seeking direction/building PC

[Straynge]

Hello All,
I am building a new Pc and am seeking advice.So far I have an athlon 1.2 266 fsb and a Asus A7V133/SWA mobo. I am planning on getting a Antec SX 840 case, as far as the rest I am getting confused , originally I was going to go for a Leadtek GeForce 2 GTS but now I'm unsure.
Any suggestions on this and the rest of system would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance

[Beemer]

There are no hard and fast rules to building a PC. You have a good start with that A7V mobo and AMD 1.2 CPU.

Building a PC is and isn't easy. You will find doing the screw driver work is fun and productive. Getting to the screw driver part is a long and arduous journey.

The machine you will build will have to be built in your mind long befoe all the parts come in. Figure your usage intensions "plus".
Plus in this case means extra power you don't need presently. (Saves you from upgrading to soon in the future)

Research, Research, Research.

I just built a machine in March and it was my first.

Check out the parts and pieces I put into the machine for a good idea of the parts you will need.
http://machine.beemerworld.com

CPU's, heat sinks, thermal compounds, RAM, cd-rom, burner, dvd, floppy drive, extra case cooling, where to buy, etc, etc.

It takes time, and don't hurry the process. You don't want to order something online and have to return it. This will cause unwanted delays.

Read lots of reviews: http://www.anandtech.com/index.html

Hunt down the best prices: http://www.pricewatch.com

Do searches on search engines with a component in mind for price, distributors. Pay attension to taxes, shipping fee(s), allowed time for shipping.

Software for cheap:
http://www.9software.com/shopdisplayproducts.asp

You should have most of your research done in about 2 weeks or slightly less.

During the research process, you will with no dought in my mind, upgrade to a bigger better machine than what you intend on building right now. It's enevitable.

Good Luck, don't go broke, say good buy to the wife/girlfriend and the kids. You are going on an adventure and don't know when you will be back.

Select the correct forum here at sysopt.com that meets your query or knowledge needs. We're here and aren't going anywhere.

Welcome to sysopt.com <IMG SRC="http://cablelan.net/beemer/smileys/orange_wink.gif" border=0>

Cheers!

[Straynge]

Thanks for the input,
Prices must be radically different between here in the US and there up north.
My next "little" peice of my puzzle is the arctic silver ll but i found it on eBay for 8.88 and no shipping.
I think I'm going to take a shot on the samsung monitor 955DF i read about on here in steals and deals.
I looked at your site and think my next aquisition will be the HD's you selected.
again thanks for the advice
Straynge

[Straynge]

actually just checked eBay again and got the arctic silver for 4.99 a tube + 2.50 S&H

[Beemer]

There's different sizes of tubes. Large and small.

Here's a page on application of Arctic Silver http://www.subzeropc.com/article/thermalinterface.htm

If you need a cool case sticker: http://home.earthlink.net/~stikkers

Keep a Favorites folder of "My Hardware" and subcategories of the sites you visit for each component. In the subcategory of each component make another sub folder of "Best Price So Far".

Make a category in the main "My Hardware" folder of "Purchased". You will need this kind of site record to refer back to as you search it all down. You will refer back to this "My Hardware" in the future, after you finish building the PC as well. I use it all the time as I did here with you. I took it a step further and created a web site on the topic of building my own PC and the componenets I used. (I had to build a simple site for my Internet Proficiency course anyway. Web Page Layout and Design)

Here's an eg of mine:

<IMG SRC="http://cablelan.net/beemer/favorites.gif" border=0>

Keeping a Favorites category on your hardware search activities will be invaluable present and future.

As you search down your hardware and you know what you want but you haven't found the price yet, you might bump into software updates for that component. Log it into your components category and make a folder called downloads or updates.

Do a few things at once and save a little leg work if at all possible.

Cheers!