bumpus said:
Off the top of my head, I'd get the following (although others will doubtless disagree with me).
120gb Maxtor or WD hard disc
AMD Athlon XP 2600 333 cpu
neForce 2 mobo
GeForce 2 MX400 video card (cheap but not that important)
LiteOn CD-RW
2x512mb Brand name PC2700 ddr ram
Cheap case w/450 watt ps.
That's not the top of the line for everything, but it is a good mix of price vs performance. If you go above those models (faster cpu, bigger hard disc), you get a big increase in the price/performace ratio.
-=bumpus=-
i agree with:
Hard Drive selection
CPU 2600 333fsb AMD
pc2700 ram 2 512's
as for everything else
get a gigabyte motherboard, they have 2 BIOS's in them, so if you flash the first one to an updated edition and it fucks up, all you have to do is pull the 3v battery out of the mobo for 15 mins and backup bios takes over ... I'd get the GIGABYTE KT600 Chipset Model "GA-7VT600 1394 ($77) ... it has Serial ATA (SATA) so you might want to think about getting a drive with that interface instead of the old ATA (parallel ATA)
i would agree with the lite-on cd-RW, but now i would have to say buy a DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo drive from lite-on ($50) , its only $20 more expensive, but couple this with a NEC 8x DVD-R/-RW +R/+RW 8x drive for $118, and you can burn DVD's on the fly (read from the combo while writing to dvd burner, instead of copy to hard drive then burn from there)... plus you'll want DVD to back-up your data incase of a crash or its time to re-install windows (I reinstall yearly)
"cheap case w/450w power supply"
you can do this, but the case is gonna be $30 and a quality 450w will be $70.
do yourself a favor and buy a raidmax scorpio868, it has an acrylic window, LEDs on the front and a 420w raidmax power supply, for $65 ($99 retail w/o power supply @ some web sites tho!)
as for the video card, i would get an ATI chipset instead of Nvidia. buy an ATI made buy ATI or an Asus w/ ATI chipset.
also bumpus left out the most important part of an audio production system (mayo brought it up tho)....the audio card
get a Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS Platinum, you will thank yourself later
if you want good 5.1 THX sound, go with Logitech Z-5300 ($150)
almost forgot, i would not buy from any of the retailers on pricewatch.com (other than newegg)
buy everything from newegg.com (thats where i quoted the prices from), make sure the RAM you buy (model #'s match & everything) is compatible with the motherboard.
newegg is reliable, they ship fast (fedex) and most of the shipping is free or cheap (some items have free shipping & others dont, so pay attention) ex: a $7 floppy drive has $4 shipping charge, and a better $10 drive has free shipping, which one you gonna buy?
newegg has free or cheap shipping and you can RMA (return) it and get a replacement if anything is messed up (and it wasnt your fault)
if your putting this together yourself, read the damn instruction manuals to a T and take your time, IE dont put your heat sink on backwards and crush your processor cuz you couldnt look @ the picture of how to align it correctly for 3 seconds. make sure you wear a static wrist strap, that it is grounded (to the case) and you are in a low static area. never handle computer components outside of their static bag without a static wrist strap on thats grounded! if you heard it, its fried... if you felt it, its really fried. you can fuck shit up even if you didnt hear it or feel it @ all.
