The only problem I have is.... there are too many options!!

here is the list of what I *think* I want in my machine

CPU - Athlon xp1900 or xp2000
Motherboard - was thinking Gigabyte GA-7VRXP or Asus VIA A7V333 KT333 ... probably Gigabyte
Video card - Geforce 4 ti4200 or radeon 8500????
Sound Card - Sound Blaster Audigy
Hard Drive - MAXTOR 80GB 7200RPM
CD-R drive - Lite On 40X12X48
DVD drive - PIONEER INTERNAL ATAPI 16X DVD slot loading
Ram - not sure - Crucial PC2700 or Corsair XMS3000
Speakers - If budget allows, logitech z560 4.1
monitor - ??? haven't done much research yet
case - ? I just want a decent cheapie case w/ 300 watt power supply, none of that fancy aluminun for me (too much $$)
floppy - who cares, they are all $10
Probably a LAN card somewhere too
no modem, have cable internet.

Please give me your comments, suggestions, opinions, etc.

Can address vid cards abit.

Geforce4 is top of line, and you pay for it. An ATI Radeon 8500 is still really good.

Unless you are playing graphics intensive games, such as Everquest or some of the newer MUUDs coming out, you can save a buck here.

Personally, I may be upgrading to the Geforce, since I DO play some of those games, although an 8500 all-in-one card would be cool, because then I can watch tv in the office without buying another piece of equipment.

Monitors are fluff. just specify the dot pitch you want. You might pick up a copy of computer shopper to help with the decision.

-legrue

For a montior, might I suggest an LCD flat panel (15" or 17").  I will never go a CRT display again; TFTs are [b]so[/b] easy on the eyes.  Samsung makes good ones, and even the $300 KDS models are pretty decent.

For cases, I've gotten hooked on on Antec.  They make great cases for well under $100 and provide all kinds of cooling options, which may be a consideration with your Athalon.

video:  I know a couple people who recently got the GeForce2 4200TI and are very happy with it.

Make sure your "cheapy case" has an AMD approved powersupply. AMDs are picky about
a certain voltage/amp rateing, Off hand I think it is the 5-12 v combined amperage. just go to AMDs site and check the ps. or buy a barebones bundle and that way the seller makes sure the PS will work with the proc/mb. other than that have fun!

There is a good review of video cards at [url]http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1608[/url].

I prefer the Enlight 7237 case.  Everything on it is easy to access, which I have found makes a big difference after putting together a bunch of PC's.

Not sure if there have been any recent improvements in LCD technology, but generally they are a poor choice for games (and it seems like this is the case based on the vid card chosen).  The refresh on LCD panels is comparitively slow compared with a CRT and results in a ghost like effect when the image changes rapidly (as it constantly will in an action type game).

Don't underestimate the value of a well designed case and good power supply - heat management is getting more and more important these days, especially if you ever plan to overclock.  A roomy, well designed case will maximize your airflow and allow for better cooling.  At the very least, you want to make sure there is space for another fan in the back of the case.  Many mid-tower cases lack this, and rely on the exhaust fan on the power supply alone to move the hot air out.  A good power supply is a must as well, once again especially if you plan on ever overclocking.  All 300W power supplies are NOT created equal.  It seems silly to spend $250 on just the vid card and get cheap with the case.

Just to go along with the cooling theme, round IDE cables are nice, as a big flat cable tends to impede airflow, but you can just make your own (albeit ugly ones) by wrapping them with tape.

Rocko

I've got a new system with an AMD chip, and the cooling requirements are a pain in the ass.  Whether it's crappy fans, or a bad mount, or just the facts of life, this sucker is loud.

Called tech and was advise that AMD CPU has healthy cooling requirements.  Suggested locating the case in another room.  Yeah, right!

Look at the Pentium CPUs.  I would if I was doing this again.

Make sure you look at it before buying it.  For me, CRT's are much, much easier to read than a LCD.  For the same money, you can get a much larger CRT.  The CRT will be much brighter and have a higher contrast too.  Also, with a CRT, you can pick the resolution you want.  You're not stuck with what the LCD will force you to use.  I spend a lot of time scrolling through pages of text, and the update on a LCD is just too slow to be usable.  Where I work, with have 24 LCD panels of various brands and sizes with my single CRT, and I hate having to work on a different machine.  Depending on what you're planning on doing, an LCD might be a poor choise.  Whatever you do, get a good monitor.  If you bought a good 20" CRT ten years ago, you'd still have a nice monitor.  Except for maybe a keyboard, you can't say the same about any other piece of computer hardware.z

With higher cooling requirement you need more watt to power the fan [:D]
I just installed the SIXTH Fan in my friend's AMD. Air sucking in from the front and the side and blown back through the rear. Making sure the air goes through the CPU's heat sink.

He is Still running a bit hot.
Well that will be a great time to stop playing hero on some vid game, and turn off that computer.

Go with the Gigabyte board, ive built three systems with them using AMD Athalons and have no problems what so ever with them....built one with a Asus, and had a couple crashes and freezing problems...

Buy whatever processor is the best bang for the buck where ever you buy from(I.E. dollar per mhz)

I say buy the corsair memory.
I say spend the dough and buy the Geforce 4 4400 instead of the 4200.

The 4400 can easily be overclocked faster then the stock 4600. Please don't buy ATI's card.
The 3D on the geforce4 is absolutly unmatched.


I say ditch the DVD, I don't care to watch movie's on computer and the DVD's still haven't even really started to replace CD's on computer.

I say buy the gigabyte board, I probably made a mistake and bought the MSI board, but it seems to work great, the gigabyte board I hear is the fastest board.

Everything else I agree on.
I bought exact same HDD and its works awesome and its fast.

Burner, well I like Mitsumi for my cheap burners, but liteon I guess is cool.
Don't waste your money buying a $150 HP or plexor burner that does same thing as your cheapy burner.

And please, don't buy pentium's unless your spending a business's money (not your own business) or building a server.

The AMD processor's price vs. performence intel can't even come close!!
You if you want to spend $300 more, have a slightly quitier computer and look like a dumbass after you just wasted $300, do what fatman says, other wise your on the right track.

Ahh, for some reason I saw 4400 when you wrote 4200 in the vid card choice.  Ok, so you're not proposing to spend $250 on the vid card alone, but still don't underestimate the value of a good case and ps.

Rocko

Agreed.  The sharp edges on the cheap cases[i]will[/i] cut you.  I've had the best luck with Enlight cases.  Everything fits and the edges aren't as sharp.  I've had four out of about 50 of their power supplies quit.  That isn't great, but it's better luck than I've had with the no name junk.z

Just so you guys know, I built a athlon XP 1600 for a friend about 4 months ago when they were brand new.

I went through 2 abit and 2 asus boards (they said athlon XP compatible on the boxes) before I bought an MSI motherboard that worked perfectly fine and still does. The first abit board I bought out of the 2, it was able to get past POST, but after I flashed the bios it wouldn't even get through post. The second abit wouldn't get past POST.

Both asus boards wouldn't get past POST as well, keep in mind that after these boards couldn't boot past POST with the XP 1600, I would stick in a 1 gig athlon and it worked fine. Gee, do these board support Xp athlons? Are you sure?

I'm sure abit and asus have all that worked out now, but because of what I went through (about 20 hours of my time), I will never buy abit and asus boards again. The build your own market has taken a complete 180 turn in my eyes.

The trend seem to be this, the brands that were once known as "junk" few years ago, seem to make a better and cheaper product in todays market.

Anyway, good luck again.

I was just on another board with some techie friends, and they are saying that they still have problems with Athlons and asus boards. This is with Athlon 1700+'s.

Somebody work me up a inexpensive STABLE m-board/chip/v. card combo please.  I don't want or need the latest, fastest stuff and would even like to stick w/ using the 256mb of SDRAM I have.  I also want to stick w/ my OS ('98) to save another $80.  I am not one that likes new software, I haven't bought anything in years except for a few action games.  All I want is stability w/ a meaningful performance boost (1ghz chip range is fine)!

If I WERE to go the pentium 4 route (Not that I really want to, but my father likes pentiums for some reason and is contributing a significant amount for this project financially)

What would I want then?
What would I have to get to take advantage of the new "Northwood" Pentium 4's?

There is quite a lot of reliable info at Toms Hardware...[url]www.tomshardware.com[/url]


ByteTheBullet (-:

I agree with the Enlight case suggestion, I paid $47.00 for mine an it has a 300 watt power supply is extremely sturdy and has brackets you mount to your components so they slide in an out of the case by just squeezing two tabs. Read closely when matching MB and CPU or you will most likely have compatability problems. I have a KT7E ABIT mated with the recommended AMD Thunderbird chip, zero problems. When attaching the heatsink to your CPU don't use that thermal pad that will most likely come with it order some Arcticsilver thermal paste or some equivilent an you will see alot less heat, although you should still order an additional case fan since most exhaust fans are meant primarily for the power supply. As far as vid cards, go to Newegg.com and look at the Gainward video cards, those guys have been around since the early 80's an really know their stuff, their cards are designed to be overclocked and mine overclocked itself when installed. They have a safe and enhanced mode so you can choose what you want, mines a GeForce 3 Ti200 64MB currently selling for $118.00. I think the GeForce 4's are about $150.00 for 64MB, don't let the price fool ya these are excellent cards.
[url]http://www.newegg.com/app/catalog.asp[/url]

Check out this place.[url]http://www.ars-technica.com/[/url]

Lots of good info & knowledgeable people in their forums.

-T.

for the video use the geforce, my wife has one and its really nice.

Keep in mind your ignorance to "new software" will be your downfall when it comes to stability. Remember, win9x and stability cannot be used in the same sentence.

Yeah, but I didn't think XP was thought to be much better?

The pentium 4 1.6A is the lowest model that has the northwood core.  There is also a non-northwood at 1.6 GHz.  In case 'A' isn't listed, you can tell the difference by looking at the amount of L2 cache (512kB for the northwood, 256kB for the regular).
This is completely wrong if you bother to overclock.  A 1.6A northwood can reliably be overclocked to well over 2GHz with little effort (just the right motherboard and decent components).

I also recommend an enlight case as others have mentioned.  I am using a 7237 with a 300W power supply.  They used to make a 250W version of the same case, so always verify the specs.  AMD systems inherently run hotter and require more power than pentium systems.  I would probably get something with at least a 350W power supply if I were going that route.  But I'm not.

I seem to be in a similar situation, so I'll tell you what I'm planning just to give you more ideas.  AMD clearly made superior processors from the time the pentium 4 was introduced until the northwood model.  But now intel is worth looking at again.  My plan:

-CPU: pentium 4 1.6A northwood
-motherboard: something with the intel i845e or i845g chipset.  I've been looking at the Abit BD7-II.  Abit's bios is unbeatable when it comes to overclocking.  I'm hoping to get mine up to 2.4 GHz (600 MHz bus) but it may be too optimistic.  Almost everyone seems to be able to get 2.13 GHz though, even with intel's stock cooling (make sure to get a retail model, not oem, if you go this route).
-memory: corsair XMS3000 or XMS3200.  The abit motherboard allows you to run memory asynchrously in a ratio of 4/3 with the bus.  This means that if I could get my cpu up to 2.4 GHz like I hope, with a bus speed of 600 MHz (4 * 150Mhz) then I could utilize DDR400 (4/3 * 150 = 200 implying ddr speed of 400 MHz) even though the chipset doesn't officially support it.  The only downside of XMS3200 is a latency of 2.5 rather than XMS3000's latency of 2.
-video: Geforce 4 is currently the best there is, without a doubt.  They are also very overclockable from the looks of it, so getting a ti4200 or ti4400 is probably the best move.  I may wait a month or two to upgrade my video however, because matrox is releasing a new card soon that will supposedly rival the ti4600 even.  If nothing else it should drive down costs.
-DVD: I would avoid pioneer.  Many people recommend them, but I don't know why.  My friend purchased one and it ran unusably slow, even for reading standard cd-roms.  It's possible he had a defective unit, but I would stick with toshiba or sony maybe.  Also, slot loading looks neat but it could have trouble playing non-standard size media, although that isn't probably much of an issue.

That's just not true from my experience.  Sure it's popular to bash windows but I've never had a problem.  I use win98 standard as my primary OS and it runs both more quickly and with more stability than mandrake linux 8.1 (dual boot).  Most stability problems that people seem to have in windows are related to faulty hardware drivers or buggy dll's.  It is not an inherent problem with the OS (except for stoopit people).

I built myself this a few months ago..

-AMD Athlon 1700+XP
-Sanyo Dragon mother board
-GForce 2 TI 400 (I think)
-60 Gig 7200RPM hard drive (can't remember the brand, but it was one of the best)
-Yamaha 20x10x40 CD burner
-another 56x CD drive
-Panasonic floppy drive
-I forget the name of the case, but I love it
-256 megs of DDR ram
-Some other stuff I can't remember
-Win 2k Pro

My monitor is a ViewSonic E75F (flat panel), and it is [b]BY FAR[/b] one of the absolute best 17" monitors you can buy for the price! I LOVE it.

Oh ya, and I've got Altec Lansing speakers, and they are pretty good for my usage.


I had severe (and I mean SEVERE) problems getting the operating system loaded on this mother board. Kept locking up, crashing, etc within minutes of starting up. Reinstalled and formatted countless times. Updated windows, etc, etc. Finally I ran a "repair" on Win 2k right after it started up, and that fixed the problem, then I updated everything.

I think it was that the mother board was just too new for a 3 year old operating system. IE, not very compatible.

It had a built in lan, which worked good for a month or so. Then it went into the crapper and started losing the connection ALL the time. I then placed a Linksystem NIC in, and that worked great for a couple weeks. Then that took a crap as well. I replaced it with yet another one, and still going strong!

I have a feeling that I can get the built in lan card to work again if I reinstall the driver, but the disc is in my closet, and I'm pretty lazy.

I doubt any of this helped you out any, but I'm pretty bored.

XP is just Windows 2000 Professional with a fancy front end. Which equals to = waste of money.

I am currently picking up some spare parts from here and there to build myself an inexpensive system.

Going with the Athlon 1800 XP, it's about $94 right now.  

The Gigabyte board you are looking at kicks some serious butt.  I was going to buy a Soyo Dragon Platinum (love the coloured PB) until I started talking to some die hard gamers.  Since gaming will be the primary function...

Memory.  I have never had any problems with Kingston or Micron memory, ever.  So I will go with one or the either for a piece of 256MB  PC2700.

Will probably go with a Creative sound card, have no idea which right now.

Will also go with a V 92 modem (live in the country, no high speed access), probably Creative as well and then run the two boards for the voice mail, etc.

I already have an enlight case, but will pick up a power supply and some case fans.

Still looking at CPU fans (maybe a Volcano 6 cu+) and have decided to use the Artic Silver thermal paste.

Why go for PC2700 ram? I do not beleive the bus speed on the 1800 is fast enough for the 2700. In essence, you are paying for something you can't use. Go with PC2100.

Hello, This is kind of funny, because this is my first post on a firearms board, and it is in regards to a computer question.
You might want to think about maybe a 350 watt power supply. And with the new chips coming out as fast as they are, numbers don't mean much. In other words in a lot of cases your system speed will only be as fast as your fastest component ( video cards etc. ). Get as much ram as you can squeeze in the machine. Most motherboards are the same these days, basically, until you come to overclocking. Overclocking will destroy ANY, it's just a matter of time and some hold out longer. Someone else mentioned that for gaming you can't beat a CRT, I definately agree, for the money you spend on a flat panel, you can have a 21" Sony or whatever and still have money leftover. Go to Pricewatch.com for some good deals on practically anything, components wise. AMD or Intel, Hmmmmm, Intel, in my opinion is just to expensive. I have a P4 1700Mhz, and a AMD 1600xp ( 1400Mhz.)and there is a very noticeable difference in performance for most apps., in AMD' favor. The P4 machine is quieter though. OK, are you really confused about what to do now? Good luck in whatever you decide, and there is a great deal of satisfaction building your own machine. What sucks is, no matter what you do, when your done, it's obsolete and time to build another. Based on your "think list" your going to have an awsome machine!!

If the powers that be force me into the P4, I have another can of the proverbial worms,
DDR Ram vs RDRAM

pc1066 Rdram has made some impressive benchmarks... of course at a high cost...

Discuss amongst yourselves....

Just a clarifier on Wintel operating systems. Win98 second edition is extremely stable. The "second edition" is the important part. I personally like 2000pro, but just because it has easier networking features (IMO) and multi-user customability and security. I "hear" that XP is actually worth upgrading to now that it has been out awhile and the evil empire (MS) has had time to debug it.

In reality, the casual user is good with any of the three so long as your important software will run on it.

That is not true if you do it correctly.  In the case of the northwood, a 2.4GHz from intel isn't much more than an "overclocked" 1.6GHz.  The key is to buy at the bottom level of a new technology--1.6A or 1.8A northwood.  When these were released, Intel already had 2.2GHz processors available, so in a way it was a step back in speed, heat, and stress.  What this often means is that the manufacturer (Intel) has purposely clocked down a chip that is perfectly capable of 2.2+ but they run it slower anyway just so they have something to sell at all price points.  You often hear of people that run their 1.6A at 2.13GHz with the stock retail cooling for this reason.  If you upgrade your heatsink/fan you can probably push it even further.


pc1066 rdram is still hard to find.  If going this route I would recommend doing some research on various brands of pc800 because it is easy to find some that can overclock to 1066.

On the other hand, DDR333 and DDR400 are approaching the levels of high end rdram for slightly less cost.  Of course you can't take advantage of the high speed ddr unless you have overclocked, as I mentioned in a previous post.

Edited to add:
RDRAM overclocking charts [url]http://www.biwa.ne.jp/~yok/TOUKOU-REPORT/TZ/RDRAM.PDF[/url]

No, it is true, no matter how you do it.  Overclocking accelerates the death of your chip due to end-of-life wearout mechanisms.  If you only intend to keep it a couple years, it doesn't matter, since semiconductors have a normal lifetime of ten or twenty years.  How much you shorten its lifespan depends on how much you raise the voltage, clock frequency, and temperature.



It's just not true that Intel purposely clocks down a chip to sell it at a cheaper price point.  What economic or market motive would they have for this?  It would just be plain stupid.  They make more money on higher speed chips, lots more.  So why would they purposely give away money?  It doesn't gain them market share.  If they had high enough yields on the fastest clock speeds, they would sell the fastest clock speed chips for cheaper and both win market share and increase their profits that way.  

The real reason they sell them at slower clock speeds is that that is as fast as they will successfully pass all tests (plus a small guard band).  You may be able to overclock them above that speed because you don't happen to use the feature of the processor that doesn't work at higher speeds.  Or at least you're not using it when you're testing how fast you can overclock and it only comes back to bite you and crash your system later.  Or maybe you get lucky and none of your software uses that feature at all.  But don't make the mistake of thinking that Intel is really giving you the same processor that they marked 600 MHz faster on another chip.  They aren't.

Overclocking is not without risk.  You just have to decide whether you want to accept that risk or not.  There are ways to minimize the risk, but there are no ways to eliminate it.  You cannot eliminate the laws of semiconductor physics or electronic circuits.  

If you're a big gamer who wants the fastest system and is going to buy new components in a year or two anyway, overclocking makes a lot of sense.  If you're setting up a system for someone else or buying it to run a business on or expect to keep it five years, overclocking is not very smart.

By that reasoning, a 2.4GHz northwood which is made using exactly the same process as a 1.6GHz won't last as long as the latter, because it runs at a higher frequency and a higher voltage.

Then why did NVidia purposely slow down their geforce 2 (via drivers)?  Because there was no competition.  At the time of its release it was fast enough to not be threatened by any competing product.  When ATI later threatened its performance, NVidia released new drivers that increased the performance 10-15%.  Intel use the same technology and manufacturing process to make all northwoods (of 400MHz bus speed).  They are doing what will maximize their profit.  To do so they are best off by offering options at all price points.  Especially when they clearly have the performance edge at the moment.  They have no reason to push things further until AMD starts competing again.

That's just not true.

That's correct, it won't last as long because it runs at higher clock frequency and, given the same cooling, will run at a higher temperature.  However, they both have a core voltage of 1.5 volts, so that's no difference between them.  If you can get your 1.6 GHz processor to run at 2.4 GHz without raising the core voltage, you're doing very good.  One of the reasons Intel dropped the supply voltage of their processors to 1.5 V for the 0.13 micron processes was to insure gate oxide reliablity.  If you increase the core voltage, you're going to see an increased hot electron effect which will eventually cause transistors on your chip to quit working.  What is eventually?  Probably still several years, but you have no guarantee once you violate the manufacturer's guidelines and operate the chip in a voltage range they didn't intend for it to be operated in.  I'm just pointing out that is a risk.  Some people may find it acceptable, some may not.



It may be that Nvidia didn't want to show ATI everything they could do.  That's different selling some chips with fast drivers for a lot of money and some of the same chips with slow drivers for less money at the same time.  They didn't do that.



Why?



That would explain why they don't offer a 3 GHz Pentium 4, but it doesn't explain why they would want to sell at 1.6 GHz chip if they didn't have to.

I just finished building my new system. Here is the MB setup

Abit KR7A-133 raid
AMD xp1800+
GeForce 4 ti4200 64meg (it out performs the 128meg card!!)
DDR pc2100 Ram 256megs
Enlight 400watt power supply.
I used some older drives I had.
Plextor burner/Plextor cd-rom
Cheap soundcard

The thing screams and is as stable as hell. I am running win98.

GTA3, SOF II,  and Medal of Honor all play flawlessly.

Definately get the Geforce 4 ti4200 64 meg card.  

Very close to computer guys setup.  The Dragon that he has is VERY nice!  I almost got it. All the benchmarks on this system are nice.  No problems so far.  Been on for 5 days now with some serious gaming and serious processor useage.  Not a problem.

Eh, when done right overclocking won't hurt a thing.
Proof? My PIII 700 OC'ed to 933 (Abit BH6 MOBO) has been running fine for the past 3 years.  Look at the Toms Hardware or overclockers websites.

I have no problem with people overclocking if they understand the risks.  It's your machine, you should be able to do what you want with it, and more power to you if you want to fiddle around with its insides.  It's fun, if nothing else.  However, I don't agree with encouraging people to overclock and telling them there are no risks.

That your system has worked fine proves very little.  Integrated circuit reliability can be described statistically, and one data point, such as your system, proves basically nothing.  When IC vendors gather reliability data on the operating life of their chips, they study 500 chips at a time.  Generally, one failure out of 500 chips is acceptable, and two or more failures out of 500 is not.  They raise the operating voltage by 10% and raise the ambient temperature to 125 degrees C, and this compresses 20 years of operating life down into one month of stress testing.  No one has collected this kind of reliability data on overclocked chips.  Overclockers rely on anecdotal evidence.  But the scientific evidence shows that they are shortening the life of their chips.  One thing that reliability testing in the industry has demonstrated is that some chips are weaker than others and will fail first while the majority continue to work.  (I'm not talking about infant mortality failures here, I'm talking about end-of-life failures.)  But eventually all of them will wear out due to gate oxide degradation, the hot electron effect, and electromigration.

Either your lying or not paying attention when you say GTA3 is performing flawlessly. That game has some Serious performance issue's.
If you go to gta3forums.com, you will see that almost everyone has choppy gameplay and misc playiblity issue's.
There has been some people saying they got it to run OK, but that's after downloading tons of tweaking utils and wasting 5 hours with trial and error playing with the settings.

I'm absolutly pissed off about it.
I have access to almost any game (pirated copies) and I chose to buy this game to support this company. In return I get a game that runs 15-30 FPS on a Athlon 2100+, 512 333DDR, geforce4 4400.

Sausage folks, sausage.

I just built a system with the Asus A7V333 last weekend. I have the version that has the 1394, USB2.0, and the RAID hardware. So far I've had mixed results. The system came up easily enough; however, it can't do the Start/Shutdown.../Restart sequence (or Start/Shutdown.../Shutdown) correctly as of yet. Basically, when I try to shutdown I get the typical "Saving settings" message and then I get a blank screen shortly thereafter.  I'm using Win2KSP2.  On the positive side, the USB 2.0 RIPS and the board has been quite stable. Via screwed up their first shot at USB 1.1, it appears they got it right first time with 2.0 (crossed fingers). Haven't tried the 1394 yet. I note that many builders suggest using a 350-400 watt PS with this critter when using an Athlon XP. (I'm using the 1800 with 256Meg of DDR memory.) Case is an InWin mid-tower.
Good Luck!

What?! I can't hear you!  What did you say? [:D]
Sorry, the fan roar is drowning out all conversation in the room.  Any advice as to how to mitigate this typhoon somewhat?  

I just built one with an Athlon XP2000+ and an Asus A7V333 - No problems with those.  The built in sound on that MB is just fine.  It also has USB 2.0 _and_ 1.1 as well as FireWire (IEEE 1394) which I plan to use for audio and video editing.

I used an old used Dell ATX case (pulled out of the dumpster at work) and substituted a brand new 350 watt PS (old one was broken anyway) for a mere $40.  (All ATX power supplies are interchangeable though the larger ones may interfere with your drive bays.)  Don't cheap out on the power supply!

The faster RAM is still a bit pricey.  I paid $109 for a half-gig stick of DDR2100 and it seems plenty fast.  If the sweet spot has shifted upward then knock yourself out.

On hard drives, go for a 120 GB.  I got an IBM 80 GB (7200 RPM) and one week later the 120s were going for what I paid for the 80.  Oh well.

On all the other stuff you are on the right track.  Get whatever works for you and is in budget.  I used a lot of used parts (floppy drive, mouse, a CD-ROM drive for playing audio CDs etc.)  Also put in a Que CD-R drive for $89.  Get yourself a keyboard that is comfortable for you.  And don't forget to have fun.

Its not my fault you bought a cheapy case.
Like I said, if you want to spend $200-$300 for the same computer, go for it!

This should clear up any confusion about AMD vs. Intel.

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1554

Read the benchmarks.

I recently got a new computer myself, let me tell you, it is GREAT. i'm a game buff, so it's essential to get a great graphics card and monitor... I opted for a 17" flat screen and a GeForce 3 64 meg. It's more than enough, I don't see any reason to get a GeForce 4 unless it gets cheaper. Also Pentium 4 works out fine but it's a bit on the expensive side compared to some other chips.

Don't break the bank for a huge hard drive if you aren't going to use it.  I've got a 40 GB and I've only managed to use 10, and that's with two operating systems.  Unless you have an obscene amount of mp3s, mpegs, etc. then there isn't much worry any more.

I have to recommend that you avoid IBM drives.  My brother had two of them die in the first 6 months of operation.  IBM customer service is lacking as well.  IBM is having serious issues with their drives.

Maxtor used to be loud and slow, but at least they keep working!  Western digital has done alright in my experience as well.

You obviously know a lot more about the physics of semiconductors than I do.  I agree that overclocking will shorten the life of a processor, it just isn't much of an issue.  If a processor only lasts 5 years it will be very obsolete before it dies.  And now with top of the line processors to be had for around $200, it is even less of a problem.

You are right though.  I don't want to come across as encouraging someone to overclock if he doesn't have the interest/know-how and isn't aware of the risks.  It has become so cheap and easy now though, with the ability to change everything from within the bios on many motherboards, that anyone can do it.

Yep, that clears up any confusion one had about AMD vs. Intel...[b]seven months ago[/b].

Unfortunately for us all, AMD has done nothing in the last seven months.  Meanwhile, Intel has finally started competing again via the Northwood.

Heh, I guess I should read the dates!

Sorry bout that.
This article does prove a point though.
The AMD are more efficent and seem to shine out mostly during gameplay.
I will say that since the into of the northwoood, performance is gain (of course) but still not enough to justify the extra $100-$200 you have to spend on a P4 setup.