New system. What to get?

[auger 0]

Going to build my first sorta-kick-*** home system. Long overdue. I'm leaning Athlon XP 2100+ w/ Asus A7V266e motherboard, Volcano 7 Fan, Enermax 350 watt ps and 1G Micron PC 2100. Half assed considering one of the new 333 based chipsets. USB2 woudl be good. Haven't even ruled out a P4. I do a little gaming, lotsa web dev and tons of Photoshop and some video. Will be running Win2K/98 but maybe XP instead. If you were going to build a basic but kinda high end box, what would you build and why?

[Brian Frank 0]

As much as I like Asus, I'm really diggin the Abit NV7-133R. It's probably a tad slower than the Asus, but, if you're one of the folks less inclined to buy a Via board, this uses the NForce 415 (the 420 w/o the integrated video). It's got USB 2.0, HighPoint ATA133 RAID (controller can natively function as an extra IDE controller), LAN, 4 USB 1.1 ports, 5 PCI, 1 AGP with a retention clip, and has 5.1 channel Dolby-Digital on-board sound. The KT333 boards seem to be having some problems right now, being a new product. I'd probably hold off on a KT333 board until the boards have matured. The only things to watch out for are the AGP slot being out of spec and the board is not overclocking friendly (which you probably don't really care about anyway).

[ThC 129 0]

Yeah the nForce chipset is really nice and a very good deal if your going to be building a new system from the ground-up and not replacing anything from the old box. I also agree with Brian and that the board you mentioned is nice, but it lacks some of the new features that people will need in the future, USB 2.0,IEEE 1394 (FireWire),ATA133. Yeah make sure you never buy a 1st generation VIA chipset they ALL have problems (c'mon VIA get your *** in gear). I don't know anything about the AGP slot being out of spec with the nForce board so that is something to look out for.

 

 

Anyway your best bet for a computer that is good is to go with the following companies.

 

Video: nVidia GeForce 4 Ti4400 (not as expensive as the 4600 but can still kick some ***)

 

Board: Asus or Abit (check hardware sites for the best board out so your can get a good idea on what ones have what and how they rate. www.hardocp.com is one of the best.)

 

Sound: Turtle Beach Santa Cruz, its an old card but still one of the best EAX 1.0,2.0,DirectSound 3d, and A3d support.

 

Burner/Optical Drive: Sony or Plextor

 

LAN: Linksys or onboard 10/100

 

HardDisk: WesterDigital or Maxtor

 

RAM: Kingston the BEST ram for overclocking. Crucial/Micron is good but its more expensive and doesnt overclock as well as Kingston.

 

Processor: AMD or Intel, the pros with intel is that you can get an intel made Chipset on your board which is much more stable than any of the VIA crap out there. AMD pros are that they are overclocker friendly somewhat more so than intel, and they are cheaper, but they do run A LOT hotter.

 

If you plan on running any DVD movies make sure you get a RealMagic Hollywood+ Decoder card. Hardware decoding of DVD movies is much better than software decoding is.

 

I would also go with Windows XP Professional as your OS. Or Linux but since you said its for gaming Linux is ruled out.

 

Those are my recommendations

[auger 0]

I'm now leaning toward a P4 2G system. Mainly because Rambus memory is looking much more affordable. Lotsa homework to do...thanks for the input. Been looking at the Lian Li cases too. Sweet!

[Brian Frank 0]

ThC: The Nforce is not out of AGP spec. The NV7-133R has a capacitor that is in violation of the spec (in the way).

 

The P4 Rambus combo is the best to date for the P4, and as much as DDR costs right now, it's a better bet to go with RDRAM.