[Nico]

So I'm fed up with my crappy athlon. It takes twice as lon,g as my laptop to render a pic in max, the power supply fan keeps making loud noise from times to times, dust is carved in all the conponents, hell, I'm sure I've seen a small dinosaur running in the case. It also starts talking to me. It's so old it starts evolving. So it's time to upgrade

Now I'm using the custom build thingy on grosbill.com ( don't bother checking, it's in french ), coz I can't bother building it by myself anymore. Pb is:
1) the choices are, well, limited
2) I'm completly out of it, last time I was "aware" of hardware, it was when I got my 900mhz, and that guy was around the first ever to grace the land of men. Yeah.
I'll limit myself to 600€ ( 600$ if you don't pay attention to the fact the $ is ****ty right now ).

So, w/o further ado:

CPU ( I want an AMD, so forget the intel things):
-Barton 2600+ ( AMD Athlon XP - 2600+ - 1.91 GHz - 333 MHz - L2 Pipeline Burst - 512 Ko - 1 x processeur - Socket A )
-Athlon 2400+ ( AMD Athlon XP - 2400+ - 2 GHz - 266 MHz - L2 Pipeline Burst - 256 Ko - 1 x processeur - Socket A )

I'd say the difference in mhz is, well, I don't care, so I suppose the Barton thing is better with its 333 Mhz thing, but then, I don't even know if that's really useful or anyhing... What you say?

thermic glue thinguy
her... never paid attention to that, but the choice is there, so.
choice is ARTIC ceramic or ARTIC silver V.

cooler
two choices, both are THERMALTake, first one is TR2TT M SE, the other is Extreme Volcano 12 ( W00t )
You know anything about that? In the doubt, for now, I've checked the second one, coz it's more expensive

mobo
I'm not sure there,; I don't know/like the choices there.
Of course I jumped directly to the ASUS choices, but the two there have integrated videocards. Die, ASUS.
Then I have an
ASROCK ( ? ) K7S8X -add lots of crap there-
or an ECS K7VTA3 ( which has VIA chipsets Do they still suck? )

RAM
Well I'll take what goes with what I have right now

HD
Well I don't need one, but I cannot choose none, so that'll be that maxtor diamondmax plus 9 80 Ghz. ALready have two 80 Ghz, but heh, can't do anything 'bout that.

CD/DVD reader
Ah well, the choices seems to be generic things. Don't care, I can choose none,  I'll put back my old one, works more or less fine ( save when reading Divx, it makes so much noise I can't hear a thing ).
DVD burner
just noticed I could get one thanks to the saving on the DVD reader. Cool, won't have to copy all my stuff to my laptop anymore
So I have the chopice between a pioneer DVR - 107 and a NEC ND - 2500.
Maybe someone knows better than me about DVD burners? ( I doubt it, but heh, why not? )

videocard
I have my Radeon9700, so no Videocards, thank you. Plus there's only GeForces in there.

monitor
Same deal, not gonna get a crappy 17" when I have a trinitron 21".

case, keyboard, mouse, etc
well, I doubt you can help with that.

voila. For now, I'm at 582.30€
Not bad.

[Turnsky]

that's some nice specs there..

[Setekh]

Originally posted by Nico
2) I'm completly out of it, last time I was "aware" of hardware, it was when I got my 900mhz, and that guy was around the first ever to grace the land of men. Yeah.

I totally empathise. I don't know my head from my tail when it comes to buying PCs these days. All I can say is, get as much RAM as you can afford. That always applies.

[Nico]

yeah, that's planed
But nobody can help with choices?

[kasperl]

not really. I'd get the Barton though. either that, or wait and wait and wait and get a 64 bit one when it get's affordablle.

[Lightspeed]

Originally posted by Nico
yeah, that's planed
But nobody can help with choices?

I can't.

reason:

I want an AMD, so forget the intel things

[Sandwich]

I feel overwhelmed.

*strokes 600MHz P3 lovingly*

[Tiara]

Go with the Barton for the CPU choice. The better bus speed would do it for me

[Lightspeed]

Originally posted by Tiara
The better bus speed would do it for me

That's exactly the reason why AMD is a crappy choice these days

[Xelion]

Would go for the Athlon XP 2600+ (Barton Core: 333MHz), I've used ARTIC silver V for my cpu and its doing pretty well in 36'C Temperatures at around 50-59'C, have seen it rise higher but nothing over 62'C and thats in 38-40'C heat with average case cooling.

Originally posted by Lightspeed
That's exactly the reason why AMD is a crappy choice these days

Hmm... intel-based systems are not exactly any faster then amd-based systems. Look @ HT technology = absolutely useles.

[Martinus]

[color=66ff00]I can verily vouch for the Abit NF7 and the NF7-s variant is supposed to be rock stable and quite flexable too.
They should be pretty competitively priced now too as they've been around for a while.

As for paste; I've heard that the pricier ones do no better than the stuff supplied with your generic CPU cooler.
Also if noise is a problem check out the aero7 range of coolers, they're not designed like standard fans and are a good bit quieter than just about everything barring steath fans.
[/color]

[Liberator]

The 2600+ is going to be faster just based on the amount of Cache is has.

As far as Mobos skip anything that doesn't say Asus, MSI or Abit in the brand.  ASRock used to be a subbrand of Asus, but they suck regardless.

Everything else I think you know.

More RAM is almost always better.
More HD space is helpful, especially for what you do.
ect.
ect.

[Jiggyhound]

much cheaper to go shoping for parts where iam, around £300 for a bunch of cool high grade stuff. Just the only problem is the monitor i want costs that much alone o_O

[Kazan]

i highly recommend you buy componant-by-compnant off pricewatch's listings and ebay

PS: Get a Coolermaster Aero 7+ cooler ..  quiet as can be, and more effective than any other fan cooler i've ever seen

[Martinus]

Originally posted by Kazan
PS: Get a Coolermaster Aero 7+ cooler ..  quiet as can be, and more effective than any other fan cooler i've ever seen

[color=66ff00]They look cool too.
[/color]

[Kazan]

they are cool - their design makes it so there's no "fan shadow" right in the center where it's the hottest -- all the traditional fans have that airflow shadow.  

Noth aving that shadow means you can have less flow and less power consumption, but more cooling

[Nico]

Originally posted by Kazan
i highly recommend you buy componant-by-compnant off pricewatch's listings and ebay

The thing is, I can't bother, that's why I'm asking about stuff from the list at the begining.
Ah well.

[Kazan]

you can bother to save a lot of money?

[ChronoReverse]

You don't want the 2600+

You want the 2500+ M


That's right.  M.  As in mobile.  The chip that can be used as a desktop chip.

Reason?  Because if you use DDR400, it'll be a a 3200+.  That is, without using fancy RAM, you get 3200+ on air.



As for motherboards, another good choice is the DFI Infinity Ultra400


Just get Artic Silver 5 and remember not to use too much.

[Liberator]

Define "too much" 1 cc? 2 cc?  That's what bugs me about Thermal Compound it's not as precise as it should be.  If the instructions specify "squeez X amount of Artic Silver V onto the surface of the chip" I can judge, but they just say "squeez a small amount of Artic Silver V on the surface of the chip" and thusly a newbie is terrified that they are putting two much on.  That fear is why I used an HSF with a pad instead and I have no complaints.