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Tired of fighting the 13 year old for computer time, so thinking of building a new box for me, and giving him this one.
This box will be for surfing mostly. I do have photoshop, and a first grandchild, so in the not too distant future, I'm certain I'll want to do some video editing. So being able to upgrade is extremely important.
Looking to build cheap, yet quality cheap if that makes any sense.
Here's what I've got in mind.

MB = MSI K8N Neo4-F. I believe this board has the firewire I'd need for the video editing. Also pci-e. $86. I know the mb is where all upgrades will come from, and I know I'm kinda going cheap here, but this board seems to have all the upgrade options I might require. Anyone have any better ideas?

CPU = AMD Athlon 64 3000 retail, 939 socket. $146. I know the sweet spot is the 3500. I'll upgrade later if need be, when hopefully they'll be cheaper.

Harddrive is the Samsung spinpoint 0812c, 80 gig SATA. $60. Never had a sata before, is this ok?

Lite-on SOHW-1693S dvd burner. $47.

Some value memory, most likely corsair, 2X512, PC3200, around $80. Guess I could save a few bucks here, and only get 2X256. When I upgrade later, this old memory can go to the boys' computer.

Case = Rosewill TU-155, with 400 w power, and 3 fans. $52.99. Serious question here is the power supply, is this good enough for my needs, considering I'll probably never have a bunch of drives or high powered vid card? Does it have sata connectors? 20 or 24 pin connector? Which does that motherboard require anyway? I couldn't care less what it looks like, I just want a sturdy and cool box with a decent power supply. I'm certain you guys can help me a bunch with this choice. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6811147001

Another problem I'm having is the vid card. I'm getting by at the moment with a crappy old 32mb tnt, and it's been fine for surfing. I'll never play games on this machine, but will I need a good card for the video editing? I've very tentatively picked this card: SAPPHIRE 1024-2C50-04-SA Radeon X300SE 128MB 64-bit DDR PCI Express x16, for $49.50 I've heard some mention that some of the new motherboards have better onboard graphics than some of the cards. Maybe I should save a few bucks here, get the onboard video, even if the board costs a few bucks more than the one I've picked out? If so, can someone advise me on a mb with pci-e, firewire, and onboard graphics?

A $10 floppy, and at newegg prices, I'm up to $531.46, sans monitor, keyboard, mouse, and modem, all of which I have spares that will make do to later. If I just get the 512 of memory rather than the gig, I'm at $500.

Cheap, but looking to get all I can. What do you guys think?

That does look pretty good.
I think that 2x256 will probably do you well enough until you do your next upgrade. Do you do much multitasking? That's really the main area that you'll need the ram (except for gaming and photo/video editing).
The only reservation I have is the PSU, as you mentioned. It looks decent enough, but to be honest I'd be much more comfortable with even something like this

Stick with the 3000+ (for $146 you are getting the new venice core?). A really good chip.

That way you can upgrade to a X2 Dual Core later on when the prices drop.

You can go with this for your MB. That should keep you going for a while. Most people would not agree, but since you're not overclocking or doing anything really intense, this board should do well. The onboard graphics is radeon X300, and it has IEEE1394.

There is always the MSI version.

Thanks for the help guys.
Still not sure about the onboard vid. They are all micro boards, and I'm not sure about them just yet.
How about this for a case and power supply?
Antec Solution SLK3800B Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Rackmount Case 400Watt (SP400) SmartPower 2.0 ATX 12V 2.0 for AMD. It's 89 bucks, more than I wanted to spend, but quality may be the way to go here. The power supply itself is $65, so seems like a good deal. Has a 24 pin connector with detachable 4pin, so that's nice.
One question though is the 2 12v connectors. One, for the board, has 10 amps, while the other, for the cpu, has 15. Is this enough?
When comparing amperage with other ps's, would you add these together, and compare at 25 amps on the 12v rail?

That's a decent case and power supply. Since you are not considering installing two high-end GeForce video cards, you should have plenty of power.

The XPress 200 onboard graphics should be fine for your application. Going the RS480 route would save you at least $50 for the initial video card cost. It still has a PCI-Express X16 slot if you want to add a video card later.

With so much integrated onto newer motherboards, I would not worry about choosing micro-ATX over ATX. There are enough expansion slots for the few things that you might want to add-on later.

Was going to check out those micro boards again, but both are no longer on newegg. All they have now are jetway. Tiger still has the msi, but for $99.

Check ZipZoomFly
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDe ... ode=241177
MSI RS480M-IL Radeon Xpress 200 for $79
EDIT: or $87 for the socket 939 variant
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDe ... ode=241160

About those micro boards. I know they aren't really a lot smaller, but I guess things do fit a little tighter. Is there a cooling issue there? Will they last just as long as the atx boards?

About that case, Antec makes the same case with a 350 w power supply. $20 cheaper. Would that be sufficient, or should I go with the 400?

My $.02 on this is that you can not go wrong with the Antec case. Spend the incrementally larger sum on the bigger PSU, as you never know what the future holds.

I will NEVER use MSI again. That is based on several MBs and one Gfx card that have just died after 1-2 years of use.

<a href="http://secure.newegg.com/Oldversion/app/WishHistoryReview.asp?position=HISTORY&submit=VIEW&ID=1595545">Here</a> is a nice setup from Newegg that will get you going for under 650 shipped -- second day!! SATA II, 2x 1394 and lots of USB. I know that $650 is not "cheap" in absolute terms, but for a whole new system? That is a steal!

I'm now thinking of the chaintech vcf4 ultra, $85.

Will I have to pay sales tax if ordering from newegg? I live in arkansas.

Well guys, here's what I ordered tonight.

MB = the chaintech vnf4 ultra.
Case = Antec slk3800b w/400w power.
Cpu = 64 3000 venice with integrated frontside bus, oem.
Fan w/heatsink = Arteccooling acs64u
Ram = Rosewill 2x256. I'll upgrade that soon, and pass this stuff to the boy.
Vid = Asus en6200tc128/td/16m rtl. I didn't do nearly enough research on this component. Hope it works out, the price was right.
HHD = Hitachi sata II 8mb cache, 7200 rpm 80 gig.
DVDROM= Samsung 16x sh-dit2c/bebp. I'll get a burner later.
Some arctic silver paste, $8 keyboard, $9 floppy, $8 modem, $8 keyboard, a free newegg logo, and a $5 discount for something I can't figure out.
Subtotal 537. 20
Shipping $52.64
No tax
Total $589.84, deliverd, sans monitor. If anyone sees a 19" lcd for around $200 let me know.
Anyone see any problems?
I know I tried my best to get all I could for $600.

looks like a damn nice system for the money to my eyes . the 3000+ will overclock like crazy . i am running mine at 2.5 ghz versus the stock 1.8 . your a little light on your amount of memory but like you said you will upgrade it soon anyway .

Thanks, I'm somewhat proud of my choices, but i've been looking at that vid card, and I believe I made a mistake there. Newegg says I can't change my order. Wouldn't be so bad, but that pci-e card won't go in the boy's rig. I'm sure it will be fine for for me, but I could have done better there.
Reckon I can RA that thing and get something better?

Good buy on this dell 19" for 260 ish...

http://www.xpbargains.com/#51065

i am sure you could RMA the card but thats kind of an ethical question if you ask me . your ordered the card knowing what it is so personally i think you should probably keep it unless it doesnt work when you get it . the only reason i say this is because i am a overclocker and have personally gone through several motherboards and processors in a few days time . i would get one and it ran fine at the default speed but wouldnt overclock very well when i knew there were processors out there able to do much more . i ended up ordering another processor and selling the one i had already bought at a loss because i didnt feel like i should return something that worked as it was suppose to .

ethics aside you say your not going to play games on the system . the geforce 6200 is many times faster than what you have now so i am sure you will be happy with it .

Well, seeing as the guy hasn't even received the merchandise yet, and therefore hasn't even opened, much less used, the card, I don't see ethics as even entering into the equation. It's a piece of merchandise. So, return it if you want to, but now I'm going to say that I agree with Hance on the other point and state that you're not a gamer and you really have no business getting a better card if you're not going to game. So I'd keep the card if I was you.

I'm still concerned about the vid. It's got 16mb onboard @ 32 bits. The rest comes from system memory. Seems like a big mistake on my part. Called newegg, and they said they couldn't change it without cancelling the whole order and starting over again. I'm sure that card will be ok when I get some real memory, but for now, it'll be sucking up a third of the little memory I'll have. Newegg also said that as long as I didn't open the vid card, they wouldn't have a problem with RMA, which answers the ethics question. Of course that means another week to 10 days before I can get the system going. I know I could have done better for the same money, but I think I'll just keep the card, and chalk it up to experience. Do the research.
I stopped at staples today on a whim, and they had a 19" flat screen crt for $129. I bought it, and though it's not the greatest by any means, it's ok. Sucks to get old and have bifocals, but the 19" really helps.
So far I've spent $730. Not too bad for a complete 939 system, with ultra board, fsb integrated into chip, 64x2 future, and sataII drive.
Imminent upgrades will be 2x512 GOOD memory, cas latency 2.5 or better, probably $100, though I might talk myself into 2x1gig. Or would it be better to go with 4x512? Just in case one stick burned up or something? If so, I'd lose the dual channel in either case, but with 4x512, I'd still have 1.5 gigs of memory vs. 1 gig, all without dual channel. I could however pull the third 512, put it in the boy's rig, and still have a gig of memory on dual channel. Might be the best bet, seems to be more options with the 4x512. And a dvd burner, about $50. Possibly another case fan. Not too concerned about the memory, the boys' computer could really use the rosewill 2x256, added to the corsair 256 he's already got. He's got one of the cheaper asus boards(a7n8x-x, w/athlon 2500+) that does not support dual channel, so the three sticks won't hurt him much, though his current stick is pc 2700 and the rosewill's will be pc 3200. I guess that means they'll all 3 run at 333mhz. Think I'll also get him a decent 8x agp card so he can game some. Can someone recommend an agp card for, say, $50 to $75?
Got to get the kid fixed up pronto, or he'll be frickin' with my new system!
$1000 bucks if I go with just the gig of ram, $1100 if two gigs, and I fixed the boy up pretty good too.
I know I could've done a little better, but what do you guys think?

Pretty decent system for the money invested...good job

Ewwww.... the video card thing hurts... for $2 more you could have gotten the 64 bit memory bus on the card. Or for $12 gotten the "Best" 6200TC. Oh well.
<a href="http://techreport.com/reviews/2004q4/geforce-6200-turbocache/index.x?pg=6">TR </a> liked the 64 bit version, as long as you are playing @ 1024x768 or less.

As for the AGP, I would look for a 9700 Pro / 9800 Pro from ATi or 6600 GT from nVidia. For less than $100 you could get the 9600 Pro, which at ~ $80 which is a decent value. I think I would stay away from nVidia below $100 on AGP, but their high(er)-end stuff is awesome.

Given a choice, I would get a 6600GT for around $150 or for half that get the 9600 Pro. AGP doesn't really have legs, but I would say those are minimums for any future gaming that the son might do.