Hi,

Any expert advise for buying a good MOBO+CPU bundle under $200 to play
games, Play DVD, and Video Edititing/ Buring home DVDs from VHS cam
corders etc.

I prefer to get a good AGP8X or PCI Express Video card and a 5.1 Audio
Card, so it need not to be inbuit in the mobo.

Thanks in advance

Sam

Show quote Hide quote you are kidding

$200 thats what... £100 roughly

$2 = £1 (roughly)

the cheapest decent good PCI-Express video card i have been able to find has
been £180 and as for the AGP8X cards well not sure i knwo geForce 5900 is
about £90 in places

going down the scale to the crappiest geForce 5200 i would say about £30 if
you got for ATI u can get 9600's for about 45 quid if u try, but then you
need a motherboard, a case, a PSU, a processor, an optical drive, a hard
drive as well as a CPU.. i forgot memory

i dont know about the price in america for hardware so this could be wrong
but for a decent setup with CPU+MoBo with an alright gfx card your talking
(off the top of my head)

£300 MINIMUM so thats about $500/$600

for a full system, that will play games ok and will be alright for video
editing

i recently got a load in for a system im making for someone its a gaming
system

AMD 64 3200 (939)
1GB RAM
PCI-E GeForce 6600GT 128MB
120GB hard drive
Firewire+USB
NEC DVD-/+RW

the usuals usb, and stuff

a decent 425w PSU

im chargin £680 for it a little profit for me so thats about $1200/$1300 and
thats a good gaming system, but its not the best it could be

i could have gotten a 3500+ or a 6800GT and 1GB of DDR2 memory and a Raptor
hard drive

i could easilly have spent £1000 on it which is close to $2000 ish, for for
$200 your not gonna get anything far from a desktop word processing machine

might get one second hand mind

i reccomend if you want to try

AMD Athlon XP-M 2500+ (overclock it)
512MB ebuyer memory DDR400
any ATI Radeon 9600 or a GeForce 5700 (ATI is cheaper)
an Abit NF7
an old skool ATA133 Hard drive about your choice on size, the bigger the
pricier, i would say 40 - 80 GB
an ebuyer 400w PSU (gotta save money somewhere)

and a cheap ebuyer case

if you really wated to budget you could get a mATX board they are cheaper

abit VA-10/VA-20 or

Asus A7S8X-MX

or
Asus A7V8X-X

again with XP-M 2500+

your on a mission though its a tough one, i hope u get there

your gonna be looking at a socket A system though and i think the dream of
PCI-E within $200 is gone man, go for a cheap ATI Radeon 9600 (not XT)
some really cheap memory, ebuyer is the best for that. a cheap HDD

if you go for the Asus above with the SATA on try to get a SATA drive, look
at your current system see how much hdd space you have used

i have 80GB hdd at the min and only have used about 30GB so 80GB is a decent
size or 40GB if this system isnt going to be your main system.

HTH and good luck

Oh no. the age old question. I was asking myself this very same thing
recently. (earlier this week) I was looking at a CPU / Mobo / Memory combo
( ~$520.00 USD) and then you need a graphics card ( this is PCIx BTW) and
that will run you (~$380 USD) for a Nvidia 6800GT PCIx for the cheapest I
have found so far, so now we are up to ~$900.00 USD and that's just CPU /
Mobo / mem / vid card. I am going to assume you are going to cannibalize
your case / power supply / HDD / CD-RW / DVD-RW / and sound card like I plan
to do. if you do that you will have a descent system for gaming, all the
rest too I assume you keep from old system like keyboard, mouse, monitor,
printer, scanner, and if you have a mic. The problem I had was for a GOOD
game system that was a good price.

ECS PF4 Extreme-Intel 915P & ICH6 Chipset DDR2 400 1PCI Expressx16 3PCI AGP
Audio LAN ATX Socket 775 -with cpu - Pentium 4 550 3.4GHz LGA775 800 fsb
w/Heatsink & Fan with 512MB PC4200 Memory

that was the info I came up with. as you know the problems with "Real game
machines" you can never have enough :( I hope this helps and prices are ~
roughly listed rounded up.)  Oh you may need to buy a few new fans too if
you use your old case, the components listed might run a little warm for
serious gamming.

Good luck










Show quoteHide quote

Show quote Hide quote The obvious choice would be a 754 socket board AMD 64.
They are going cheaper obviously cause theyll be phased out while the
939 sockets takeover for the AMD 64s for desktops. They even had an
article that AMD was showing off its dual core chip already.

The 754 socket amd 2800 64 goes for around 120 and the 754 socket
boards range as low as 50 for cheapos and theres lots of mainstream
brands ASUS, aBIT, MSI for $80 or so



http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=19-103-452&depa=1

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-131-512&depa=1
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-131-512&depa=1
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-127-190&depa=1

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-130-470&depa=1


If you want to get the 939 socket the lowest CPU is 3000 and I think
thats around 146 and the boards are around 110 or so - total more in
the high 200s.

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-152-049&depa=1
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-128-263&depa=1
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-127-181&depa=1

Thank you for all the excellent information.
Is it possible to install a AMD Athlon 64 CPU + Socket 939 MoBo in a
case with SPU 450W /20PIN and DC 12V@15A;5V@35A;3.3V@26A;-12v@.8A;
-5v@.5A;+5VSB@2A or should I consider replacing the SPU?

Thanks in advance

Sam.


J***@Smith.com wrote:
Show quoteHide quotehttp://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=19-103-452&depa=1
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-131-512&depa=1
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-131-512&depa=1
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-127-190&depa=1
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-130-470&depa=1
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-152-049&depa=1
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-128-263&depa=1
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-127-181&depa=1

Sure. Its a standard ATX type MB.  The only thing is whether the PS is
decent enough. As long as its not a really cheapo PS it should be OK.
Ive already posted in another thread that some say some of the older
boards that been out there require a bios update to handle the newer
90nm 939 processors.  I dont think the vast majority does need one.
In fact I think most of the boards that need one should have been
updated or you run into that problem as some pointed out - you need a
754 socket processor to flash your board. That would be kind of goofy
if they sold boards like that without warning you.

The case is a black Matrix "CP702-7" ATX with a 450W PS. Bought for
under $45 including shipping. Not sure the PS is cheapo or good. The
case looks very thin and flexing. I hookup the fan and a harddisk to
the PS but nothing seems turning on. Also no reading in the multimeter.
Is there a way to test the PS without hooking the mobo and CPU?

This is my first case bought to build at home though I have done some
memory, hard-disk, videocard, etc upgrades at home.

I vaguely remember seeing in iInternet that this case is part of a
Intel Celeron bundle, but not able to retrieve that info now.

Thanks in advance

Sam



J***@Smith.com wrote:
Show quoteHide quote

Is this a good MoBo+CPU+memory combo to go for?

Abit AV8 VIA Socket 939 ATX Motherboard and AMD Athlon 64 3400+
Processor with 512MB DDR Memory [@TigerDirect - $299 after $130
mail-in-rebate]

Sure but I think the AV8 was the board that I saw in the Abit group
when I was looking around which some of the boards needed a bios
upgrade to use the 939 so I was make sure you dot get one like that.

The other thing is a lot of people bash Tiger Direct, its famous with
some groups of consumers who  think they are really bad with rebates
and sometimes the claim goes ships returned merchandise as new. Now
there are some that claim theyve gotten better now but I just want to
warn that some groups of consumers seem to really hate TD with a
passion. 


3400 219
av8   110
memory  60

Yeah you would save about 90 or so if you get the rebate from TD.
Not sure what kind of mem you are getting though from them.


Memory theres tons of deals going on now again with 3200 512 sticks in
the 50-60 range at CC, Compusa, outpost/frys, Office Depot and Max
even Newegg has had deals.  Most of the sticks at the retail chains
are PNY, Kingston valueram etc. 

Now Ive had great success in the past with brandname cheaper mem and
Ive seen posts where people have claimed Kingston worked with their
boards when more expensive ram didnt. That was when there were lots of
incompatiblities.  Usually when a board first comes out there can be
lots of mem incompatiblities -- the nforce2 boards were like that for
a while and the nforce3 boards -- Toms Hardware did a roundup of the
early ones and listed the mem that worked with what boards in one test
cause there seemed to be lots of problems.  I dont see as many
problems like that with the nforce4 boards but there maybe some as
they are fairly new.

Now once again Ive seen a post where someone claimed Kingston valueram
was really bad. Im going to test it again overnight with memtest86 and
the other tester when I get my Amd 64 going which should be soon cause
Ive heard the ATI 800XLs are shipping now for preorder customers. I
did test it my sticks - a PNY and Valueram which I got for 58 each
with rebates in a neighbors AMD 754 socket 3200 system and they seemed
worked fine though I didnt test it with memtest86. This was when he
was plagued with problems and I finally traced it to a bad samsung
stick of mem he paid something like 90 for - gross. Massive mem errors
in one stick rightaway.

Anyway the other thing is the 939s are said to OC very well and if you
get 3200 it probably wont OC very well -- many are buying a bit more
expensive higher speed rated mem but I dont really care about that yet
as most of that type mem is really grossly priced though Ive seen
prices coming down a lot recently.   I dont think its that great a
deal unless you can get a big discount on it.

If you dont want to risk TD then go for a lesser processor not a big
deal anyway , like a 3200  to save money.

Price ZipZoomfly, Mwave , Monarch , XtremeGear and Newegg as well as
use Pricewatch, Dealtime , pricegrabber etc to check if there are
better deals.

Show quote Hide quote Just wait until you get the MB.  Its by Powmax I see.  In the past Ive
seen lots of people post about the Powmax PSes and they were
considered cheaper but OK PSes. Not the greatest but ones that worked
with Radeon 9800 Pros etc which some PSes had a hardtime with a year
or so ago. I actually ordered one for someone else and looked them up
and noticed they had 2-3 400 watt versions , two of -- one was
relatively avg in price 40 or so the other was a bargain which many
bought as low as 15-30.  Then they had one which was pure junk sold at
only the places you never heard of for as low as $8. They were
relatively hard to find.

Impossible to say but itll probably be OK though there were some
people posting here that said PowMax had really gone downhill but who
knows.

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