Budget Build?

[lonegeek]

Well my 800mhz celeron just isnt cutting it anymore!
Im looking to build a new pc , on a budget. A new case, motherboard, ram , and cpu.(new psu?)...

Im thinking somewhere around 2 ghz , with at least 512mb of ram. And preferably audio on the motherboard and ethernet... Its hard to find 2ghz P4 procesors on any reliable sites anymore.. I dont want to spend more than 200!

case

I want a fairly plain case..

Any ideas??

zach

[ddrawley]

A socket 754 AMD based system can be very stable, inexpensive, and powerful.
I have had excellent results with the 64-bit capable Sempron chip, with an MSI motherboard.
Take a look at this one:
MSI K8N NEO3-F ATX

[lonegeek]

I love MSI...although that doesnt seem to have alot of features...Is a sempron good enough? It seems like it has a small L1 Cache...

[A_Brass]

If your not stuck on brand names, you could go off the shelf. I picked up a e-machine from CircuitCity.com for less than $300usd.

3300+ (2.0Ghz) Semperon, 512, 100Gig HD. Onboard Sound is functional, Onboard video is horriable (no video out), but I'm using it as a PVR server.

Cheap, easy, and its a fast way to get up and running. And much faster then the 1Ghz Duron I was running as my primary PVR.

[ddrawley]

SDA2800BXBOX
Core Palermo
Name Sempron 64 2800+
Operating Frequency 1.6GHz
FSB 800MHz
L1 Cache 64KB+64KB
L2 Cache 256KB
Process Type 90 nm
Hyper-Transport Support Yes
64 bit Support Yes
Multimedia Instruction MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, 3DNOW! Professional

$75.00

I game on this, so I think GBPVR will snore except when transcoding or comskipping.

[Koenie]

No doubt AMD gives you the bang for the buck!! I was using an old Duron 1300 before which had no problem copig at all. I checked upgrading it to and Athlon 1300 (512 versus 64 K cache) but did not notice any difference. I finally upgraded to the mobile athlon because of the low voltage / heat / noise, but hete the Athlon 64's outperform intel by miles.

[WerewolfTA]

I built my wife's last PC in that case. Great case for the $ & no PSU issues w/ XP 1700+, 1GB DDR, 2 hard drives, 2 optical drives. You should know, though, that the blue LED on the front of that case is BRIGHT (the red, less so), so it may be distracting in a darkened room or generally in the same line of sight as your TV.

[WerewolfTA]

Just wanted to update that the PSU finally flaked out after a year of near 24/7 use. I took it apart, and it's pretty cheaply constructed. Still, for the price, that's to be expected and I'd say is still a pretty good deal. I replaced it with an old 250W I had laying around, which surprisingly powers everything in that case. When that burns up, I'll have to invest in an Antec.