gig of RAM, i dont think you would want more than that

 

[diesoft]

Yeah I kind of figured thats what you ment .

I ment thanks for bringing to my attention that CAS2 and CAS2.5 RAM are actually faster than CAS3, I was under the impression that the higher number = faster (doh!).

 

[darthparth]

yea lol, np i would just hate to see a potentially sweet machine perform worse just because of lower quality RAM.