$400 dollar computer for my friend

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holydeadpenguins

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Ok so my friend wants me to build him a computer. He's got around 400 dollars. I'm thinking of getting:

Athlon xp - m 2400 and overclock it
512mbs of ddr266 ram cas latency of 2
Sapphire ati radeon 9600 pro 128mb
Case, generic with 400 watt psu
DFI NF2 U400 S-AL ATX AMD Motherboard
Windows xp home with sp2
And i'm giving him a 20gb hard drive, and he'll be taking a hard drive from an older computer.

total is 418 dollars.

What do you think? I think this is pretty good for 400 dollars lol. All he wants to do is play css and half life 2 (we're looking forward to playing sven coop 2 since i'm moving :farmer: )
 
Cd drive/DVD drive?
Mouse/keyboard?
Speakers?

Whats the demensions on the Case?
Because your mobo is 12.0" x 9.6".

And a 20 gb, hard drives doesn't do well these days. Halflife 2 with CSS is about 8 Gigs, and windows is about 4, so thats about 12 right there.

And make sure the cpu's Socket is 462.

-NSF
 
Well he said all his friend wants to do is play HL2\CSS and they are also adding a 2nd HD. No problems there.
 
you might want to consider getting ddr333 ram if you're going to overclock. the rest of the deal looks nice though.

and steam with hl2, hl1, cs1.6, cs:s and various mods only comes to 5.5 gb on my hard disk, so i don't know where 8 came from. also, a fresh install of windows xp is around 1.5 gb, which can rise to maybe 2-2.5 over a couple of years ( if you don't clean out temp dirs, etc)
 
NonStopableForce said:
Cd drive/DVD drive?
Mouse/keyboard?
Speakers?

Whats the demensions on the Case?
Because your mobo is 12.0" x 9.6".

And a 20 gb, hard drives doesn't do well these days. Halflife 2 with CSS is about 8 Gigs, and windows is about 4, so thats about 12 right there.

And make sure the cpu's Socket is 462.

-NSF
Click to expand...

I think i'm smart enough to take care of that on my own. Plus it's a standard ATX motherboard, it's supposed to fit in ATX cases all athlon xps are socket A/462. You know how easy it is to get free cdrom drives and keyboards? He's got an mx1000 mouse too.
 
Seems good to me mate. As said above, if you plan to overclock, some higher rated ram wouldn't go amiss, price shouldn't be mich different, as ddr333 and ddr400 are standard ram speeds and not specialist overlockers ram speeds which command a higher price. secondly, my only other thought, i had a look at the 9700 pro, because it is nearly twice as fast as a 9600 pro, and in england the price diff is about 10 pounds, might be worth a look, for CS and HL2's sakes anyways.

Just my 2 cents
 
buy Athlon 64 2800+(s.754) and some cheap 754 mobo
 
Nah it's 91 dollars. But i repicked the motherboard and ram and muahahahaha can afford a 9800 pro 256-bit.
 
Now it's got:

ECS KM400-M2 3.0 Socket A (Socket 462) VIA KM400 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail $37.00
Rosewill SL313-2628WU+P27 2-Tone Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 400W Power Supply - Retail $29.00
Masscool 5F287B1L3GL 80mm Ball Blue LED Light Cooling Fan - Retail $10.49
A-DATA 512MB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered System Memory Model VDBGB1916 - OEM $34.25
Microsoft Windows XP HOME Edition With Service Pack 2 - OEM 91.95
AMD Mobile Athlon XP-M 2400+ (45W) Barton 266MHz FSB Socket A Processor Model AXMH2400FQQ4C - OEM 79.99
SAPPHIRE 100556L Radeon 9800PRO 128MB DDR AGP 4X/8X Video Card - Retail 127.00

total - $409 even lower than before.
 
If the ram runs at 266 speeds, i can probably go with lower latencies. But i'm gonna need help overclocking it, never overclocked by multiplier before.
 
NonStopableForce said:
And a 20 gb, hard drives doesn't do well these days. Halflife 2 with CSS is about 8 Gigs, and windows is about 4, so thats about 12 right there.
Click to expand...

8 gigs ? 4 gigs ? ok mr. exaggeration ..
 
destrukt said:
8 gigs ? 4 gigs ? ok mr. exaggeration ..
Click to expand...

Depends on what u have.. Of course you dont want be short, so i increased it a bit. And my steam Folder is 8.31 gigs, but i just thought of why, because i have hl:source, and hl2 deathmatch

Jezz Sorry, dont have a Heart Attack.

-NSF
 
holydeadpenguins said:
ummm dude that's without sp2 or a cd key.
Click to expand...

are you stoned? its legit, i have bought 2 from there as well. comes with sp2, and a valid key that some itty bitty company seems to say is valid. whats their name again? oh yea MICROSOFT.
 
Ughhh when i read cd only that usually means cd only, i guess this isn't the case. I've looked dozens of other places and the cheap ones are media/cd only.
 
definitly go higher on the ram with ddr333, it will help loads in Source engine games, as it is very ram dependent....if you can, but him an extra stick so he then has 1 gig, and have him pay you pack later.....he'll thank you when he doesn't have to deal with stuttering and can run most settings on high at 1024x768
 
How does everyone have such small steam folders..
Mines over 12 gigs :/
 
holydeadpenguins said:
Ughhh when i read cd only that usually means cd only, i guess this isn't the case. I've looked dozens of other places and the cheap ones are media/cd only.
Click to expand...

yes, thats how OEM is. its a cd, and a little paper sleeve with a valid cdkey on it. thats what they mean by cd only.
 
Ikerous said:
How does everyone have such small steam folders..
Mines over 12 gigs :/
Click to expand...

I know, I have 14 gigs of stuff in my folder and another folder of random half-life related crap and its about 200MB big.
 
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