suggestion on new system.

[cluelessnewbie]

Alright I did some research on PC parts and i've decided to get :

Motherboard : ASUS A7A266 - mainly because it got good reviews and i read from 2 sources that when athlon 4 comes out, this motherboard will most likely support it.

CPU : not exactly sure but somehwere from Athlon Thunderbird 1.2 - 1.4 (266). If someone could offer suggestions on which, it'd be great. For the cooling I'm deciding on a Thermaltake Volcano II Heatsink.

RAM : PC2100 256mb. most likely 2 of these to get to 512mb. Also, is there a pc2100 512 by any chance b/c i couldnt find any....

Sound Card : Sound blaster live X-Gamer 5.1

Monitor : NO CLUE ... need help here.

Video Card : GeForce 2 Ultra (is this a good choice?)

A 3com 10/100 ethernet card.

CD burner : Plextor (most likely the latest one)

Cd-Rom or DVD : I'm not sure which is better so suggestions here would be good as well.

PC Case - most likely i'll get a full tower.

Also, one last question. What is this thermal paste or whatever which cools the CPU and how does it work?

thx for all the help =)

[fvay]

wrong forum. you should post in Brainstorming.
btw athlon 4 is a mobile chip. you cant install that on a desktop mobo

[socalgal]

fvay, oops, wrong suggestion http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif There is no more Brainstorming forum.

Take a look http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif
http://www.sysopt.com/forum/Forum17/HTML/003548.html

http://www.sysopt.com/forum/Forum17/HTML/003541.html

Moved to General Tech.

[Axel]

If you get a CD-burner, you shouldn't need a second CD - I'd say go with the DVD - some of the larger games have been coming out on DVD for the last year. Baldur's Gate fits on 5 CD's or 1 DVD - I'd rather the one DVD.

One warning, DVD's can sometimes be a real pain to configure for the video card. I haven't dealt with many of these as yet because they are rare on the business desktops I work on. I'd research your DVD choice carefully.

Next - your hard drive. I'd recommend a Quantum drive - either a 20GB or a 40GB 7200 RPM with a minimum 2MB onboard cache.

If you are going to have anything sensative on this system, I'd recommend getting a Promise PCI IDE card that supports IDE RAID - get a second hard drive and do RAID 1 - mirroring on this system.

Modem - are you dialing up or are you going through your network card to a DSL hub? If you think you might get a modem - please avoid soft or win modems - they rob you of processor cycles and have more driver conflicts that they are worth.

Thermal paste - this is typically a white compound you can buy in a small tube - don't get the large tube - you only need a tiny amount. A paper thin layer goes between the processor and metal heat sink. It noticably improves the thermal transfer from the processor face to the heat sink material.

Case fans - Several companies make case fans - if you are going with a full tower, I'd recommend getting an antec 5.25 slot case fan and put it in the top 5.25 expansion slot to act as a "chimney" venting out the hot air in the case. This $15 investment helps protect the rest of the system but a lot of people don't spend that - doesn't make sense to me.

Sound card - I recommend getting the sound card and the system speakers seperately. Unless you have a really good ear, most speakers perform about the same for under $50. The difference is in the sound card. Some DVD's come packaged with sound cards - again, something to research.

Monitor - go with a minimum of a 17 inch screen. Get a 19 if you can afford it. If you want to save some money on a monitor - buy a used one. I recommend not getting anything with a manufacturer date stamp before 1997. Otherwise, the monitor is unlikely to make the most of the video card you have speced here. On a used one - make sure you test it before leaving the store and change the resolutions and color depth - don't just plug it in and go with what's there.

Mouse - stay away from the expensive cordless stuff - go with a regular PS/2 mouse - either bona fide microsoft or logitec - the cheap stuff is just that....Totally avoid a USB mouse - it doesn't work when to go into safe mode on most operating systems.

Operating systems - win98SE or win2000 - avoid 95 and winnt4.0.

On the case - make sure the power supply is at least 230 watts in any case and with all the stuff you have listed - I'd go with a 300 watt power supply.

On the keyboard - I recommend a multi-media keyboard with a ps/2 connector - avoid USB keyboards - same reason as the mouse above.

That's all that comes to mind.

[MiKe85]

Great advice Axel!

I've been wanting a 21' flat screen monitor, for a long time..Not enough $$ to buy one though http://www.sysopt.com/forum/frown.gif

Mouse - I have a Microsoft optical, and it works great!!

Operating system - I'd go with Win98 SE

Well if you want a cheaper video card, right now you can get a Voodoo5 for just about $100.

Do you have an estimate on how much this entire system will cost?

[wyvrn]

When is the myth that all software modems make a significant dent in cpu cycles going to end?

I feel like a one man crusade in saying that recent LT Winmodem chipsets perform as well and sometimes better than much more expensive hard modems. I guess I should just give up, too hard to change people's minds once they are made up.