PCTech Forums

Hi knowledgeable peeps!
I need a favour... I am ordering my computer today (hopefully) and have spent days painstakingly selecting the right ingredients for my first ever DIY PC!!! I am worried that I have selected 'dodgy' parts or that some things may be incompatible. I am getting all the bits separately from Ebuyer.com. Here's my shopping cart:

1 x LG GSA-4167BAL 16x DVD±RW Dual Layer Internal IDE
1 x Maxtor 6L200M0 Diamond Max 10 200GB 7200RPM SATA/150 8MB Cache
1 x AMD (Venice) Athlon 64Bit 3200+ Socket 939pin 512k L2cache 90nm
1 x Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe S939 NF4 SLI ATX - Sound 2xgln 1394 USB2 SATA
1 x CRUCIAL 1GB DDR PC3200 400MHz 184-PIN UNBUFF 128MX64 Memory Modules
1 x Antec Black Overture II Quiet Media Case 450wpsu 24pin Atx2
1 x Ebuyer Extra Value TSK800M Multimedia Keyboard
1 x Labtec USB/PS2 Optical Mouse - Retail Box
1 x Logitech headset Dialog-812/stereo + Microphone

TOTAL= £477.64 inc. shipping/VAT etc

I have a crappy old monitor and speakers so those can wait, as can graphics. The motherboard supposedly needed a decent 'PSU' so I looked for a good case with one included... dam it was expensive!!!
I'd much appreciate your input and experiences comments, I really don't wanna blow everything up with incompatible parts!? Any build tips?
Many thanks.

Luke-o

It looks like you have done a pretty good job of putting together your parts. You indeed want a decent PSU to run it all and i think you picked out a good one. I do have something for you to look into. The Maxtor DiamondMax 10 6L200S0 drive offers a 16 meg cache and only cost 5 bucks more than the 8 meg model.

Hi liljim,
You're right! I Froogle'd it and it's actually the same price on one site, but of course they don't do free shipping like Ebuyer. For some reason Ebuyer doesn't stock the Maxtor 6L200S0, YET. They have an ATA for the same price as the 6L200M0, but with 16Mb. However I have been strongly advised to buy SATA so maybe I'll hang on until Ebuyer get some 6L200S0's in. Thanks for the sound advice.

The main concern I have now is that of the motherboard, as after posting on some other forums I had some feedback saying that I needed a 'minimum of 500W' to power the Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe S939? Is this belony, as the PSU with the Overture II is supposed to be pretty kick ass? ("450W SmartPower 2.0 ATX12V v2.01 compliant"). Also, people were saying I needed some kind of PCI-E gfx as there is none 'on-board'...

I bought the Overture II because it's a great looking case AND has a decent PSU included so it saves me quite a few £££'s in the end. I have NO GFX card at the moment, I was thinking of getting a cheap one next year. Do I need to get one at all (I don't play PC games much, not until Supreme Commander is out next year LOL!)??? The idea with the mobo is that it makes my system more 'future proof'. Do I need GFX now? HELP!!??

Thanks again, liljim.

Luke

You WILL need a GFX card.

You have 2 options:
Cheap basic PCI card, just to get by on

Advanced PCI Express card, for gaming


That board does not have any onboard GXF, in my opinion thats a +
You will have to buy a video card but in the long run you will be happy you did. Keep in mind that video cards have much more inportance than just gaming. They improve visual quality on all levels.


I also advise to stick with SATA, i have a post on here somewhere with a HDD benchmark i performed on my system. It shows the difference in ATA vs SATA. I'll look for it and post a link.

Sata comparison

http://www.pctechforums.com/modules.php ... ght=#28513