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After my laptop had some major problems, I decided that it was time to build a new computer. I am always reading about what the current hardware is. I wanted to build the best computer I could, however I had to do so on a pretty tight budget. Of course after using my laptop as my only computer for the last three years, just about anything would be faster. I also needed to get a nice monitor since I didn’t have anything but my broken laptop screen. So I did a bunch of research, found what I wanted, and then waited for my tax refund to come in. If you are looking to build a new computer, on a tight budget, I think this one works pretty good.

Motherboard

The motherboard is the most important part of any computer. I wanted to go with an AMD based computer, because I like their performance, and they are also much better performance for your money. I went with an ASUS A8N-VM CSM micro-atx motherboard. This is a Socket 939, Nvidia nForce 430 chipset board. This motherboard has everything on it. Sata raid, 1000mb lan, 6-channel audio, 1394a, and Nvidia Geforce 6 video. I like this board because it has Nvidia integrated graphics, with vga and dvi ports. Now integrated graphics aren’t exactly the greatest, but with my budget, a good video card wasn’t going to happen right now. The graphics on this motherboard are pretty good. Not great, but much better than my laptop. I’ll get to more specifics later. Plus this board has a PCI Express x16 so it will support a better card. For $60 it was a great deal.

CPU

I went with an Athlon 64 3200+ Venice Socket 939 cpu. From all the benchmarks I have seen, it is one of the best performers for the price. I got mine for $154. It operates at 2.0 ghz, has 2 64kb L1 caches, and a 512 kb L2 cache. It also has a 1 ghz bus. I have read that this cpu can be overclocked pretty well. I have read that it has been clocked at 2.4 ghz with stock cooling. I haven’t tried any overclocking, cause I don’t want to fry anything(I can’t afford to replace it).

Ram

I went with 1gb of Kingston ram. $67 is about an average price for 1gb ram. Eventually I want to get another gig. The motherboard can support up to 4gb.

Case

I got an Athentech A100SC270 Silver. It is a nice looking silver micro-atx case. It has a 270 Watt power supply. It has two internal 3.5″ enclosures, 1 external 3.5″ and 1 external 5″ enclosure. The case is sturdy, and quiet. It has 2 fans in the back, and space for a third in the front. The side panel has a grill for extra air flow. It also has two usb ports and a headphone jack in the front. It is also $45. The only complaint I had with the case was that I had to remove the plate for the motherboard ports. You can see what I mean in the picture below.
Hard Drive

I used a 250gb Sata hard drive that I had been using in an older computer I already had. If you shop around carefully you can usually find a 250 gb drive for under $100.

Other

I installed a DVD-rom drive that I had sitting around. Eventually, I will get a DVD burner for around $40, but for now I wanted to save a little. I also installed a TV Tuner card that I had sitting around.

Monitor

I use a Dell 19″ LCD monitor at work, so I bought the same one for this system. It costs about $250 from Dell. Of course I wanted to get the 20″ widescreen LCD, but it was $200 more. This is a great monitor. It is nice and bright, with 1280×1024 resolution.

Setup

Setting up the computer was very easy. I bought all of the parts off of Newegg.  This is the best online retailer of computer parts.  They have great selection, good prices, and fast shipping.  The case provided good instructions for installing everything. In under an hour I had all the components together. This is a picture of the inside of the computer.

And the back panel.

Since the cpu was 64 bit, I wanted to try out Windows XP 64 bit edition. It installed pretty easily in about 20 minutes. The motherboard driver cd had all the 64 bit drivers. The drivers for my tv tuner I found off of PlanetAMD64. XP 64-bit requires all the drivers to be 64-bit. It does not use 32-bit drivers. The only driver problem I have had so far would be with the Cisco VPN client. There are no 64-bit drivers for this program, which I use all the time for work. I have solved my problem using Virtual Server. (something I will blog about more in the future)

Performance

The computer runs very fast. Doing all my internet browsing, and other office stuff is very quick. Playing music, or watching videos while doing other work is very smooth too. I am not a very big gamer, but I do occasionally play some games. It is definitly not the fastest system for games. My 3dmark03 score was only 1152. This is pretty lousy. The poor performance is due to the integrated graphics. It is Nvidia geforce 6 graphics though, so it isn’t too bad for game that are over 3 years old. I tested in with Far Cry, which is a standard game that is used for testing 3d performance. With all the settings to Very High and at 1280×1024 resolution, I got about 11-18 FPS. This is definitly not playable, especially in big fights. With all settings at low and 1280×1024 resolution, I could get about 40-60 FPS. This is pretty good, but the graphics look pretty bad. Still it is much better than the laptop that I had before. I also noticed that I got better frame rates using the 64-bit version of Far Cry versus the 32-bit version.

Conclusion

For $400 for the computer, I think this is a very nice system for office work, media viewing, or a home server. Of course for $200 more, you could get a bigger power supply and a Geforce 7800 and turn this into a decent game computer. I haved loved having a better computer, since I am upgrading from a laptop. I would definitly recommend this setup to anyone looking for a quality, inexpensive computer system. Email me if you want any advice about building a computer. Also If you want me to build one for you, I can do that for a good price.