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gonna build my own computer.
I think I wanna try AMD this time, but I'm not married to that idea. Anybody have suggestions for a motherboard CPU combo online? It has to be a reputable place with a descent warranty.

Stats I'm looking for:
CPU: 3.0 Pen4 or equivalent AMD
Motherboard: 1334/Firewire capability even if I have to add it with a card later just as long as it has the capability to support it. I have NO idea where the cache stats should be on this these days.

USB2 at leaste 2 sockets in back and hopefully 2 up front.

More than 2 RAM slots with 512MB to start out with, they're are at leaste 2 differant types of RAM available now and I have NO idea what's what except that one is more expensive than the other.

I have a DVD drive and a CDRW drive to stuff into it along with a floppy and an internal ZIP 100 drive that runs off a PCI bus controller card.
An ATI Rage Fury Pro AGP card that I will likely replace after while. Along with 20GIG and a 80GIG hard drives.
Probly need at leaste 5 PCI slots.

This is the box I'm planning on stuffing it into, but I havent bought anything yet. http://www.xoxide.com/demonx1.html

Any thoughts about all this? Money I$ a factor, but I want something nice even if it isnt bleeding edge.

"We sleep safely in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would harm us". George Orwell

Fighting For Justice With Brains Of Steel !
<img src="http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/atengun2X.GIF" border=0>

Edited by - boomer on Oct 12 2004 10:01 PM

_________________
The only time you have too much fuel is when you're on fire.

What I recommend:

Motherboard: FOXCONN 755A01-6EKRS. Newegg.com $74. Very good reviews and very cheap. Gives you 4 front and 4 back USB ports as well as a rear firewire port.

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 2800+, 512KB L2 Cache, 64-bit Processor - Retail. Newegg.com $141.

For ram go to www.18004memory.com and get 512mb of DDR400/PC3200. As for the videocard, if you get a new motherboard, you're going to have to replace it. the rage fury pro is 2x AGP which is incompatible with a 8x slot for voltage reasons. You could fry the whole system by putting it in there. I'd recommend one of the readon 9200SEs they have for around $40. Nothing special, but it gets the job done.

the video card says it's 1X 2X 4X, it only has 32MBs but a new card would be another $100-$200.
The RAM will have to wait till I settle on a motherboard so I can get the right stuff, my head has been out of the hardware picture TOOOO long. I knew all this stuff 3 years ago lol
Thanks for the reply Ben.

What about SATA? many/all of the new motherboards are supporting it but my currant hard drives that I plan to swap over to the new puter are both ATA, is SATA backwards compatible to use ATA?

"We sleep safely in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would harm us". George Orwell

Fighting For Justice With Brains Of Steel !
<img src="http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/atengun2X.GIF" border=0>

_________________
The only time you have too much fuel is when you're on fire.

BOOM,
THATS THE MAIN REASON I HAVENT GOT A NEW ONE YET $$ AND IT'LL BE YEARS BEFORE I CAN GET DSL OR HIGH SPEED CABLE.
SAT INTERNET IS $70.00 A MONTH AND $600.00 FOR EQUIPMENT.
TO FLIPPING HIGH! I'M NOW AT THE BLAZING SPEED OF 24,000 BPS.<img src=icon_smile_sleepy.gif border=0 align=middle><img src=icon_smile_sleepy.gif border=0 align=middle><img src=icon_smile_sleepy.gif border=0 align=middle><img src=newicons/tard.gif border=0 align=middle><img src=newicons/anim_cussing.gif border=0 align=middle>

I BET THE COMP WIZARDS HERE CAN HOOK YOU UP. WAIT TILL THEY SEE THE THREAD.

GOOSE

MONEY TALKS,B.S. JUST PILES UP.

_________________
\"Live Free Or Die\"

I'm living with my sis for now, she already had DSL and I hooked up a wireless LAN for the 3 puters here plus my approaching a decade old laptop lol. My Dell is creaking along at 866hz with a P3 CPU 3 years old and time to get a major upgrade if I can just find the $$$.

"We sleep safely in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would harm us". George Orwell

Fighting For Justice With Brains Of Steel !
<img src="http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/atengun2X.GIF" border=0>

_________________
The only time you have too much fuel is when you're on fire.

I have an ASUS A7N8X and love it. It has plenty of space for extra RAM. Also have an 1.47 GHZ AMD processor and an NVIDIA e-Ge-Force4 Ti 4200 video card. I like the Athlon processor, it has plenty of speed and the video card is phenomenal.

Marge: There's someone here who I think can help you. Homer: Who, Batman? Marge: No he's a scientist. Homer: Batman's a scientist? Marge: It's not Batman!

<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote><font size=1 face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote>
the video card says it's 1X 2X 4X, it only has 32MBs but a new card would be another $100-$200.
The RAM will have to wait till I settle on a motherboard so I can get the right stuff, my head has been out of the hardware picture TOOOO long. I knew all this stuff 3 years ago lol
Thanks for the reply Ben.

What about SATA? many/all of the new motherboards are supporting it but my currant hard drives that I plan to swap over to the new puter are both ATA, is SATA backwards compatible to use ATA?

"We sleep safely in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would harm us". George Orwell

Fighting For Justice With Brains Of Steel !
<img src="http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/atengun2X.GIF" border=0>
<hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote></font id=quote><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size=2 id=quote>

Serial ATA is not compatible with (parallel) ATA. However, the board I recommened does also have reguar ATA ports.

after some negotiation it looks like I will be getting a new system from Gateway, they have some great prices on fast systems. It was begining to look like little of my old system could be transfered anyway.

Thanks for the responses everybody

"We sleep safely in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would harm us". George Orwell

Fighting For Justice With Brains Of Steel !
<img src="http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/atengun2X.GIF" border=0>

_________________
The only time you have too much fuel is when you're on fire.

I bought mine a year ago from ABS Computer and have liked it a lot. I have an Athlon XP3200, A7N8X motherboard, 1 GB RAM, Audigy 2, Dell 2001FP 20.1" flatpanel,and recently upgraded the ATI AIW 9800 Pro with an EVGA NVIDIA GeForce 6800GT. Suggest a midlevel graphics card if you intend on gaming/watching movies/video editing. A bad card is a serious limfac on a computer. Definitely shy away from integrated graphics with Dell and Gateway. If you must, get the lowest end system that allows upgradeable graphics cards. In my opinion the 2 best upgrades anyone can do is more and better RAM and a better graphics card. My setup is blazing fast but I like games and video on my machine. I'd consider ABS. Never been a big fan of Gateway or Dell machines. All their customer support goes through India so half the time you can hardly communicate the issues clearly...

ATTACK!!!!!!!

I had some cash open up and this is the system I will likely be ordering on Friday from Gateway. It costs a small fortune (for me anyway) but at 3.4ghz and 1Gig of RAM (with room for more)I figure it will be a long time before I need to upgrade, but it was still $300 less than a similarly configed Dell and has more of the features that I wanted.
Sorry about the formatting, but the page didnt save very well.


Operating System: Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional Edition ........[ +US$79.99]
Application Software: Microsoft® Works Suite 2004 - including Microsoft® Word and Encarta

Processor: Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor 550 (3.40GHz) ........[ +US$75.00]

Memory: 1GB (1024MB) DDR SDRAM PC3200 (400MHz), Dual Channel ........[ +US$135.00]

Chipset: Intel® 915G Chipset
Hard Drive: 200GB Serial ATA100 7200rpm hard drive ........[ +US$30.00]

Optical Drive: 48x/32x/48x CD-RW/DVD combo drive and 8x Double-Layer Multi-Format DVD Writer (DVD±R/±RW) ........[ +US$65.00]

Floppy Drive: 8-in-1 media card reader and floppy drive ........[ +US$10.00]

Extended Service Plan Including Limited Warranty: Desktop Value Service Plan -- 1 year parts/labor/no on-site/1 year technical support

Monitors: FPD1930 19" LCD flat panel display analog/digital (19" viewable) ........[ +US$280.00]

Video: ATI RADEON® X300SE with 128MB DDR Video Memory and TV Out ........[ +US$90.00]

Sound System: SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS Sound Card ........[ +US$50.00]

Speakers: GMAX 2100 2.1 Speakers with Subwoofer

AntiVirus Software: Norton AntiVirus 90 day introductory offer
Rebate: $50 Mail-In Rebate (Limited Time Promotion -- not reflected in price)

Additional Application Software: Integrated 10/100/1000 (Gigabit) Ethernet

Case: Gateway 7-Bay Tower Case

Controller: Integrated Ultra ATA Controller

Expansion Slots: (1) PCI-E x16 Expansion Slot, (1) PCI-E x1, (3) PCI in which 2 are available for use

External Ports: (7) USB 2.0 (6 in back and 1 in front in the media card reader), (2) IEEE 1394 Firewire Ports, Parallel, Serial and (2) PS/2

Certification: Energy Star Compliant
Keyboard: Gateway Premium 104+ Keyboard
Mouse: Two-Button PS/2 Wheel Mouse (no mouse pad included)
Music Sampler: Napster 2.0 and 150 Song Sampler (pre-loaded on hard disk)
Modem: 56K PCI data/fax modem
Internet Service Provider: Six months America Online® Internet access
Part Number: 1008273
PCI Adapter: IEEE 1394 (FireWire) PCI Card
Network: Integrated 10/100/1000 (Gigabit) Ethernet



"We sleep safely in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would harm us". George Orwell

Fighting For Justice With Brains Of Steel !
<img src="http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/atengun2X.GIF" border=0>

_________________
The only time you have too much fuel is when you're on fire.

I see you went for the PCI Express option. Let me know how that works out as I'm tentative to switch til it's past the beta and software support is higher. Enjoy!

ATTACK!!!!!!!

lol well it wasnt an option, but yeah I hope it all works out. Wish I had more options on the vid card though ( I actually went for the better X600XT 128MB) and the monitor doesnt come with a cable !!

"We sleep safely in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would harm us". George Orwell

Fighting For Justice With Brains Of Steel !
<img src="http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/atengun2X.GIF" border=0>

_________________
The only time you have too much fuel is when you're on fire.