What do you think to this setup?

[wedge22]

I have decided on this setup for my brothers pc, so that he can play champ manager and have win xp. Let me know what you think.

80GB Maxtor DiamondMax+9 133/7200 £30.65 £30.65

AMD Sempron 2400 [1.6GHZ,333] RET £36.25 £36.25

ATi Radeon 9550 128MB DDR AGP £39.00 £39.00

Asus Terminator A7VT System Kit AMD £59.00 £59.00

512MB PC2700 DDR SDRAM (DDR333) £36.99

Total inc vat and delivery is £237.22

[tfboy]

Personally, I've had no end of trouble with 80Gb sized Maxtor DM9 drives. About 4 failed in a couple of months Maybe all the problems have been sorted. Either that or I was incredibly unlucky with the batch I received...

I think the ati card is a good buy. Cheap enough but OK in terms of performance, and probably quite well matched to the rest of the hardware.

No experience with the A7VT mobo myself.

Is the ram from a known supplier? I'd always tend to ensure it is. Most of the major manufacturers offer lifetime warranty, and really really cheap memory has been known to let people down

[wedge22]

The ram is some crap I imagine as it is Aria's own branded stuff.

[steve threlfall]

The ram is some crap I imagine as it is Aria's own branded stuff.

Usually its samsung from Aria so fingers crossed

[Rave]

Unless you specifically want a small box, I don't think the Terminator is great value. I'm not sure it comes with a CD-Rom drive like in the picture, and the KM266A + 8235 chipset is a bit antiquated. Why not just get a generic midi-tower case (say £20 inc. power supply) and a mid range motherboard like this:

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...duct_uid=65567

Pair it with some PC3200 memory (only about £1 more than PC2700) and you should be able to OC the Sempron up to 200MHz FSB no problem at all, even using the stock cooler. You've also then got stuff like SATA that the Terminator can't provide; no use now, but it gives you more upgradeability.

Rich :¬)

[wedge22]

Well that is also an idea Rich.
In fact I colud let my brother have my spare Lian Li pc-7 case and my enermax psu and then some good cheap mobo. I would like to know which nforce 2 mobo you guys would recomend.

[Rave]

Abit NF7 or NF7S.

Rich :¬)

[wedge22]

ok cool I like nforce 2, do you think its the best option for a low budget system.

[tfboy]

nForce2 mobo?

Abit N7F-S v2 for £42.60 inc vat here.
If you can stretch a little more, get a pair of 256MB RAM sticks instead of one 512MB.
edit: just spotted the twinmos twister RAM on ebuyer. If no one has anything against these, they seem pretty good value for money. 2x £23.48 = £46.96 inc VAT

edit2: just read the reviews. Sounds like a bad choice / incorrect specs stuck on ebuyer

[kushtibari]

You can get an NF7S from Arias bargain basement for £41. I've never had a problem with Arias ram, always been spot on. To tell the truth I never noticed any difference in performance running my NF7S with one 512 stcik as opposed to 2 256 sticks. The single stick usually tended to clock better as well.

[Rave]

nForce2 mobo?

Abit N7F-S v2 for £42.60 inc vat here.

That's the NF7, they seem to have the description for the NF7S in there. The NF7S is here:

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...duct_uid=63401

Whether it's worth the extra to get SoundStorm and SATA in this case is debatable. They also have a new model called the NF7S2G which has SATA and Gigabit LAN, but no SoundStorm.

If you can stretch a little more, get a pair of 256MB RAM sticks instead of one 512MB.
edit: just spotted the twinmos twister RAM on ebuyer. If no one has anything against these, they seem pretty good value for money. 2x £23.48 = £46.96 inc VAT

edit2: just read the reviews. Sounds like a bad choice / incorrect specs stuck on ebuyer

Well, if they cost as much as other PC4000 modules it would be poor. Since in fact they cost about as much as normal PC3200 I'm inclined to think they're a good deal.

Rich :¬)

[wedge22]

I was trying to keep the cost under £200 but I have not really been successful. I need these items at least to build him the pc.

CPU
Mobo
Memory
HDD
Gfx

I have a spare case and psu he can have.

[Rave]

Amd Sempron 2300+ 1.583ghz 256kb Cache FSB333 Retail Boxed Processor with 3 Year Warranty 080894 154 £31.21 £31.21
Gigabyte 7NF-RX Socket-A nForce2 ATX - Sound Lan USB2 400FSB ATA/133 Retail Box 074708 41 £28.58 £28.58
Kingston 512MB DDR PC3200 400MHz CL3 Memory Module 049294 493 £45.86 £45.86
Seagate Barracuda 80Gb 7200rpm UDMA100 Hard Drive - OEM 036369 431 £30.63 £30.63
Sapphire Radeon 9550 128MB DDR AGPx8 TV-Out DVI-I Lite Retail Box 062208 113 £35.81 £35.81

Cart Total: £172.09
Shipping Band: £4.99
Approx Cart Weight: 2.53Kg
Shipping Surcharge: £0.00
SubTotal: £177.08
VAT: £31.03
Total: £208.11

Go for Ebuyer RAM and a slightly cheaper motherboard and you could get it under £200 easy.

Rich :¬)

[Firelord]

I use ABit VA-20s in cheap systems as the board is cheap and has 5.1 surround sound (pretty decent as well!) SATA, AGP and limited oc abilities

Plus the VA-20 uses the newer KM400A chipset done me proud so far!

ABIT VA-20 KM400A SOCKET A 400FSB 2X DDR400 ON-BOARD VGA + 8XAGP MICRO ATX MOTHERBOARD 6 CHANNEL AUDIO & LAN
3


£32.30



AMD SEMPRON 2400 SOCKET A CPU 333 FSB OPERATIONAL FREQUENCY 1.67GHZ
15


£39.00



400MHZ 184PIN 512MB PC3200 DDR RAM DIMM 2.5V 3.2GB/SEC
62


£41.00



DIAMONDMAX PLUS9 SATA 80GB 8MB CACHE HARD DISK DRIVE <9.0MS 7200RPM - OEM
12


£37.22




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Total Cost of Goods £149.52
Standard Delivery £4.25
VAT (17.5%) £26.91
TOTAL AMOUNT PAYABLE
(inclusive of VAT) £180.68
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Thats what I got but shopping around you might find some cheaper stuff. Perhaps a second hand GFX card or just using onboard?

[wedge22]

Thanks for the info guys, I will take your advice on the mobo Firelord.

[Firelord]

I have the VA-20 in my HTPC and it works a treat one in my gf's rig after her AOpen KM400 mobo died and think their great I had used the VA-10 as well but the VA-20 is defo worth the extra £4