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"My PC... What do you all think?"

I have been looking to build my own PC for a while now, and only last week I set the funds aside (after discovering I can use a savings account) and that my Dad will go halves with me. I emailed around some of the shops in my local area to get a few quotes and after a few days I assembled (well in my head) exactly what I wanted.

The following is the spec of my PC (so far):

Descriptions:
1 off, BO03 ATX MIDI TOWER CASE 300W ATHLON/P4 PSU
1 off, 1.44MB 3.5" FLOPPY DRIVE OEM (mitsumi)
1 off, GA-7ZXE Gigabyte Socket A Motherboard 3 Dimms 1000-2400XP (gigabyte)
1 off, AMD Athlon2200XP+ Socket A OEM (AMD)
1 off, AK785SE Akasa Athlon/Duron Cooler Up TO 2200XP (Akasa)
1 off, 48X12X48 CDRW ARTEC RE-WRITER RETAIL BOXED (Artec)
1 off, 20GB 5400RPM SEAGATE HARD DRIVE 9W1021-301 (Seagate)
2 off, 512MB PC133 BRANDED KINGSTON
1 off, 56K V92 MODEM INTEL CHIP SET RETAIL BOXED (Intel).

Sub Total £409.20
VAT £71.61
Total £480.81

+GE-FORCE 4 4200 TI4200 128MBDDR 8X AGP SP72288X £120.00 (Sparkle)

I think that is a remakable system? What are everyones thoughts. Will it run the latest games and the basics like I want it to? Is the card a decent price and is it any good?

Just look at that memory though! 1024mb DDR Dimm SD! And all that for just £530! I assume I can build it in a day of solid work and then config all the BIOS and op system in a few days.

I ordered my anti static equipment and am now just waiting till my Dad comes back from Wales (next Saturday :( ) with the magic plastic!

There's never a hard drive that's too big. No matter how big it is, you always manage to fill it - somehow.

Get a big hard drive.

i'm getting a 80 gig on next one i consider 40 gig or more a minimum

As I said if it does get too much I can easily install a new HDD. Thats a very good idea though AMD MAN. I was considering doing it but my mother wont let me strip down the old PC, incase we need it for backup. Although its very unlikely both this PC I am building and hers will both go at the same time eh... lightning strike? lol?

I like 20gigs cos they only usually take a few hours to defrag. My m8 with a Westward 80gig 7200rpm takes 12-15 hours. I may consider getting a 30gig when and if the time comes...

If you fill your hard drive up to much it loses a lot of performance and becomes fragmented quicker, it is said for best performance do not fill the hard drive up over 60%, with a 20gig hard drive you are not getting very much for your money i bet you will find a 60gig hard drive for roughly the same price and it will be 7200 rpms and have more cache, or if you have already got a hard drive and it is pretty good then use that one only for windows and office and put all games, videos and MP3's on the second larger hard drive.

just some suggestions.

c.b.

AMD_MAN wrote:
> Only a 20 gig hard drive, why not buy a bigger size one, these days
> they are not much more than the smaller one's?.
>
> c.b.

Trust me I only need that amount. Office 2000 is about 3/4 of a gig.

Most new games are about 1-1.5 gigs max! I doubt I will end up with about 20 top games, do you?

Besides it is easy to install a new HDD into it if I set it as slave...

Only a 20 gig hard drive, why not buy a bigger size one, these days they are not much more than the smaller one's?.

c.b.

If anyones interested this is what I have decided on:

Descriptions:
1 of, BO03 ATX MIDI TOWER CASE 300W ATHLON/P4 PSU
1 of, 1.44MB 3.5" FLOPPY DRIVE OEM (mitsumi)
1 of, GA-7VAXP Gigabyte Socket A Motherboard 3xDDR 6CHANNEL AUDIO, RAID, FIREWIRE (gigabyte)
1 of, AMD Athlon2000XP+ Socket A RETAIL BOXED (AMD)
1 of, AK785SE Akasa Athlon/Duron Cooler Up TO 2200XP (Akasa)
1 of, 48X12X48 CDRW ARTEC RE-WRITER RETAIL BOXED (Artec)
1 of, 20GB 5400RPM SEAGATE HARD DRIVE 9W1021-301 (Seagate)
2 of, 216MB PC2100 DDR BRANDED
1 of, 56K V92 MODEM INTEL CHIP SET RETAIL BOXED (Intel).
1 of, GE-FORCE 4 4200 TI4200 128MBDDR 8X AGP SP72288X £120.00 (Sparkle)

Total is £520 ex VAT

How much was all that?
It almost like mine. but i aint getting a monitor and i aint building it myself.

I personally have just finished the following and it is a thing of beauty

XP2400+
TwinX Corsair 2x256MB 3200
Asus A7N8X
Sapphire Radeon 9700 Pro
Audigy 2 & 6.1 6700 speakers
Liteon DVD
Liteon CDRW
120BG 8mb cache ATA133 HD
Iiyama Visionmaster 454 Monitor 19"

It absolutely tears through all older FPS's like Wolfenstein and Jedi Knight and am about to try it on Unreal 2 tonight. The monitor is well worth the money as it supports resolutions upto 2048x1536 and has dual inputs so I can play my PS2 on my monitor through a VGA adapter. I am hoping to use the Audigy 2 to use the sound output from the PS2 as well to utilize the 6.1 speakers.

If you use a network card all the time then I suppose you may not want to use the onboard but I doubt it would mean a huge performance drop

Well this one has onboard dolby surround 6 channel onboard sound........ or i could get a audigy 2.