Another PC Building Thread

Fidelis

Basically, I've asked questions on this board and recieved some great advice from the likes of Gerry and JustHalf. Now I really need all your help because I am going to buy a new system in the next few weeks.
I've a load of questions here, if some of you can answer one or two and give some advice then I'd really apprecaite it

3D cards ? I'm willing to spend no more than £250 on a video card that can hopefully let me play my games at decent resolutions, better than my Voodoo3 anyway What about the 64MB Hercules Prophet 4500, 64MB Geforce 2 or the 64MB DDR Radeon ? Any other recommendations ?

I'll need a 30-40GB HD capable of 7,200rpms. Are some makes noisier than others ?

DVD & CD-RW aren't really a concern, region free dvd for sure and I'm not worried about the speed of a cd-rw, although are some makes better than others ?

Sound cards + speakers - I heard there's a new set of 5.1 speakers coming out to compliment the Audigy cards, they any good and worth the cash ? I was thinking of getting the Creative FPS1600 (4 satellite speakers + Subwoofer) @ £78 from www.marx-computers.com - that good ?

Monitors - 17" natural flat monitor with 1200x1072 @ 85hz is what I'd be looking for. Any makes in particular ?

Cases, am I right in asuming that a £50 midi-tower case should do the trick ? 4x5.25 slots and a 3.5

Athlon chip, over 1Ghz at least, I was thinking that the difference between the 1.2's and the 1.5's doesn't justify the price difference, am I right ? Athlon 1.2 from marx-computers costs £141, is that good ?

Board ? Are there distinct differences between the Asus boards and say the KT-7 range of boards ? I'd also like a board that I could use DDR Ram with and one that supports a 1.2 or similar but also alows me to upgrade to a 1.5 or higher if possible. I'd be getting 512ddr ram aswell.

Does it matter what kind of heatsink you buy ? I'd preferably like my pc to be quiet so I'd be thinking more in the way of a few ultra 'quiet' fans.

Basically I'm looking for advice, should I wait a few weeks for the nVidia cards to drop in price as the new Titanium models come out or should I bother waiting ? What kind of price range do you think I'm talking here ? a grand ? I'm going to hopefully build this thing myself so all the bits and bobs will have to be added, cables, floppy etc.

I'm using mar-computers.com, itdirect.ie and peats.ie as examples of the hardware but I'd like your opinoins please.
Thank you in advance

SantaHoe

I'd say keep your voodoo3 until the gefo3's drop to an acceptable price... you'd be surprised at how good V3's can be with fast machines... I was anyway

strat

having recently built meh own machine ill throw in my 2 cents

Athlon chip, over 1Ghz at least, I was thinking that the difference between the 1.2's and the 1.5's doesn't justify the price difference, am I right ? Athlon 1.2 from marx-computers costs £141, is that good ?

well i got a nice 1.4 (gaurenteed to 1.535) from oc.co.uk for about IE£150 so

I'll need a 30-40GB HD capable of 7,200rpms. Are some makes noisier than others

i got a nice quantum fireball 60 gig 7200 beastie and its VERY fast - and quite even though i cant hear much over meh delta fan

BabyEater

I too am also going to buy a PC.
The motherboard i am going to buy is the Epox 8KHA+ Socket A
from Markx-computers for £159.99 inc VAT
It is the best motherboard i have seen available in Ireland and one of the best motherboards about .
I will also probably go for the XP1700 available from Peats for £229

Fidelis

BabyEater, don't buy that chip from Peats. Get it for £203 from IT Boutique. www.itbdirect.com

Samson

I have points to make on two of your required items:

1. If you are looking for a good sub-£250 card then you can't go wrong with a Radeon 64DDR, I have one and am very pleased with it.
Excellent frame rates, lots of RAM = high res; good image quality (I have heard that image quality is better than Geforce 2 based cards).

2. Hard drive:
Quantum Fireball 40GB 7200.
Very quiet and very fast, ATA100 support, not expensive.

Hope this helps.

astrofool

best cheap graphics: gef3 Ti 200, cost about 240 irish, coming into supply about now, beat around most graphics cards

chip: AMD 1600+, price difference to another one is so little you might as well get it, keep away from the thunderbird chips now.

Motherboard: Asus A7V266-E or KR7A-Raid thats an R not a T, best DDR boards you'll find by far, by the two motherboard makers who get it right more often than not.

IBM 60gxp series any of them, just pick your HD size, the 120gxp is out now, might be worth a look

Sound: SB audigy Player - best and cheapest you can get, and worth it with decent speakers.

Monitor: Idek Iiyama or Sony make the best ones, 17" minimum, 19" is lovely though

FPS1600 are cheap + Good, have the fps1000 from 2 years ago and they're still great

Heatsink can be hard, get the thermalRIGHT SK6 from www.overclockers.co.uk if you can, dabs do the thermalTAKE series and have a copper Orb quiet model available, good performance for an orb, cheap too (£15)

Ricoh do decent combo DVD/CD-RW drives, otherwise, pansonic (DvD) or plextor(CD-RW) would be the ones to look out for

Kairo

Guess what? I'm yet another person thats Building my own PC!

I have a fair idea of what I want;

CPU- Athlon XP 1600
Mobo- Abit KG7-RAID(Socket A) (mb-004)
Heatsink- OcUK Super ThermalRight Sk6 (socket A) (Hs-001-tr)
Case- Globalscabe 802 - Black
PSU- Macron 300w
RAM- 2xCrucial 256mb DDR PC2100 ECC CAS-2.5 (registered)
Graphics Card- Geforce 2 64mb DDR
Sound- Sound Blaster Audigy Player
HD- Quantum 40gig
DVD- Pioneer DVD-106s Region Free
Mouse- Microsoft Intellimouse Optical
Keyboard- Something or other

Okay...any recommendations would be appreciated. Those are mostly stuff from overclockers.co.uk but id prefer if I could get that stuff cheaper from Ireland. Are all those components compatible?

PHB

Id suggest a IBM since ive had two quantum fireballs and both have failed

d4r3n

im also getting a new pc wondering if any hardware was dodgy:


CPU: Athlon XP 1700+
HSF: SK6
Mobo: EPoX 8kha+
RAM: 512mb ddr crucial
HD: IBM 60gxp 40gb
Graphics: gf2 ultra/gf2 ti
Audio: Audigy