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Wanna give me some advice on my list?

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Rabid Snail

Member
Joined
Sep 20, 2002
Location
New York
Copied from another post that got no responses, and might be due to the title so that is why I reposted:

Any advice on the list, it is for my sister, she plans on doing little gaming except for mabey Warcraft 3. Moderate upgradeability is expected. The budget was $500 for just the computer, not including keyboard, moniter and all, and going under budget is ok also.

Here is the list:
ANTEC SOLUTION SERIES MODEL SLK3700AMB w/ANTEC SMART POWER 350W P4/AMD POWER SUPPLY ATX12V - RETAIL
Lite On 52x24x52 CDRW Model LTR-52246S Retail
Seagate 40GB 7200rpm EIDE Hard Drive OEM Barracuda 7200.7 ST340014A
CORSAIR 512MB PC2100 VALUE SELECT. DDR RAM - OEM
ABIT NF7-M, nForce2 chipset support AMD processors W/VGA Audio LAN,8X/4X ATX motherboard
AMD Athlon XP 1700+ Thoroughbred /266 FSB Processor CPU 1700+/ 1.47GHz -OEM
Using an old mid end (40 C) HSF

The plan is that she is probably going to use the onboard video on the NForce. She definetly will be using the onbaord Sound and Lan.

Does anything look as though it will either generate excessive amounts of noise, or bottleneck the system greatly. Also, is it worth it to get Crosair ram. It is more expensive, but I don't want to cheap out on components. And..... the PSU that comes with the case, will it be good enough for the listed components, and mabey the addition of a GeForce 4 ti 4600?
 
Question:

Does she need a burner and does she have to have one that is so fast? You may be able to cut the cost with a DVD drive or a slower burner.

You should check the Heatsink reviews on the front page. I do not understand what you mean by a 40c heat sink. I would get her something with a c/w close to 0.30.

With the rest of your setup, I would advise against buying cheap (PNY) memory. Corsair, Crucial or Mushkin are all very good and considering the savings you might find with the CD drive (of whatever type), you should be able to afford decent memory. Also, for the way you say your sister will be using the box, all she needs is a single stick of 256MB. If her needs change down the line, she can always add more but right now that will be more than she needs.
 
if you plan on using the onboard video make sure you buy 2 sticks of RAM so the board can run in DUAL DDR mode. Their is not enough bandwidth for the CPU and Video in Single mode. preformance will suffer big time
 
Any recomendations on cheap speakers?

edit: I meant that it is a heatsink that can cool the CPU to about 40 degrees C, mabey a little more.
 
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