Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Common Interests Building a new comp on a low budget

That case is 170 dollars with 30 dollars in mail-in rebates. I was told already to watch for things like that. Not to mention those offers will expire by the time I get the PC and mail them in.

And don't pick on my HD. lol I know it needs to be upgraded. but for now I'm gonna keep it until I get another 80 bucks to throw at it.

Biggest issue right now is finding a different barebones because of the lack of PCI express. And decide if I want the AMD which seems like it well end up costing more then the intel. I'll probably have to end up dropping in another 100-150 dollars at this point. So much for updating my PC and the Tour's suspension this summer.

And the PC is probably the more important one to run right, because my tour's suspsension is wear, but not dead. And right now I'm only putting about 4k a year on because of living up at school. So it can be put off till next summer.

*sigh*

I'll go back and look at the AMD and intel boards and try to start over.

Generally speaking, Win XP Pro and Norton Antivirus are memory whores no matter what machine I've ever used, but once they are fully loaded, I can load three scenes of 3d Max effortlessly (350,000 k's each) and the computer can work on those overnight without issue. I have 1.5 gigs of ram and a 2.2 ghz Athlon 3000+ processor.

Build your new PC geared toward upgradability, otherwise you're shooting yourself in the foot, as people have already said.

I agree with everyone about going AMD 64-bit. However, if I was going to make that jump I would NOT get the Sempron for your needs/wants of being able to upgrade later. I'm not saying it's not a good processor, but everyone keeps saying you can upgrade the video/cpu/etc later on.

This is only half true. The Sempron is socket 754, which is already being abandoned, so you'll run into the same problem that is being mentioned about no processors being available. This is going to be the possible case for anything you buy now. In 2 to 3 years, don't expect the CPU socket to be around anymore.

That being said, I would still go for the Sempron 64, unless you want to be able to upgrade the processor later. If you want the upgrade option, I would suggest saving up a little more and jumping up to socket 939. It is at least more likely to still be actively around by your time frame.

Either way I would stick to going AMD 64-bit. You will be glad you did.

AMD Socket 939 is the way to go. Better than intel, 64 bit and can later be upgraded to a dual core.

Current power supply is a 300 watt. runs fine with current setup and no problems.

A new higher watt supply was on the wants list I was looking @ 400 watt supplies.

BUT on a side of fantastic news, I got a p1151 code on my way back to school. So I might be looking at an 02 sensor now as well. lol

But thats really not that big of an impact.

Check it out.

I would be very sceptical buying that barebones system. The power supply looks to be a rebadged deer and is highly over rated. It's probably 200w max and will adequately power the system until you upgrade. then it'll pop it's capacitors and you like most users will be scratching your head wondering why you get blue screens, phantom reboots etc..The MSI main boards are also notorious for popping capacitors and they skimp on power regulation using 2 instead of the usual 3 regulators.

I'd buy everything seperate. Get a cheap ass case for $30, throw away the power supply and get a Seasonic 380w or larger. That's about $62 shipped and it has active pfc, all the proper connectors for future upgrades and good japanese capacitors. I've pulled a few of these apart and it's a very well made unit and inexpensive. As for mobo's and processors, I agree the Athlon 64 (preferably socket 939) is best. Even a socket 754 Sempron will be better than a Celeron (biased comment). Budget mobo's are a real crapshoot ATM as they tend to use chinese capacitors which can fail in 6 months to a year. You roll the dice and pray