Recommendation for New Rig!

Hello Guys,

I might be building my own new around rig end of this year. Well the budget
is Brunei Dollars $2000 (US$1063). The Rig will be used for a little bit of
gaming mainly sports & racing simulation, student work, listening
to mp3s. First of all, I need some recommendations for the components &
other pheriperals before that i can start price watching! I prefer purcahsing faster components
instead of spending on a fast CPU.

Motherboard: Is a ASUS K7V266E or a n-Force Chipset Mobo adequate?

CPU(AMD): Duron or XP or MP?

CPU FAN: I have no knowledge about this!!

DDR RAM: Crucial or Samsung or Kingston?

Sound Card: SB Live! Platinum? (Santa Cruz is not available in the Singaporean Market!!)

Hard Drive: Maxtor or Western Digital or Seagate or IBM?

3D Card:

Speakers:

Casing, PSU: Probably Lian-Li Brand

CD Writter: any ideas?

- You don't want MP. It's tailored for servers - multiple CPU's

-XP may be too expensive. A 1.4 GHz Thunderbird maybe? Or an older Athlon?

-Durons only have 64kb of L2 cache, e.g. - they're good for gaming! but for office applications, they stink.

-You want a good fan if you want your CPU to last long. Perhaps one from ThermalTake, Alpha or TaiSol.

-As for an n-Force, go for the A7N266. They're very good for onboard video (GeForce2) and sound (very powerful).

-No problems with Lian-Li cases. Very high quality.

-Hard Drive: Seagate's are the best hdd's available. Western Digital for price, but they still make good drives.

-If you're not going for an n-Force, I'd still go for the GeForce2 MX. Or a more powerful card, but definitely not anything below that.

-DDR SDRAM: OCZ isn't available in the Singapore market, so try Crucial. 256 MB is great for what you're doing, but if you want go ahead and go 512.

-CD Writer: Do you want fast or do you want cheap? Maybe a 16x-20x burner from Yamaha, Plextor, or maybe even HP.

-Speakers...Cambridge Soundworks? Logitech? Not Klipsch, they're very high performance, for the price...

In addition to this list, Lite On. My brother purchased the 24x10x40x burner recently and its very nice. According to the now defunct Storageguide.com its about as fast as the Plextor equivalent. I imagine the 32x12x40x and the 40x12x48 models are just as nice. The Lite On 32x12x40x can be had for $95 US at www.newegg.com.

Read his post?

One thing you guys should note is that Young&Wild said that he was going to be building the rig at the end of the year.
By this time the Hammer Series of CPUs should be out and probably Intels MacKinley (McKinley??? ), so by that time I would think that the XP range of processors, even the XP 2200+ on 0.13 micron will most likely be quite a bit cheaper.

Also mobos that support 333DDR and above will most likely be more refined that the current available Iwill and other 333 offerings. Just at the end of last month Asus announced their A7V333 which uses Via's 333 chipset. I have yet to read reviews of this but I imagine it should out perform the KT266A unlike the initial 333 releases. This should also be a more affordable option.
Unless you are going to start buying the parts now Young&Wild, it would be best asking this question again (or reviving this thread) closer to the time when you will be purchasing the parts

Re: Recommendation for New Rig!

then i'd say you should wait till the day you are ready to do it (end of the year?) and do some price research then. it's only March, and it's still a long time till the end of the year. doing a research now won't do you any good if you're not buying them now.
newer/better products come out all the time. and so the price of older products will drop as time goes by.

AMD Home
http://www.amd.com/us-en/

AMD Thermal Solutions
AMD Thermal Solutions

AMD-XP Motherboard Compatibility
AMD-XP Motherboard Compatibility

System Configuration Information
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/TechnicalResources/0,,30_182_869_4348,00.html


If money was no object, Soyo Dragon+ & Athy XP
Read Bobes excellent review www.3dspotlight.com

Re: Recommendation for New Rig!

Sorry, i forgot to mention probably middle of this year.

Isnt this supposed to be the other way around? Im not trying to be critical. I am just wondering if this is a mistake or true..

Re: Re: Recommendation for New Rig!

Why dont you just replace your mobo, cpu and memory. Maybe a new PSU as well. Most of the components you have should be fine for awhile such as your CD-RW. You may want to take a second look at you current config and build upon that.


Also, this technology changes so fast that it is going to be hard to get a grip on what you should get today if you are not going to purchase for another 3-6 months.

Hey young&wild,

You are probably not gonig to like this but I would first throw out the Lian case, that is if you are talking about the fancy aluminum one. Why ? Well they are quite pricy and if you bought a cheaper case, or should I say regular beige case, you can use that money on other stuff of substance.

Would you rather have a nice looking PC or a screaming one. Some of the best "Street Sleeper Cars" are the ones that look plain but have all the good's "under the hood". Know what I mean.

If you choose an AMD for your rig, go poking around AMD's site for everything on cooling, power, and mobo.

www.amd.com

As for other hardware, I have a Samsung CD-RW that isn't the very fastest but fast none the less (16x10/32) the best thing about it is it is SILENT ! When I burn a disk, you cannot hear it spin up. When I got it I thought it was broken....its just that quiet.

Memory, I would go with Crucial/Micron or Samsung, both very good companies that make some of the best memory in town.

I tend to stick with Maxtor or IBM hard drives, but beware of the IBM models as posted here and elsewhere...some of the IBM's have heat issues.

Speakers, all personnal preference, I use Altec Lansing but Labtech is making a model now call the Pulse 424 which is one of the best sub-$200 speakers you can buy ($50 US). Also Logitech is making some fine sub$200 2.1 and 4.1 sets now.

As for video, I use ATI radeons, so I would recommend that or any of the new GF 3's and 4's...thats all up to your budget.

By the time you build your new rig the best graphics cards will be Radeon 8800 or GF4Ti4600, or perhaps GF5 will be out by then.

I mean look what happened with the Gf3, produced the chips for a couple of weeks or so, and then announced the GF4.
NVIDIA are getting nearly as good as Sony (announcing the PS3 before the PS2 had even been launched over here)

Slight exaggeration since some people have had Geforce3 cards for about a year I have had mines for about 7-8 months...
If your talking about the GF3Ti range then, yes your right...
I was actually wondering whether Nvidia purely did that to give them the highest benching graphics card between the launch of the ATI 8500 and their launch of the Geforce4 range, or was it always in their plans???

The Sony PS3 thing was funny though, trying to deal with the fact that more powerful consoles from Nintendo and Microsoft were not that far off being released after the PS2. Was the right thing to do though since it has given them a good grip on the console market. PS2 has virtually had the console market to itself for about a year....

I agree with boeingfixer, if you get a lianli case, you're going to take up at least 20-25% of your budget on the case... you should use that money somewhere else.
You should get an XP, t-birds are starting to become totally obsolete and XP's are getting pretty cheap. a 1600+XP is about $110 in the US right now, not sure where you're at though, and if you wait three more months, it'll definitely be lower than that.
As for the motherboard, Asus is a bit expensive with their motherboards, but they're nice as hell. however, if you want to save about $50, then I'd go for an Epox or something cheaper than the Asus board.
Video card: radeons are the best bang for the buck right now. the geforce3ti200 is a good buy also for around $150.
HDD: Stay away from IBM until the dust clears with their current hard drive troubles and go with maxtor.

the rest I have no real opinion on. good luck with the computer.

To the best of my knowledge yes.
The Durons are still cheaper, however most computer labs today go Celeron simply because of the above.

Just look at my setup and copy it as is except for the SB Live, go to the Audigy, I am soon. This system is solid as a rock, I don't even know what a blue screen is.