Ideas for a new cheap system
I'm building a computer for my mother to use. My brother and I will pay for it and give it to her for christmas. I searched the forums for other "cheap computer" topics, but didn't find the answers I needed.
I want this computer to have a decent amount of horsepower in case I ever want to do something on it when I'm at her house (which will happen now and then), but we won't need anything fancy. No SATA, no RAID, no FireWire, no Gigabit Ethernet, no need for infrared connectors, etc. Abit boards are preferred. I have an NF-7 and it's worked great for me so far for 8 months.
She won't do much other than regular web surfing and playing videos from the internet.
Here's my ideas so far:
1. Cheap computer case, 300-400 watt power supply.
2. I want to stick with an Abit motherboard, either P-4 or AMD, doesn't really matter much. Processor should be around 2 Ghz. Give me a good idea for boards for each type of processor.
3. 256 MB to 512 MB memory. In either case, would it be better to have 2 sticks (2*128, 2*256) or one stick? Don't you need to have 2 sticks to utilize any DDR capabilities? Something like PC2100 - PC2700 (266,333)
4. A cheap CD-RW drive, speed is not important as it won't get used much, no floppy drive.
5. 60-80 GB hard drive (I'd pick a Seagate Barracuda, I have 2 working well for me).
6. ATI Radeon 9200SE video card. I'll donate mine and buy a better one for myself.
7. 17" CRT, mouse, keyboard, and speakers - generic computer show stuff.
What are your opinions?
I want this computer to have a decent amount of horsepower in case I ever want to do something on it when I'm at her house (which will happen now and then), but we won't need anything fancy. No SATA, no RAID, no FireWire, no Gigabit Ethernet, no need for infrared connectors, etc. Abit boards are preferred. I have an NF-7 and it's worked great for me so far for 8 months.
She won't do much other than regular web surfing and playing videos from the internet.
Here's my ideas so far:
1. Cheap computer case, 300-400 watt power supply.
2. I want to stick with an Abit motherboard, either P-4 or AMD, doesn't really matter much. Processor should be around 2 Ghz. Give me a good idea for boards for each type of processor.
3. 256 MB to 512 MB memory. In either case, would it be better to have 2 sticks (2*128, 2*256) or one stick? Don't you need to have 2 sticks to utilize any DDR capabilities? Something like PC2100 - PC2700 (266,333)
4. A cheap CD-RW drive, speed is not important as it won't get used much, no floppy drive.
5. 60-80 GB hard drive (I'd pick a Seagate Barracuda, I have 2 working well for me).
6. ATI Radeon 9200SE video card. I'll donate mine and buy a better one for myself.
7. 17" CRT, mouse, keyboard, and speakers - generic computer show stuff.
What are your opinions?
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Comments
This is a nice walk through for building a budget system.
I would stay with an NF7, and a nice Barton or Thorton core XP.
You don't need two sticks of memory, dual channel doesn't matter in this machine.
Get a single stick of brand name budget 512MB PC2700 or faster.
Check the weekly deals at your ares electronics stores for hdd. You might find a Maxtor or WD with a $40 rebate on an $80 drive.
if its not a enermax or antec u shouldnt get the psu or u will run into problems
like instablity or every capasitor on ur motherboard and videocard poping (seen that about 30 times).
also dont cheep out on ram spend the extra few bucks and get it from a good brand (Corsair or Kingston)
also for motherboards make sure its an Asus, Msi, Abit or Gigabyte.
those are the only ones i havent had problems with.
well i hoped that helped
have fun
I'll stick with a decent AMD chip (Athlon, Barton, I don't even know most of the AMD architecture names and core words) or P4.
Don't necessarily discount the Sempron, AFAIK it's just a renamed T-Bred B. At least in the Socket A.
Sempron 2800+ review.
You will see that while the Sempron is geared at the celeron buying circle, the performance on both new celerons & semprons has moved on quite a bit from 1.1ghz celerons...