New System Review

[Andu]

Hello,

I am building a home-brew system for the first time and would welcome input on my proposed system.

Proposed Specs (from another Tom's machine):
* $80 <A HREF="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103417" target="_new"> AMD AthlonXP 2600+ 2.08 GHz; 333MHz Processor;</A>
* $52 <A HREF="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813138236" target="_new">Biostar Nforce2 400 Socket A M7; NCD-PRO Motherboard;</A>
* $80 <A HREF="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820141437" target="_new">Memory: Kingston DDR SDRAM 1GB (2 x 512MB) 400MHz PC3200 Dual Channel;</A>
* $56 <A HREF="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144122" target="_new">Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar 80MB 7200 RPM 8 MB cache;</A>
* $67 <A HREF="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811124072#DetailSpecs" target="_new">ENERMAX CS-30881TA-S3A Case;</A>
* $120 <A HREF="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814164008" target="_new"> Radeon 9600 XT Graphics Card;</A>

I will use my current monitor, hard drive, CD-RW drive, floppy drive, and peripherals in the new machine.

Budget: ~$500

System Usage:
* Software development (running ASP.NET and MSDE [MS SQL server] on development machine).
* Very limited image editing
* Big Excel files
* Some word processing and web surfing

I really appreciate your input, thanks!

Edit: Since I will not be doing gaming or intensive graphics work on this machine, is that 128MB video card overkill? How about replacing it with the following:

$33.50 <A HREF="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814140038" target="_new">Apollo Bloody Monster GeForce4 MX4000 64MB</A>
<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by andu on 06/17/05 04:58 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[apesoccer]

If the mobo you've chosen has raid available to it, i would buy 2 of those 80gb hds and put them in raid 1, since this is for work. It's one thing to use a computer at work where most everything is backed up, and quite another when you work from home. In a small buisness environment i wouldn't consider doing anything less. You might consider putting it on a battery backup as well (500+).

F@H:
AMD: [64 3000+][2500+][2400+][2000+][1.3][366]
Intel: [X 3.0x3][P4 3.0x2][P4 2.4x5 down][P4 1.4]

"...and i'm not gay" RX8 -Greatest Quote of ALL Time

 

[dunklegend]

Why not get a Socket 754 motherboard?
A <A HREF="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819104226" target="_new">2600+ Sempron</A> is only $76, and it's newer technology, you can get it cheap now but you'll be able to upgrade to 64bits in the future

<font color=blue>If everything seems to be going well, you obviously don't know what the hell is going on</font color=blue>

 

[fishmahn]

Yep, the video card is overkill... The mx4000 is cheaper

You could also get a mobo with integrated graphics for what you're doing, though I always cringe when I put "integrated" and "graphics" right next to each other.

Use the money saved on video to upgrade to a Socket 754 system and a Sempron 2600+ or so. They'll perform much better and in a year, another $100 will upgrade you to a full Atlon64 3500+ or similar. Heck, if you have enough, get a socket 939, but I think that will push your budget too far.

Mike.