A good cheap system?

snip


Just go to NewEgg and see what they presently have...
the last two motherboards I got from them were priced quite low and
worked great.

The only thing is, IDE is being phased out and if you find any boards
that still have IDE...
there may be only one channel...so you may be limited to just two IDE
devices.

Yeah, one IDE port would do. Are people still overclocking? I've OCed like
5 AMD systems easily. I always end up with pirated OSes even when I own
it. Even if I waited and got a Dell with Win7 I'd probly use pirated. Tho
I think they will be offering free upgrades soon. I haven't bought a PC
since my first Dell in '94...lol. A P75 that I fianlly realized would run
at 100MHz....zoom!.

IP Daley


I never bother to over-clock...to me it's not worth it.

As to using a pirated OS. I am keeping my XP and not going with the new MS
operating systems.

I now use Linux for about 95% of my work.

IP Daley wrote:
I've built maybe 10 systems but the last one was a few yrs ago so I'm completely out of touch. I mostly used AMD an
overclocked them. Fond of Abit mobos. I usually shop at Newegg.

So, what's a good basic non-gaming system for the money? I'll be using Win7 (don't include in price). I just bought a
new Acer 23" 9:16 black monitor for $170 so I'd like a case to match. Say we aim for $230 to keep the total at $400. I
have a new IDE DVD burner so I'll put that in it (I assume most mobos still have a port). I have good speakers, mouse
and KB. I have some IDE HDDs. Is it worth reusing them?

How about this CPU:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103680

AMD Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition Callisto 3.1GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache 6MB
L3 Cache Socket AM3 80W Dual-Core Processor

....$102 and unlockable to four cores, it seems. Maybe one of these motherboards:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813157154

ASRock A780GMH/128M AM2+/AM3 AMD 780G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

We might have blown your budget by a little, but, Dude-- you're worth it.

I routinely use old hard drives, and seldem have a problem.
turn on the smart function in the bios if its off.



"Paul" wrote in message
...
IP Daley wrote:
I've built maybe 10 systems but the last one was a few yrs ago so I'm
completely out of touch. I mostly used AMD an overclocked them. Fond of
Abit mobos. I usually shop at Newegg.

So, what's a good basic non-gaming system for the money? I'll be using
Win7 (don't include in price). I just bought a new Acer 23" 9:16 black
monitor for $170 so I'd like a case to match. Say we aim for $230 to keep
the total at $400. I have a new IDE DVD burner so I'll put that in it (I
assume most mobos still have a port). I have good speakers, mouse and KB.
I have some IDE HDDs. Is it worth reusing them?

Thanks

IP Daley


You know that Abit (Uabit), stopped manufacturing motherboards at the
end of 2008. There is still warranty service available for whatever
period still exists on their warranties. I would not buy an Abit
board now (you may see cheap ones around, but consider how
willing and able the company is to support them). Some
info on the company history can be found here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_abit

Paul

On Tue, 09 Jun 2009 21:30:43 -0400, IP Daley wrote:

I've built maybe 10 systems but the last one was a few yrs ago so I'm
completely out of touch. I mostly used AMD an overclocked them. Fond of
Abit mobos. I usually shop at Newegg.

So, what's a good basic non-gaming system for the money? I'll be using
Win7 (don't include in price). I just bought a new Acer 23" 9:16 black
monitor for $170 so I'd like a case to match. Say we aim for $230 to
keep the total at $400. I have a new IDE DVD burner so I'll put that in
it (I assume most mobos still have a port). I have good speakers, mouse
and KB. I have some IDE HDDs. Is it worth reusing them?

Thanks

IP Daley

If you want cheap stick with Core2 instead of Core i7. The i7
motherboards and processors are more expensive than the Core2. The last
system I built used a Gigabyte motherboard and an E8400 which I
overclocked to 4GHz using a Thermaright Extreme Ultra 120. I used 8G of
OCZ Gold DDR2-800 DIMMs, if I were doing it over I would have bought
DDR2-1000 DIMMs or faster. The Gigabyte motherboard doesn't give you a
lot of choices for DIMM speed. The DIMM speed is overclocked by the same
ratio as the CPU which forced me to run my DIMMs at 1GHz rather than
their rated speed. I got lucky with the OCZs and the system is stable but
if I had known about the limitations in the Gigabyte BIOS I would have
picked faster RAM.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128358

Somewhere on teh intarwebs General Schvantzkoph wrote:
On Tue, 09 Jun 2009 21:30:43 -0400, IP Daley wrote:

I've built maybe 10 systems but the last one was a few yrs ago so I'm
completely out of touch. I mostly used AMD an overclocked them. Fond
of Abit mobos. I usually shop at Newegg.

So, what's a good basic non-gaming system for the money? I'll be
using Win7 (don't include in price). I just bought a new Acer 23"
9:16 black monitor for $170 so I'd like a case to match. Say we aim
for $230 to keep the total at $400. I have a new IDE DVD burner so
I'll put that in it (I assume most mobos still have a port). I have
good speakers, mouse and KB. I have some IDE HDDs. Is it worth
reusing them?

Thanks

IP Daley

If you want cheap stick with Core2 instead of Core i7. The i7
motherboards and processors are more expensive than the Core2. The
last system I built used a Gigabyte motherboard and an E8400 which I
overclocked to 4GHz using a Thermaright Extreme Ultra 120. I used 8G
of OCZ Gold DDR2-800 DIMMs, if I were doing it over I would have
bought DDR2-1000 DIMMs or faster. The Gigabyte motherboard doesn't
give you a lot of choices for DIMM speed. The DIMM speed is
overclocked by the same ratio as the CPU which forced me to run my
DIMMs at 1GHz rather than their rated speed. I got lucky with the
OCZs and the system is stable but if I had known about the
limitations in the Gigabyte BIOS I would have picked faster RAM.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128358

Whereas I would have used the cheaper RAM but put the extra money towards a
better motherboard, with better BIOS options, such as FSB / RAM
dividers/multipliers or even seperate busses.
--
Shaun.

"Build a man a fire, and he`ll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and
he`ll be warm for the rest of his life." Terry Pratchett, Jingo.

On Tue, 16 Jun 2009 23:18:42 +1200, ~misfit~ wrote:

Somewhere on teh intarwebs General Schvantzkoph wrote:
On Tue, 09 Jun 2009 21:30:43 -0400, IP Daley wrote:

I've built maybe 10 systems but the last one was a few yrs ago so I'm
completely out of touch. I mostly used AMD an overclocked them. Fond
of Abit mobos. I usually shop at Newegg.

So, what's a good basic non-gaming system for the money? I'll be using
Win7 (don't include in price). I just bought a new Acer 23" 9:16 black
monitor for $170 so I'd like a case to match. Say we aim for $230 to
keep the total at $400. I have a new IDE DVD burner so I'll put that
in it (I assume most mobos still have a port). I have good speakers,
mouse and KB. I have some IDE HDDs. Is it worth reusing them?

Thanks

IP Daley

If you want cheap stick with Core2 instead of Core i7. The i7
motherboards and processors are more expensive than the Core2. The last
system I built used a Gigabyte motherboard and an E8400 which I
overclocked to 4GHz using a Thermaright Extreme Ultra 120. I used 8G of
OCZ Gold DDR2-800 DIMMs, if I were doing it over I would have bought
DDR2-1000 DIMMs or faster. The Gigabyte motherboard doesn't give you a
lot of choices for DIMM speed. The DIMM speed is overclocked by the
same ratio as the CPU which forced me to run my DIMMs at 1GHz rather
than their rated speed. I got lucky with the OCZs and the system is
stable but if I had known about the limitations in the Gigabyte BIOS I
would have picked faster RAM.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128358

Whereas I would have used the cheaper RAM but put the extra money
towards a better motherboard, with better BIOS options, such as FSB /
RAM dividers/multipliers or even seperate busses.

It's the top rated P45 motherboard, there isn't a better board available.
The price of 1066 RAM and 800 RAM is trivial, looking at Newegg the
difference between OCZ 800 and 1066 is $3.

Somewhere on teh intarwebs General Schvantzkoph wrote:
On Tue, 16 Jun 2009 23:18:42 +1200, ~misfit~ wrote:

Somewhere on teh intarwebs General Schvantzkoph wrote:
On Tue, 09 Jun 2009 21:30:43 -0400, IP Daley wrote:

I've built maybe 10 systems but the last one was a few yrs ago so
I'm completely out of touch. I mostly used AMD an overclocked
them. Fond of Abit mobos. I usually shop at Newegg.

So, what's a good basic non-gaming system for the money? I'll be
using Win7 (don't include in price). I just bought a new Acer 23"
9:16 black monitor for $170 so I'd like a case to match. Say we
aim for $230 to keep the total at $400. I have a new IDE DVD
burner so I'll put that in it (I assume most mobos still have a
port). I have good speakers, mouse and KB. I have some IDE HDDs.
Is it worth reusing them?

Thanks

IP Daley

If you want cheap stick with Core2 instead of Core i7. The i7
motherboards and processors are more expensive than the Core2. The
last system I built used a Gigabyte motherboard and an E8400 which I
overclocked to 4GHz using a Thermaright Extreme Ultra 120. I used
8G of OCZ Gold DDR2-800 DIMMs, if I were doing it over I would have
bought DDR2-1000 DIMMs or faster. The Gigabyte motherboard doesn't
give you a lot of choices for DIMM speed. The DIMM speed is
overclocked by the same ratio as the CPU which forced me to run my
DIMMs at 1GHz rather than their rated speed. I got lucky with the
OCZs and the system is stable but if I had known about the
limitations in the Gigabyte BIOS I would have picked faster RAM.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128358

Whereas I would have used the cheaper RAM but put the extra money
towards a better motherboard, with better BIOS options, such as FSB /
RAM dividers/multipliers or even seperate busses.

It's the top rated P45 motherboard, there isn't a better board
available.

Odd then that it doesn't have more options for RAM speed.

Heh. Maybe it's the best Gigabyte board, what about ASUS?

The price of 1066 RAM and 800 RAM is trivial, looking at
Newegg the difference between OCZ 800 and 1066 is $3.

Obvious the near-parity in RAM prices that you see hasn't reached New
Zealand yet. Here there's still quite a price jump going from DDR2-800 to
DDR2-1066 or better.

Ok, just double-checked as it's been a while since I had reason to price
components (still happy with my C2D in the P35 board). There's only a 10%
price jump to go from OCZ DDR2-800 to OCZ DDR2-1066.

So... Scratch my reply. :-/ Except maybe the bit about finding a board with
more flexible RAM speed options in BIOS.
--
Shaun.

"Build a man a fire, and he`ll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and
he`ll be warm for the rest of his life." Terry Pratchett, Jingo.

"General Schvantzkoph wrote:

...
I used 8G of OCZ Gold DDR2-800 DIMMs, if I were doing it over I would have
bought DDR2-1000 DIMMs or faster. The Gigabyte motherboard doesn't give
you a lot of choices for DIMM speed. The DIMM speed is overclocked by the
same ratio as the CPU which forced me to run my DIMMs at 1GHz rather than
their rated speed. I got lucky with the OCZs and the system is stable but if I
had known about the limitations in the Gigabyte BIOS I would have picked
faster RAM.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128358

You do know about the Gigabyte secret hidden advanced menu made
available by pressing Ctrl + F1, right? Actually, one of the existing menus
changes, it might be the M.I.T.

On Tue, 16 Jun 2009 21:07:26 -0700, Fishface wrote:

"General Schvantzkoph wrote:

...
I used 8G of OCZ Gold DDR2-800 DIMMs, if I were doing it over I would
have bought DDR2-1000 DIMMs or faster. The Gigabyte motherboard doesn't
give you a lot of choices for DIMM speed. The DIMM speed is overclocked
by the same ratio as the CPU which forced me to run my DIMMs at 1GHz
rather than their rated speed. I got lucky with the OCZs and the system
is stable but if I had known about the limitations in the Gigabyte BIOS
I would have picked faster RAM.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128358

You do know about the Gigabyte secret hidden advanced menu made
available by pressing Ctrl + F1, right? Actually, one of the existing
menus changes, it might be the M.I.T.

No I didn't know about the secret menu, thanks for the info. However my
advice about buying faster RAM still stands because it gives you more
flexibility and the price difference is so small. That $3 difference I
quoted was for a pair of 2G DIMMs so the total price difference for an 8G
system would be just $6. The place where the secret menu sounds like it
would be useful is if you want 16G of RAM. The fastest 4G DIMMs are only
DDR2 800 and my guess would be that they don't have the timing margins
that the 2G DIMMs have.