PocketMatrix

As a summer project I am planning on building a pc. I am in the $700 dollar price range. I am also completly new at this.

Here is what I have pickred out so far...

Case $65 + power supply
Raidmax A288c alumininum ATX case with side window and fan.


Motherboard $221
MB-CPU COMBO PC CHIPS 817LR, ATHLON XP 2100+ CPU AND FAN


Hard drive $69
Maxtor 60gb 5400 rpm


DVD-ROM $40
LITE-ON 16X DVD-ROM / 48X CD-ROM Internal EIDE Drive - Retail Kit


CD-RW $75
LITE-ON 40X/12X/48X Internal EIDE CD-RW Drive - Retail Kit


Video Card $99
RADEON 8500LE PRO


Memory $74
512 mb pc2100 ddr ram


Some questions that I have include:
Are these all compatable?
What does atx mean on the case? Is it compatible with ata?
How big of a power supply will I need? (i am putting in neon lights)
Do I need a sound card?
Finally, is there anything i left out? Can iget better deals on these?

Thanks in advance for helping a newbie out.

Admins hlp with the links!

I can't answer all your questions at the moment, just these two ones:

1.
ATX is the form factor of the motherboard, it describes things like the size of the board, power connector etc. - just make sure that you buy an ATX case and an ATX mainboard. ATX is the most common form factor nowadays (there are others like microATX or the VERY VERY old BabyAT), but I don't think you should have any problems.

http://www.intel.com/design/motherbd/atx.htm

2.
The motherboard doesn't seem to have an own soundchip - but even if there was one, I'd suggest to buy a good soundcard. You need either the chip or a card to hear any sound (except the horrible sounds produced by the PC buzzer ), so get a good soundcard like the Sound Blaster Audigy.

And buy a faster HDD if you can afford it, Maxtor HDDs with 5400rpm are quite slow. Take a look at IBM or Western Digital drives in the 7200rpm range.

The 817LR is an ATX mainboard, no problems there.

ATA is a standard for data transfer, the 817LR seems to have an ATA-100 controller which means that you can theoretically (!) get 100 MB/s with your HDD.

[EDIT: Well, according to the Accubyte site, the board has build-in audio, so you don't HAVE to buy a soundcard. However, on other websites don't mention the soundchip and I still suggest to buy a good soundcard.]

ok, thank you very much.

if the video card i think is an ati, is that bad?

actually i think i am reading it wrong

Wow, ATA, ATI, ATX...

ATI is the company that produces the Radeon chip which is quite good.

The 8500LE is a little bit slower than the original 8500 (LE is similar to MX used by nVidia for their slower chips), it's still a fast one, though.

ok village... lets see if we cant hook you up with a better mobo. That pc chips one looks way to cheapo..

heres what I managed to find... over at bzboyz.com they have a combo of a Shuttle ak32L with an xp2000 for $208. ups ground shipping is $15 which is about $5 more then standered.. not to bad (all the shipping prices seem $5 inflated).

The shuttle has alot of high end boards out there and this one looks pretty impressive, sporting the VIA266 chipset, 2 built in usb and 4 extension usb ports (Im not sure if the included extender has 2 or 4 usb ports), built in audio, and a built in Ethernet RJ45 port. It also has 6 pci slots, and get this, 2 banks for DDR ram and 2 banks for SDRAM. I dont think you can combine them (havnt read anything about it), I would imagin the difference in speeds between them would cause all hell to break lose. The motherboard also sports hardware monitoring and apparently even has built in speed fan controls. Lastly this board has been out for a while.. and the "L" actually means version 2.0, so the board has had atleast one revision to fix any bugs that have come up.

heres a very good thread I found on the board, one post has links for 3 or 4 reviews. (BTW some of these are for revision 1.. )



direct link to one review is

looking at bzboyz site, it looks very well put together and looks to be a good bet to order from. when ordering, they give you the option to upgrade many options.. they offer a 512meg stick of ddr ram for $77 there as well so you might as well get your ram from them too, because THEN what you can do is opt for their TEST plans, and they can test the mobo with the cpu and ram before shipping. as for everything else there.. I wouldnt bother.

you can find the combo at near the bottem of the page.


next on your list of course is a good heatsink. My personal fav are the millenium glaciator 2. . It wieghs a ton but offers great cooling preformance while maintaining low noise. The normal MG2 cost $29, and they apparently have a new one out for $35 that has an even quieter fan. how ever you may not need the quieter one with the speed fan controls on your mobo. They have a Glite version (aluminum) that is $21, but honestly, your working with a 2000xp here, cheap cooling solutions are on the no-no list.

one last thing, artic silver apparently no longer comes standered with the MG2 :/ so youll need to buy the $6 tube of AS3 that they have on the MG2 site, but its comparitivly better then the tube of AS3 BZBOYZ sells on their site for $9. :D

Yeah shuttle mobo's are all i use in the pc's I build. I highly recomend them. I would reccomend spending a few extra bucks and get a sound blaster audigy card. They are absolutly wonderful. They even have a firewire port, so if u get a HardDrive based MP3 player or digital video camera.. u can hook it up w/o needing another card. They also allow 400mbs networking. Oooh so sweet.<Br><br>You also might wanna check out and compare their prices. They are the only guys i deal with and they are great

ehh, he's obviously on a budget. so not only would I not suggest the audigy because its an overpriced underquality card with 300 megabyte bloated drivers, but I doubt he will be getting a mp3 player with firewire connections either. The best value is cdmp3 players too, and he will allready have a cdrw.

If you find out later that the onboard audio dosn't have the quality you would like.. shoot for a santa cruz.. they are less then $70, have regularly updated drivers (and no bloated media players and useless profile windows for games), and have been proven to have better sound quality then the sb cards. It is also the official card of the asusboards.com site ;)

Bah, send that $700 to me. For it I'll give you a good deal. I'll give you my old Pentium 200MHz, with a Sound Blaster Pro, 32MB of RAM, 1.5GB Maxtor hard drive, 15 inch 24-bit monitor, onboard 2MB video card, with a free copy of Doom to impress your friends with. Also, I'll throw in a CD-ROM and a 3.5 floppy drive. Man, this baby rocks! With it, you'll be the coolest kid of 1995!

The AMD 2000+ has a better bang-for-buck ratio - with the 2100+ you're paying for top-of-the range.

Nah, you dont really need that good of a fan. You will probably need one though. My friends Dell has a real cheap ass fan. It uses ducting so it sucks the heat from the processor. It runs fine.

you'll need a 400W power supply minimum.

I like Dell's cooling systems, they're so quiet! I just wish my laptop ran cooler and maybe a little quieter.