Not the fastest, but……

[Earnwald]

I am trying to put together a power system, two or three notches down from the top to keep the cost down. Would like to hear what you guys think.

CPU: Pentium 4, 3.0 GHz, 800 MHz front side buss
Motherboard: ASUS, P4P800 Deluxe, with Intel 865PE chipset
RAM: two sticks 256 MB, PC3200, 400 MHz, DDR SDRAM (total 512 MB)
Graphics card: ATI Radeon 9600 XT (128 MB, 8X AGP, DirectX 9.0 support)

1. Anyone know or have experience with this CPU and motherboard combination?
2. Should the ram sticks be bought as a matched pair? Is that much more expensive?
3. Anyone have this graphics card and how do you like it?

Thanks.

 

[HardWareBoss]

Looks good. To you plan on OCing your Cpu? Mobo I would go with Abit IS7 less money great board.

 

[ChipDeath]

1) Loads of people have that mobo/CPU, and you'd probably be happy with it, but as HardwareBoss says, the Abit IS7 is a better board and cheaper.

2)YES, you should get 2 matched sticks instead of one - It's not that much more expensive but will give better performance, as the 865 Chipset supports Dual channel memory.

3)Good graphics card. pretty good price/performance ratio and should serve you well for a while.

It's a nice rig to be sure, the only thing I might suggest is to try to scrape together enough cash to get 1Gb (2x512 sticks) of RAM, rather than 512. You can never have too much, and XP is quite memory hungry (assuming you'll be running Windows XP..). 512Mb will be ok, but 1Gb will just give you that extra bit of future-proofing.

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<font color=red>Those of you who think you know everything are annoying to those of us who do.</font color=red>

 

[ChipDeath]

What are you getting for all the other stuff? (Case, power supply, Hard disks, DVD ROM, CD Writer, etc?)

Just curious. The only thing to really watch out for is that you get a decent power supply. you'll probably need a decent brand 400W one or better.

Incidentally, if you want to overclock you may as well get a P4 2.8 instead of the 3Ghz one, but ideally you'd want faster RAM.

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<font color=red>Those of you who think you know everything are annoying to those of us who do.</font color=red>

 

[bandikoot]

Just to be evil on number 3 because it's not my money. If your power system is a power gaming system, you might want to seriously consider the 9800pro 128 that retails at $225 (Which, being half the price of the 9800xt I consider it keeping costs down) as for about $50 more you get a serious increase in performance. Also the 9800 non-pro, which is around $200 IIRC (haven't checked recently) is a nice improvement. Not that there's anything wrong with the 9600xt, it's just midrange and not "power." Remember, I'm always willing to help you spend your money.