[Mark Holtz]

Looks like time's up, and I'm going to purchase the parts to the system. Hopefully, I am doing the right thing....

Motherboard - Soyo KT333 Dragon Ultra Platnium . Apparently, there are some stability issues with the GigaBite VXRP, so the Soyo board is the next best thing. It comes with a Sigma box which I can use memory cards on. (The Gigabyte board had the connectors, but not the actual box).

Processor - Athlon XP 2200+ . Fastest AMD processor you can get.

Memory - PC2700 512MB

Video Card - MSI GeForce 4400 . It's apparently one of the best at rendering graphics. I didn't want to go for a top of the line 9700 or 4600. Although a little overpowered, it should last me a few years.

Power Supply- Exermax 465.

Hard Drive - Will pick one up locally. Waiting until last minute.

Secondary Master- A 50x CD-ROM drive from an older system.

Secondary Slave - LG Electronics 8320 CD-RW/DVD-ROM Drive

Operating System - XP Home.

This setup will get me back some change, but I tend to build systems that last. I picked up a nice case for $60 (w/o power supply).

What helped in my decision is the company websites. Gigabyte, Soyo, and MSI all have their manuals in PDF format, not to mention the flash files.

 

[Mark Holtz]

The Soyo has buikt0in sound.

 

[Bogy]

Zac, sometimes some people have to make compromises. If the MB has built-in sound Z-loth may be willing to let it do the job for the time being until he has recovered from the shock of everything else he is buying at this time. How quickly he buys a different card will probably depend upon just how unacceptable he finds the sound quality for his purposes. As someone who makes lots of compromises between what he would like to have vs. what fits into the budget due to other obligations this is a plan that makes sense to me. Good luck, Z-loth. Have fun. Looking forward to hearing how it all goes, and waiting until my wife gets her Masters and is gainfully employed so I can do the same thing.

 

[gcutler]

Originally posted by Zac
...I that almost everybody finds them unacceptable for all but basic things like system beeps and perhaps the occasional MP3/WMA/OGGVorbis and game....

Not really...Are you taking your circle of friends and expanding it to "Almost everbody"? I know plenty of people who are satisfied. But then again they are not "Audiophiles" or even have an "Ear" for most stuff. If you go onto a gamers or audiophile board of course they are not going to be satisfied, they want the perfect experience. But it does look like the Z'Loth is putting together a powerful machine and would probably want a better sound board (but the reality is in his ear)

 

[Mark Holtz]

It's reality thats screaming loudly in my ear. Hopefully, what i got will last me quite a while. We'll see about the built-in sound, then worry about a sound card later.

Because of the advances in the technology, I'm only able to re-use two components: A florry drive and a CD-ROM drive.

 

[gcutler]

Z'Loth, this is America, Throw out the old components and "Prime the Economy" with all new purchases

 

[Chris Blount]

Z'Loth,

The systems sounds nice. About my only suggestion is to make sure you have adequate cooling in the case. If you have stability problems at first, try adding an extra fan if the case doesn't have one already.

 

[Mark Holtz]

The case has two fans already installed in the back of the case, and has holders in place for two more 80mm fans in the front. In addition, the 3-1/2 bays are easily removed with a flick of a lever.

 

[MarkA]

Gosh, two case fans (even if they're both at the back) should be more than adequate. Remember - overcooling is a bad thing also, as you create a higher background noise level in your room forcing you to turn your speakers up higher to get adequate dynamic range

 

[Mike123abc]

Make sure you get CL2 ram not the CL2.5, CL2 costs about $10 more, but the first access is 25% faster.

 

[Mark Holtz]

Whoops..... ran into a problem.... they ran out of the MSI 4400 . Will call the vendor tomorrow.

 

[cnsf]

Z'Loth, I also heard the Soyo sound solution is fine. Check Tom's Hardware and Sharky Extreme for KT333 mobo reviews. I doubt you'd be able to hear a difference between that and the TB Santa Cruz, unless you have ultra-kickin' speakers...not worth the extra cash.

As for video, you may be better off with an ATI AIW 7500 (cheaper) if you're not exclusively gaming (i.e. if you want video editing features).

Also, the Gigabyte dual-BIOS is pretty cool as I've had BIOS crap out on me before....too bad about stability. Are you sure you weren't looking at the PCB v1 mobo and not v2.0?

 

[Mark Holtz]

This was a 2.0 board on the GigaByte, but I'm still looking.

I got a digital camera for my birthday yesterday that handles MMC/SD cards. Definately a factor.

 

[Mark Holtz]

Originally posted by Zac
Make the CDRW/DVD the master and the CD-ROM the slave. This will generally work better, both for movies and the CDRW. Of course, I believe it doesn't make that much difference (some would have you belive it was a life-or-death thing, but I don't think so - at least on newer IDE controllers) - but it can't hurt.

Hmmmm..... because the plan was to put the faster CD-ROM drive as primary, and the slower CD-RW/DVD as the secondary. Sigh.... so many choices. I don't even plan on overclocking this system even.

 

[Mark Holtz]

Okay, calling off plan B, going with Plan C.

I'm going to hold off until the beginning of October to purchase the systen. By then, the Athlon 2400+ should be released. I'm also going to get the MSI GeForce 4600 card.

I was at Fry's yesterday, and they had a WD 80GB hard drive with 8 MB buffer for $139 before $40 rebate. I think I will pick it up. They also had a system set up for water cooling and running what was I believe the latest Wolfenstein. Drool.

 

[Mike123abc]

Last time I was at Frys I picked up a shuttle PC, I am very happy with it. I got the one with one AGP and one PCI card slot. It is very small and quite. While it only has the one PCI slot, it has everything on the motherboard... Firewire, USB 2.0, ethernet, sound, etc. I put a geforce card in it (plus memory, disk, dvd/cd, etc), and it is as fast as my full sized systems. In fact I think it is a bit faster.

 

[gcutler]

Originally posted by Mike123abc
Last time I was at Frys I picked up a shuttle PC, I am very happy with it. I got the one with one AGP and one PCI card slot. It is very small and quite. While it only has the one PCI slot, it has everything on the motherboard... Firewire, USB 2.0, ethernet, sound, etc. I put a geforce card in it (plus memory, disk, dvd/cd, etc), and it is as fast as my full sized systems. In fact I think it is a bit faster.

A while ago a PC with that small a footprint might be a problem. but with USB and firewire the availabilty for expansion is not a problem. But external Firewire/USB devices which usually require their own case, fan, power supply are more expensive than internal devices. So like adding an ADDITIONAL hard drive, or CD drive would be cheaper if internal.

 

[Mark Holtz]

MSI GeForce4 TI4600 - $269
ATI 9700 Retail - $334.14

 

[Mark Holtz]

www.mwave.com . You can also check www.newegg.com .

 

[Mark Holtz]

Well, picked up a WD hard drive today. I'm going to hold off a week or two to order the rest of the system.