Page 1 of My first pc build - Am I missing anything vital ?

AMD Athlon xp3000 400Mhz 512 L2 Cache Barton
AZ7N8X Deluxe SKT A NForce2 Chipset Motherboard VER:2.0
Western Digital Caviiar SE 120Gb 7200rpm 8mb cache EIDE HDrive
LG 52x32x52x IDE DRIVE - OEM
512mb DDR 400
Antec Solution Slk3700amb - System Cabinet - Mid Tower - Atx - Metallic Bronze - Power Supply 350 Watt

This item was edited on Friday, 14th November 2003, 00:01

Howabout a graphics card?

"Just say NO!"

This is what I wasn`t sure about.
I won`t be playing games as I have consoles for that, and i want to ad a Nebula TV card at a later date so I`m not really sure what I`ll need.
What can u recommend?

even though you dont want to play games on the pc
you need to reconsider having a good card
if not the graphic card will become the bottleneck of your system
there`s no point in having a very fast processor but lacks in the graphic department since you need to balance it

i would go for an aluminium case (check here for a lian li aluminum pc7 for only £61) if you buy above £100 its free delivery

plus you need a good CPU cooler.. water cooling would be nice :) but expensive!

another thing you might want to consider is getting a good PSU. antec is good but is 350w enough for your pc?
I`m currently using Qtec (having the only psu i can afford, £20 for 550w at ebuyer) good performance but quite noisy. my next target will be the superflower 470w quadraple fan.. or the 520w one

and you will need a few fans to cool your pc..
other than that maybe a coolermaster musketeer or aerogate 2 for a funky fan controller 8)

cokie enjoy

This item was edited on Friday, 14th November 2003, 02:35

Can anyone recommend any decent sites about building PC`s?
Step by step with pics..

Ste

Quote:
even though you dont want to play games on the pc
you need to reconsider having a good card
if not the graphic card will become the bottleneck of your system
there`s no point in having a very fast processor but lacks in the graphic department since you need to balance it

You do need to consider what you`ll actually be doing with the PC. If you`re not playing games or doing any 3D work (like CAD or similar), then an expensive 3D card is a complete and utter waste of money. The `bottleneck`/`balance` argument doesn`t really apply any more - because these days, there`s not much (if any) difference between £25 cards and £250 cards when it comes to normal 2D desktop applications. It`s 3D capability that accounts for the huge difference in price.

I used this in a PC I built recently, and it`s no slower than my £100 card in normal Windows applications. Why pay more if you don`t need to?

Mike

This item was edited on Friday, 14th November 2003, 09:54

This is basically for internet and stuff !!!
Have my mac for doing all my graphic work

Its my PCworkWHORE !!

Doesnt the nForce2 motherboard come with on board graphics anyway? Does on mine... and it runs games fine. Even Unreal 2 happily chugs away with only the occasional frame rate drop.

Dont forget to budget for an O/S.

Quote:
Doesnt the nForce2 motherboard come with on board graphics anyway? Does on mine... and it runs games fine. Even Unreal 2 happily chugs away with only the occasional frame rate drop.

AFAIK there are several versions of the nForce2 chipset, not all of which have built-in graphics. The ASUS motherboard that dustjunkie was thinking of buying doesn`t have built-in graphics, hence the need for a separate graphics card.

As you say, there isn`t really anything wrong with onboard graphics, especially not nForce2 which has one of the better implementations. The main disadvantage is that it `steals` part of the main memory (i.e. if you have 256MB of RAM in your PC, and the onboard graphics uses 32MB, you`ll be left with only 224MB), whereas a real graphics card will have its own memory.

Mike