Meraxus

Ok I have Finally Decided to build my own PC from the ground up because I can't find a site that has all the options I want. Below is the list of components, Tell me what you think as far as Item Quality and Price, most of these prices are off of Newegg.com Website. Oh before the list I had 2 Questions, as far as Operating Systems what is the difference between OEM and Retail? are they exactly the same except for the box and instructions? Last question, for Graphics Cards I want a 256MB AGP 8X card, I want to wait for the Nvidia 6800 Ultra but radeon has the X800, has anyone seen anything on these cards? Which brand do you believe is better? Ok here is the list:

1. Aspire X-Alien Turbo Case w/500W PSU(was thinking of buying a better quality PSU if this one turns out to be crap). 138$

2. ABIT IC7 MAXX3. 185$

3. Prescott P4 3.0Ghz w/1MB L2 Cache W/ HT Technology. 215$

4. 1GB (2x512) PC 3200 Kingston Hyper-X Dual Channel Memory. 289.99$

5. SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS. 88$

6. Logitech Z-5300 5.1 THX Speakers. 139$

7. Western Digital 80 GB 7200 RPM HD. 105$

and the rest is just DVD/CD Burner, DVD rom and floppy drive.

Well that is what I have decided now i just need an OS and a kick Ass Graphics Card Any Input is greatly appreciated. Thanks guys.

Praetor

IMO, too much bling bling, not enough functionality. Go after the tried-true Chenming 601/602s

Superb board, very solid. If i'm not mistaken, that board has OTES? If so, make sure the case supports the exhaust.... not sure many cases suppor them.

Decent price but for a chip that essentially is just a P4C with more cache as being the net performance improvement, you may consider otherwise (i.e., going for the P4Cs) if prices are better. You will definitely want a solid HSF for this heat cannon

While I'm a Corsair (and more recently OCz) guy, Kingson's memory isnt bad at all.

A nice solid card, decent price.

Shockingly skimpy everything else considering: i'd jack the drive up to the 160GB 7200 8MB version if budget allows

This is important! What burner?

Short of going Linux, you should probably be looking at WXP Pro.

How much money do you want to spend?

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ASUS P5K Premium WiFi-AP, Q6600@3.7 / ASUS P5ND, E6400@3.8
4GB OCz Platinum XTC 8500 / 4GB CorsairXMS2 6400
5x500GB Seagate 7200.10 / 2x500 Seagate 7200.10
OCz 8800GTX 768MB @ 630/800 / 2x Galaxy 8800GT SLI

Smallplayer_French_LOL

yep The ATI 9800 Pro is a Kicked ass card lol and really cheap ! just 230 € lol

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Praetor

Surely you can get a better price than 230 Euro? I know prices in Europe are typically more expensive but thats almost outrageously expensive. The only reason i asked about the price range was because you can spend $150USD for a midrange card (9600/5700) all the way up to the $400USD range.

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ASUS P5K Premium WiFi-AP, Q6600@3.7 / ASUS P5ND, E6400@3.8
4GB OCz Platinum XTC 8500 / 4GB CorsairXMS2 6400
5x500GB Seagate 7200.10 / 2x500 Seagate 7200.10
OCz 8800GTX 768MB @ 630/800 / 2x Galaxy 8800GT SLI

72montecarlo

Well graphics card wise the Nvidia 6800 ultra performs just as well as the ati Radeon x800 in benchmark testing. one major difference being nvidia decided to add in the support for pixel shader 3.0 which is why the vpu is so much larger and the heatsink to go with it. the radeon is smaller and generates less heat because it doesnt have support for pixel shader 3.0. Thing is very few games will even take advantage of pixel shader 3.0 for a while. You would be perfectly fine going with the x800, but if you want to wait for the nvidia you will get the newest shader support so you can be ready once games start coming out in the future to take advantage of the feature. Either way both cards are awesome and neither one is lacking.

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• Dell XPS M170
  OS: XP Professional SP2
  CPU: Intel Pentium M 2.13Ghz
  MOBO: Intel 915PM Chipset
  HDD: 100Gb 7200rpm Ultra ATA
  OD: DVD-RW CD-RW Burner
  RAM: 2gb DDR2 533mhz
  VGA: PCi16x Geforce Go 6800 Ultra 256mb GDDR3
  SCREEN: 17' WUXGA Ultrasharp TFT 1920x1200 native
  AUDIO: 2 Speakers, 1 1" subwoofer

Praetor

I just did a quick lookup of ATI's card line-up and found this:

9800 Series
256bit memory Interface
AGP8x
Support for Smartshader 2.1
Support for HyperZ III+
8 pipelines
4 shaders

X600 Series
128bit memory interface
x16 PCI-X (theoreitcally AGP16X)
Support for Smartshader 2.0
Support for HyperZ III
4 pipelines
2 shaders

Now unless Im mistaken, that's a case of a top generation-old card beating the snot out of a midrange current generation card -- since maybe the GF2Ultra vs GF3Baseline, that's not happened... troubling that ATI would choose to do that

__________________
ASUS P5K Premium WiFi-AP, Q6600@3.7 / ASUS P5ND, E6400@3.8
4GB OCz Platinum XTC 8500 / 4GB CorsairXMS2 6400
5x500GB Seagate 7200.10 / 2x500 Seagate 7200.10
OCz 8800GTX 768MB @ 630/800 / 2x Galaxy 8800GT SLI

Meraxus

Thanks for the input guys.

I am still deciding on a case but I looked at the Chenming. Thanks for the suggestion. As for the Mobo it does have that and I'm not exactly sure how to deal with it so I went with the ABIT IC7-G MAXXII which is pretty much the same thing without the OTES. I Looked at the Memory again and found come nice Corsair XMS Dual Channel Extreme Memory Speed Series for 263$ is that a good type? The Hard Drive I will be getting is a Western Digital 120GB I have a 60GB Slave drive in my current computer that I am going to wipe and add to the new comp it is a Maxtor 7200 RPM HD.

The DVD/CD Burner is a TDK Multi Platform DVD Burner, 12X DVD+R, 4X DVD+RW, 8X DVD-R, 4X DVD-RW, 48X CD-R, 24X CD-RW.

I'm going to go with the Windows XP Pro OEM Version for 141$

As for the Graphics card I am willing to pay around 500$ for a top of the line Graphics card, I prefer Nvidia, but never tried Radeon so maybe I am biased.

you said I need a nice HSF for my Processor what brand is good? should I be looking for a certain RPM?

Thanks for all the input guys I am finally starting to get this together.

Smallplayer_French_LOL

what is a HSF ?

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Meraxus

I'm assuming it a Heat Sink Fan for the processor Smallplayer.

Smallplayer_French_LOL

oki doki lol ( sorry you saw that im not good in english lol )

so ! i will search...

LOL there is too much choices lol u can look here lol : http://www.monsieurprix.com/hardware/gen/140059.html

okay my links are french but u can do an idea first

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