Need help choosing some components!

Upgrade time! Upgrade time! Upgrade time!
Please let me know if you agree with my future purchase or if there are any other choices that I am overlooking.
_______________________________________________

Intel Deal - Intel P4 2.53GHz CPU, Intel D845EBT Mobo, Windows XP Pro - $175

Buy - Corsiar CMX512-3200C2 - $175.50
Buy - Asus P4PE - $123.01

Sell - Intel D845EBT Mobo - $100
Sell - Athon 1.4Ghz CPU - $75
Sell - 256MB PC2100 DDR Ram - $50
Sell - Epox 8K7A - $65
Sell - Millennium Glaciator - $25
_______________________________________________

Net Total - $158.51

Some Explainations -
the Intel deal is posted in the cyber deals forum and my job qualifies me for it. I plan on selling the motherboard that comes with the deal *nice features but no overclocking* on ebay - hoping for $100. I'm going to sell the guts of my computer to my brother for low pricewatch prices and install everything for him.

I need help picking the motherboard -
The Asus P4PE supports Hyperthreading * but i probably won't want/need to upgrade the CPU for a while * and there isnt any intel boards out right now that support dual ddr so I'm probably going to ditch the board and pick up another stick of 512MB once it dual ddr becomes avialable.
Something better than the Asus P4PE would be something cheaper but with rock solid stability and good overclocking features. It doesn't have to support hyperthreading, serial ATA or anything else my sytem doesn't have * raid would be nice but no needed right away *.
After all this board is most likely going to be upgraded it 6 months anyways. Please let me know what you sugest.

Thanks - Ian

PS - If the CPU is coming directly from intel does that mean i have a good chance of getting one of the C1 chips?

the only other choices that I would recamend is the p4b533 from asus and the bd7II from abit.

if you like asus (and I do) then stick with your choice since you should be happy for the short time that you have it.

if you want to save more money....try the abit bd7II.
it's a great OCing mobo that will not cost you much.

mica

Abit looks good for the money.
It will take me up to 166FSB and be stable providing the CPU is up to par?

Just looked... The P4B533-VM is about the same price as the regular P4B533 it's microatx and has onboard lan. It's missing one of the dimms from the standard version but I won't miss it, and I can migrate this board to the HTPC i'm planing on building after i get the new tv.

Any other suggestions, is the corsair memory worth it? Doesnt seem that bad a price and most other companies don't even have something with compairable timing.

Not bad, but I wouldn't expect to get $100 for the Intel board when the Abit BD7II RAID can be had for $110.

Still, even if you only get $50 for the board that's a great pickup in performance for the money.


BHD

Any other suggestions, is the corsair memory worth it? Doesnt seem that bad a price and most other companies don't even have something with compairable timing.

Click to expand...

you wont be dissapointed.

mica

Are you someone that upgrades every 6 months constently? What do you have now? I mean personally If I were you and you really wanted something now, i'd go 2.26B and clock that thing to like 2.7 and get a bd7II with the Corsair, cause the ram is recyclable, and in 6 months you're bond to be getting a HT cpu and dual ddr board anyways, for a 6 month investment, most wouldn't dump in that much money, unless the money isn't a problem for you.

MY bad for 175$ a 2.53 is not an issue, sorry... but BD7II is still cheap, stable and overclocks well.

Deptmaster said:

The Asus P4PE supports Hyperthreading * but i probably won't want/need to upgrade the CPU for a while

Click to expand...

The P4PE is a good motherboard, but you're asking the question *days* before dual-DDR finally makes a synchronous memory bus practical!

Please wait for Granite Bay, or factor it into your plans.

Thank you in advance.

Hmmm, if its really going to be that soon before dual ddr - and the intel board is only going to fetch $50 it might be wise to *grasp* use it for the mean time ( as long as its not to long ).
The only reason i was quoting $100 for it was that i found it selling around $135 most places.
Any eads for Dual DDR boards Soapy?
Neo_peter I don't upgrade every 6months but if i don't get a dual ddr mobo now the plan is to get something like the Abit BD7II for the mean time and change it out when the new stuff becomes avialable.
Money is of course a consern or i wouldn't be selling my old parts or have waited this long to upgrade.

cause personally I have a 1.8A @ 2.4 and it's not that much faster than my brother's 1.4 Thunderbird.. so I'm thinking if you really want dual-ddr, i'm sure that 1.4 won't bug you that much till you can get a dual ddr board with a HT chip.

HT - Dual DDr - Serial ATA, There's always going to be something else to wait for. For the money there's nothing out there that can touch this deal with intel and because these things are few and far between if i don't upgrade now I'm going to be paying alot more later.
I'm going to get the P4B533-VM provided it can do 166fsb because i can always use it later. I'm also going to use some of the money i'm going to save to pickup a new antec true 480 PSU, a promise ATA66 raid controler and another 80GB western digital harddrive with the 8mb cache. The ATA66 raid controler is around $25 cheaper than the ATA100 version and I've heard that there's no difference in speed because the hard drive itself is the bottleneck not the controler.

well it depends on what harddrives you have right, if you have all ata100 or greater harddrives i doubt you want a ata66 cause you're creating a second bottleneck.