building a new rig

[samcurry]

these are the specs,
tell me what you think

motherboard; asus a7n8x

cpu; athlon 2400 xp

sk7 thermalright copper heatsink with 80mm antec trilight fan

ddr crucial pc2100 1 gig

promise fastraxx sx4000 raid controller

4 wd 80 gig 8 mb cache in raid5

8500 le 128mb

plextor 48x cdrw

hp dvd100j dvd burner

kingwin tri side aluminum case w/6 case fans

400 watt psu (forget name now)

 

[HomeLAN]

1) What are you doing with it?

2) Why only PC2100?

 

[samcurry]

going to be a gaming rig mostly,
and pc2100 only untill he can afford the corsair 3500 512 sticks.

 

[Justintime]

I'd personally go for a Ti4400 or 4600 over the 8500LE, heck even a Ti4200 and oc it .

 

[s4]

Good luck with it.

 

[PT]

I wouldn't kick it out of bed for eating silicon chips.

 

[HomeLAN]

It works, but I agree with Justin on the vid card.

Save that money for the RAM upgrade, too.

 

[dan]

overpowered...

it's overpowered. waste of money. all you need is one of these:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2082690825

 

[samcurry]

LOL@nambit that is too funny....

 

[Justintime]

40 pounds bid, wow, i could prolly buy a soundcard with more total power than that thing for 20 pounds

 

[PT]

An ideal cheap introduction to computers for the beginner, a 486 Computer, mini tower case, CD-Rom, 512mb hard drive, 32mb ram, 56k modem, sound card, 15" svga monitor, new keyboard. Win95 installed. This may suit a student who only needs word proccessing, or, like I did, accounts at work. Best collected.

 

[Gato_Solo]

40 pounds bid, wow, i could prolly buy a soundcard with more total power than that thing for 20 pounds

Psst...It includes the monitor...

 

[ipmoof]

How come it's a gaming rig with a RAID 5 array and 1GB of RAM?!

I'd drop 512MB in there for now and get a G of XMS3500 once you can afford it.

Put the money towards a better graphics card - Radeon 9500 Pro would be great.

I'd also take a Pioneer A05 over that HP (which is ANCIENT as far as DVD burners go). Looks like Pie-on-ear are forcing prices down artificially to push DVD-RW - those drives are sub-£200 here so should be pretty cheap, Stateside. If you really want to go the DVD+RW route then there are better alternatives I'm sure.

MuFu.

 

[samcurry]

update: I had to send the asus mobo back. it was DOA. man i was so looking forward to returning to AMD and then this happens. Got me a little worried. But then i have never really had very good luck with asus.

 

[SleepWalker]

yah-don't like Asus much either...for the nForce boards I'd go with the Abit-NF7. -this is from experience.....

 

[samcurry]

picked up a gigabyte ga-7dx+ and guess what it booted right up. Dammit why does asus hate me so?????

 

[Gato_Solo]

Pronounce Asus with a short 'A', and you'll know what I think of them as well.

 

[HomeLAN]

Strange, I've never had anything but the best of luck with them. Abit, OTOH, *shudder*

 

[Gato_Solo]

I've been using Biostar of late, and haven't had any problems. I still wish I could've gotten that Iwill board, though. DDR and an ISA slot would've been perfect for my circumstances.

 

[catocom]

I've seen good and bad with every brand I can think of right off hand.
I think it's all in the shipping.
Except for the ddr400 boards.
I had an AOpen ax45-8xn that went though 3 different 512mb
sticks of mem, before it died it's self.
I went back too the ax4b-something a 333 board. w/2.4
Gonna fire it up today and crunch genomes with it to burn
it in good.
It was a gamming comp. w/ati-9700.
I don't know if that had anything to do with it, but I'm
putting this one on office detail with a cheap sis vid card
atleast for a while.

I've got 2 rambus ASUS boards a 16bit, and 32bit, and
theyv'e been smooth as silk since the day I got um.