Help with overall hardware choice

[StevenF]

How does this sound? Anything I can lower that won't hurt performance a lot but still save money? The total of all this comes to just over 1600 at NewEgg, and according to the S&H for each item about 180 for shipping? Why do they charge so much for shipping? The arctic silver 3 only costs 6.00 but they charge 6.00 for shipping?!?!

Evercase w/300 Watt PSU 42.00
GA-7VRXP 110.00
Corsair PC2700 512 CL 2.0 186.00
AMD 2000+ 153.00
Volcano 7+ 49.00
Western Digital 1200JB 196.00
Radeon 8500 128 215.00
Santa Cruz 58.00
Sony Disk Drive 9.00
LiteOn 40x12x48 CD-RW 83.00
Toshiba 16x48 DVD-Rom 43.00
Logitech Z-560 130.00
LG 915FT+ 300.00

 

[Viper GTS]

Your shipping charges should drop when you actually put it all in your cart.

Any particular reason you're going AMD instead of Intel at this point in the game?

The only thing that really sticks out to me is the DVD drive, the Toshibas are limited at 2X speed for ripping. Grab a LiteOn LTD-163, I've been much happier with it than I was with my Toshiba.

Viper GTS

 

[RaynorWolfcastle]

Everything is pretty nice, but if you're into overclocking, I'd go with a P4-1.6A + Asus P4B266C combo and see how far you can push it. You will most likely be able to push it to 2.13 GHz/ 133 MHz FSB (many have achieved much better like 2500+ MHz). At 2.1 GHz it will be competitive with the Athlon 2000+, and it'll be much cheaper since you can just use the retail HS and fan. If you're lucky, you'll be able to push it to 2.4 GHz or better where the Athlon won't be able to touch it.

If you decide to stick with the Athlon, I'd suggest you change the Volcano+ for a GC68, it should offer similar cooling for much less. You can pick up the GC68 + Arctic Silver 3 at SVCompucycle for cheaper than at Newegg.

-Ice