Question for my nephew.

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

Hi,
My nephew wants to build his 1st pc, he has about $700.00 to work with. In a
nutshell, is he better going with a discounted processor like a Barton 2500
($80.00),with an appropriate MB, and a decent HD and DVD burn? Or should he
dive into the XP 2800, (64-bit) ($185.00), and all of the more expensive
peripherals that go with it? I figured that he should get a good case now
and go with the cheaper Barton, and then maybe upgrade later.

RF

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

On Fri, 25 Jun 2004 23:26:33 GMT, "RF" <glassless2003@yahoo.com>
wrote:

>Hi,
>My nephew wants to build his 1st pc, he has about $700.00 to work with. In a
>nutshell, is he better going with a discounted processor like a Barton 2500
>($80.00),with an appropriate MB, and a decent HD and DVD burn? Or should he
>dive into the XP 2800, (64-bit) ($185.00), and all of the more expensive
>peripherals that go with it? I figured that he should get a good case now
>and go with the cheaper Barton, and then maybe upgrade later.
>
>RF
>

Get a good case, name-brand power supply with more capacity than
he'll currently need, and budget for 1GB of PC3200 or higher
memory. Next, see how much is left for the rest of the parts.
IMHO, the DVD burner isn't a priority that would justify
sacrificing any other part of the system, rather something better
bought later if the funds don't stretch far enough for the rest.
For example, the ~$70-150 might easily be better spent on a nice
video card or faster hard drive, better high-end (quieter and
more efficient) heatsink, or Panaflo fans to replace originals in
the case.

You make no mention of the uses for the system. Will it need do
anything demanding? An XP2500 Barton is way more than adequate
for most uses, though for some purposes like gaming, a video card
upgrade is more signficant, while for others like video editing,
a P4 platform or A64 would be better... but the XP2800 @ $185
isn't a very good buy considering you want a whole system from
scratch for $700, in addition to the fact that an XP2500 _Mobile_
Barton is quite easy to overclock without any problems (when
limited to a reasonable o'c) on popular motherboards with AGP/PCI
lock, like those based on nForce2 chipset... I'd definitely
recommend nForce2 if you decide on the Barton.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

RF wrote:
> Hi,
> My nephew wants to build his 1st pc, he has about $700.00 to work with. In a
> nutshell, is he better going with a discounted processor like a Barton 2500
> ($80.00),with an appropriate MB, and a decent HD and DVD burn? Or should he
> dive into the XP 2800, (64-bit) ($185.00), and all of the more expensive
> peripherals that go with it? I figured that he should get a good case now
> and go with the cheaper Barton, and then maybe upgrade later.
>
> RF
>
>

Personally I decided it wasn't quite time for the Athlon 64, for me.
The motherboards only hold 2 or 3 gigabytes of RAM - no different than
the 32 bit chips - and the performance of the 3000+ and below 64 bit
chips are not far out of line with the best (32-bit) Athlon XPs, which
are cheaper, not only for the CPU but the motherboard too. The high-end
Athlon64 and Opteron chips are neat but for the money they ought to be.

Then there's OS support. I'm a linux user, so would have real 64-bit
support, but got the impression there would be a lot of headaches, and
only a marginal performance jump from running in 32 bit mode.

For a Windows user no 64 bit OS has been released.


So I went with the Barton.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

Thanks,

Like any kid he wants to go online, play some games and maybe eventually use
it for some video.
I agree with the nforce chipset, I have that in my system where I have OCed
an xp1700 up to 2.1 GHz, (1 year and no blue screens yet).
The DVD burner is about 70 bucks so I think that he is going for that..

RF





"kony" <spam@spam.com> wrote in message
news:vmkpd0l6j9cqaunad2qr7o3de36r0njvl8@4ax.com...
> On Fri, 25 Jun 2004 23:26:33 GMT, "RF" <glassless2003@yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>
> >Hi,
> >My nephew wants to build his 1st pc, he has about $700.00 to work with.
In a
> >nutshell, is he better going with a discounted processor like a Barton
2500
> >($80.00),with an appropriate MB, and a decent HD and DVD burn? Or should
he
> >dive into the XP 2800, (64-bit) ($185.00), and all of the more expensive
> >peripherals that go with it? I figured that he should get a good case now
> >and go with the cheaper Barton, and then maybe upgrade later.
> >
> >RF
> >
>
> Get a good case, name-brand power supply with more capacity than
> he'll currently need, and budget for 1GB of PC3200 or higher
> memory. Next, see how much is left for the rest of the parts.
> IMHO, the DVD burner isn't a priority that would justify
> sacrificing any other part of the system, rather something better
> bought later if the funds don't stretch far enough for the rest.
> For example, the ~$70-150 might easily be better spent on a nice
> video card or faster hard drive, better high-end (quieter and
> more efficient) heatsink, or Panaflo fans to replace originals in
> the case.
>
> You make no mention of the uses for the system. Will it need do
> anything demanding? An XP2500 Barton is way more than adequate
> for most uses, though for some purposes like gaming, a video card
> upgrade is more signficant, while for others like video editing,
> a P4 platform or A64 would be better... but the XP2800 @ $185
> isn't a very good buy considering you want a whole system from
> scratch for $700, in addition to the fact that an XP2500 _Mobile_
> Barton is quite easy to overclock without any problems (when
> limited to a reasonable o'c) on popular motherboards with AGP/PCI
> lock, like those based on nForce2 chipset... I'd definitely
> recommend nForce2 if you decide on the Barton.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

In article <Jw2Dc.96768$Hg2.64098@attbi_s04>,
glassless2003@yahoo.com says...
> Hi,
> My nephew wants to build his 1st pc, he has about $700.00 to work with. In a
> nutshell, is he better going with a discounted processor like a Barton 2500
> ($80.00),with an appropriate MB, and a decent HD and DVD burn? Or should he
> dive into the XP 2800, (64-bit) ($185.00), and all of the more expensive
> peripherals that go with it? I figured that he should get a good case now
> and go with the cheaper Barton, and then maybe upgrade later.
>

$700 is tight... does that include the monitor?

A good motherboard (Asus A7N8X-E Dlx), plus 1GB RAM
(2x512MB Kingston) and a CPU (AMD AthlonXP 2800+ 333Mhz)
is going to eat up $350. More memory is almost always
better then a faster CPU. (e.g. rather then get a
AthlonXP 3200+ with 512MB, get a 2800+ with 1GB). Stay
away from the DDR400 (PC3200) if you're cost-sensitive.

WinXP OEM edition is $135 or so.

A good case is $100 (e.g. Antec Sonata, etc.).

$350+$135+$100 is right close to $500, which only leaves
$200 for the bits like the monitor, DVD, and hard-drive.

(Mice and keyboards are generally free... hit the thrift
shop.)

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

Thank you all for your replies, I will look into those.

RF

 

[Charles]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

I have an XP2800+ Retail and I only paid about $123.00 for it. It
works great. It doesnt cost that much more. Not the 64 bit but the
regular XP2800. I think he may want to save up some more cash if he
wants to go with an Athlon64 because the motherboard costs more too.
If he is really considering Athlon64 he may want to consider a top-end
AthlonXP processor like a XP3200.

He can not upgrade to Athlon64 from AthlonXP because the motherboards
are different and the socket size is different that the CPU goes into.

You dont need to buy a deluxe model of a motherboard. I am using the
Asus A7N8X 400 and it is running just fine. The integrated sound on
these is quite good. Abit also makes nice motherboards. Go with the
Lite-on brand for the CD/DVD drive. MSI also makes a fairly good
CD/DVD player. For a Hard Drive Western Digital is nice and Seagate
SATA drives are nice. The Sata Drives tend to price about the same as
the regular hard drives, but they tend to make them bigger, so they
cost more. If you plan on copying DVD's you may need a larger hard
drive to make the drive images.

One very important factor is the video card. A good option is an
Radeon 9600 Pro Video Card. That is about $100 or so.

>Hi,
>My nephew wants to build his 1st pc, he has about $700.00 to work with. In a
>nutshell, is he better going with a discounted processor like a Barton 2500
>($80.00),with an appropriate MB, and a decent HD and DVD burn? Or should he
>dive into the XP 2800, (64-bit) ($185.00), and all of the more expensive
>peripherals that go with it? I figured that he should get a good case now
>and go with the cheaper Barton, and then maybe upgrade later.
>
>RF
>