Needed help with price efficient custom PC

Hey all, I'm stuck with a dilemma. I've not been up on computer hardware for about 2 years, and I'm totally lost now. All this hyperthreading, multiple voltage, yada yada yada that's been implemented is making my head hurt. I'm looking to help a friend out on upgrading her husband's box for christmas, and i need some guidance. i've spent about 14 hours in the past few days reading on everything new to the scene, and i'm at the point now where i know what i don't need, but still not sure what i do need. My aim is to spend around 200 usd for the motherboard and processor. I'm wanting to go with about a 2.66 ghz p4 prescott, but i'm not sure about the boards. the processor is 115 usd for retail package. i loved amd a few years ago, but am not sure if they're still having overheating problems still. i'm looking to build a machine that will be stable without the problems of overheating, and i'm not even sure if intel is the way to go. I'm trying to convince his wife that there's no need to go buy a dell desktop for 350. my argument doesn't seem too strong at this point. Any suggestions on a decently priced mobo with a good chipset would be? i'm not looking for anything extreme, just a good home pc that will be worthy of usage for the next few years. any help is greatly appreciated.

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=419664
There is no need to cross post (make multiple posts) for the same topic.

sorry

BTW. Welcome to the Forums!!!!

Thankies

What is he going to be using the computer for? Also, the main reason not go to with that $350 is because the components will be of lesser quality, and dell will cut corners in almost everyway possible.

Also, what about video? Should it be onboard or do you want a PCIe/AGP alot?
Power supply?
Computer case?
RAM?

Once I have all the info, I could probably come up with a good AMD rig Not sure about overheating issues. If anything, Intel is usually the one that overheats (Stock heatsink often not enough).

to the forums!

It's mainly going to be used for browsing the web, playing a few games, and the such. nothing horrible as far as resource hogging software. sound and video preferrably onboard. I started looking around on pricewatch, got a good price on processors, but gads...there are an endless list of mobo's. amd is totally ok with me. it doesnt matter. i've always loved amd, but i wasn't sure which would be the better bang for the buck. from what i saw by looking around, intel looked cheaper by the speeds. anyways, any other questions just ask

Clock speeds aren't everything. Remember that next time you compare AMD and Intel. Anyway, since I want to stay on topic and not start a war, I'll try to help. For the CPU, go with an athlon xp. That's about as cheap as you can get them while still having something good enough to do what needs to be done. 512MB memory should be good, Corsair ValueSelect since it probably won't be oc'ed. I don't know of too many mobos with onboard video, but you can try looking around newegg for one of those. Good luck with the other stuff...

You might want to look into a socket 754 motherboard and an AMD Sempron64 processors to go with it. It will cost a slight bit more than an athlon xp system, but is at least as fast and ready for new 64-bit operating systems.

Socket754 is the way to go I believe. I'll go through suggestions after I eat.

skt754 isn't too much cheaper then skt939 boards and stuff.

I'd say go with a ASUS A8N-E for about $100 and grab a 3000+ or 3200+ off ewiz if the price is still at $130. The ASUS would be rock stable for stock speeds. Plus a skt939 onboard video and audio should be better then skt754 onboard video and audio. I might recommend a cheap video card though, so at least some of the video usage wouldn't be all taken up on the ram.

In this case though socket 754 might be necessary because the extra $50 required to go from semperon to 3200 is probably too much.

My suggestion:
-AMD Sempron 64 2800+ Palermo Socket754 (Cheapest CPU with 256MB L2 cache)
-One of these motherboards (I assumed you wanted a micro ATX board, and all of them not only have good onboard video, but a PCI-express slot)

Anything else needed?

Get this - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813138241
And this - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820145440

Motherboard has onboard video/sound/lan
also has an 4x AGP slot, 3 pci slots, and an all but useless cnr slot.
Supports (2) ddr memory chips up to 2GB.
Onboard video uses shared memory, can set up anywhere between 16MB and 64MB (if I recall).

I've just built two more computers around that configuration, and they do very well for the price. You could cut the ram in half and save some cash, and maybe get him a nice new case/hard-drive/dvdrw/etc. Good luck!

- Jim

You said you want to do some gaming. What games would that include? You may need a video solution outside of onboard graphics.

You can still go SKT939 and still have good onboard:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813138264

There's also a Gigabyte version if you don't trust the brand.