***UPDATED*** budget college comp ($1500) - FULL SPECS NOW!

[Alex]

i am strongly anti-Intel so i dont really wanna get a northwood, plus its just not worth it on a price-performance point of view...
ill either have to find a room-mate that has an athlon himself or one that doesnt mind... on another note, ill be in canada so i dont think extra heat from monitor will be a problem

 

[mchammer187]

I just read you already have a Tbird 1.4? i think ur crazy for even considering an upgrade esp since it is a ddr setup

IMO i think you might regret upgrading now come hammer time

i think you should upgrade ur video card if you need it but a 1.4-> 1900+ is not a worthy upgrade

If you can stick with the Tbird i seriously would

maybe get a CD-Burner/ DVD drive, new vid card and rough it out till winter

also reconsider a northwood if you have to upgrade 1.6A ==> 2.13Ghz + or 1.8 A===>2.4 Ghz + destroy everything else in terms of price/performance

1.6 to 2 Ghz + is guaranteed i'd say 90%+

but it would be very difficult to get a 1900+ past 2100+ IMO without being very lucky

BTW if you still want an athlon get a thermalright AX-7 + a reasonably quiet 80mm fan to cool it

 

[herbage11]

plus its just not worth it on a price-performance point of view

1.6A runs at 2.1ghz or better 95% of the time....not worth it? Tell me an Athlon that runs over 2.0 ghz for $130 and I will agree. Not to mention stock cooling with the Northwood and temps under 40.

 

[Alex]

unfortunately the only parts of my current rig that i get to keep are the mouse and keyboard...

the northwood 1.6A runs at over 2 ghz??? wasnt it like 1.6 ghz? oh, you mean overclocked? im not sure... im already betraying ATI here and theres no way im gonna betray good ol AMD

since my first k6II-300 a couple years ago ive never bought intel again...

hmmm athlonXP 1900+ = $129 and northwood = $130...

thing is how much do intel mobos cost??? the mobo i want is a $65 ECS KT266A board which is pretty darned cheap IMO...

can anyone cantradict me?

 

[LogisticalBovine]

Heh, you live in Canada? Good that's like having another HSF. Anyway, I have a thread not too far down this General Hardware forum and with s/h and a good $200 monitor its going to be around $1500 (for college also). However, it isn't an AMD and its for a good reason. About 4 weeks ago I was seriously considering an AMD rig with a nice Asus KT333 chipset mobo. However, when I read upon numerous (and I mean a load) of overclocking posts I decided to go for a 1.6a p4. Betraying AMD is going to be like sacrificing 20-30 bucks for the same performence and 256k of cache. True an 1.6ghz (1800+?) AMD outperforms an Intel 1.6ghz but for about the same price, the Intel with a stock HSF can overclock easily (with a good board) to 2.4ghz. People have gotten it higher.. again with a stock HSF. Get a nice Alpha Pal and a nice noisy delta 80mm (or good Canandian air) and run a P4 up the wazoo.

P4 Pros:
1.6a and 1.8a are highly overclockable and have a good value-to-speed ratio when you do it successfully.
They have a 512k cache.
The i845D/E/G chipsets have great motherboards from Asus. (P4B533, P4B533e, P4B533-v).
Newer cores are highly successfull in OCing.
P4 Cons:
Some are expensive, but they do come with a nice retail HSF.

Athlon XP Pros:
Cheap, cost-effective.
They are also overclockable to a really good degree.
Asus again makes some kickarse mobos for XPs. Overclocker's dream.
Support for DDR300 (whilst i845 chipsets officially support DDR266)
More instructions per clock cycle. a 2200+ would kick a 2.0ghz P4 out of the water.

Athlon XP Cons:
Thoroughbreds coming in still have 256k cache.
TBs have a small performance increase over existing Palaminos.
They are hot, hot, hot. (can we say stir fried Athlon?)
Overclocking XPs compared to a 1.6a is pretty small. I've seen 20% increases on a good XP (they go higher I know). Intel usually has 50%+ on those northwoods on 3/4th of the cores that come out.

 

[Alex]

bump for final decision! (see first post!)

 

[Ionizer86]

Switch out the Alpha 8045 for an AX7. They cost like $8 less, and in my case (no pun intended), they perform about 6ºC better.

You're spending $125 on the Corsair PC2100. I can get two 256mb PC2100 dimms from Crucial for like $78 or so (with the 15% off link and coupon).

If your budget is so great, what if you take out the cheap ECS mobo and get a better one? Some mobos even have built in goodies, like hardware 5.1 sound, lan, raid, usb2, 1394, etc etc. For example, the Abit NV7-133R offers a lot at $90. nForce sound is supposed to be good too, though not as good as an audigy.

 

[Alex]

if the AX7 is indeed better and cheaper then ill take it but this will have to be confirmed by other ppl cuz i heard very good things about the alpha...

its a Thermalright btw, correct?

im not so happy myself with the corsair ram but i have 512mb crucial pc2100 in my tbird rig and i feel its performing significantly under par.

as for the mobo, if there's an nforce board thats cheaper and with no integrated video i might consider it but if not the KT266A is cheap and very good.

 

[WarCon]

Are you going to be in a dorm? Why $250 dollar speakers? Man I would drop those to the Logitech Z560's for $136 (they will give you plenty of decent sound) and save $110 to spend on a better motherboard and maybe your DVD or a bundle of CDR's to take with you. I figure with a 120gig harddrive your going to be rippin alot of music or something. Its always nice to be able to make a backup of those mp3's.

 

[Alex]

Originally posted by: WarCon
Are you going to be in a dorm? Why $250 dollar speakers? Man I would drop those to the Logitech Z560's for $136 (they will give you plenty of decent sound) and save $110 to spend on a better motherboard and maybe your DVD or a bundle of CDR's to take with you. I figure with a 120gig harddrive your going to be rippin alot of music or something. Its always nice to be able to make a backup of those mp3's.

its an 80gb HD but i suppose the spacing in the first post is kinda misleading ..but yeah i am gonna have loadsa mp3s and divx so your point prevails

im so glad you mentioned that about the speakers... truth of the matter is i had the plans for a l337 demon and had to drop them cuz of a not-so-elastic budget... and some of the things that remained from this are the 5.1 speakers and monitor (which i dropped for a cheaper one recently...) as a matter of fact i prolly wont be able to take full, if any advantage of 5.1 speakers and the exceptional quality of the MegaWorks or any of the Klipsch series i was looking into

ok so step down to logitech speakers...

 

[mchammer187]

one change i strongly recommend is geting 512 MB samsung PC2700 from googlegear.com it costs the same amount

drop the lian li for an antec 1040 B

or they have a cheiftec aluminum version if you must go that route for $30 cheaper than the Lian Li
which IMO is much much prettier and has a nice window built in

you can get cheaper CD-RW drives just check out the hot deals forums their are 32x for $30-45 every week so I'd hold off on that

i would get a different mobo based on a KT333 chipset (epox)

stepping down to logitech speakers might be a good idea also

and definitely get a thermalright AX-7 +80mm fan instead of the alpha

 

[WarCon]

Yeah, if your going to be able to get the full $1500 then it looks like you may have a couple hundred still to spend. I still think you might want to sport for a better mobo, I just see alot of ECS problems on the forums I read, so I kind of shy from them. Heck you might get a well built one and it will run great, but that last thing you wanna be fighting is a constant mobo probs. I always spend the money on my mobo. It the root/core of my system. You going to be hooked up to dorm network, so you won't need a modem?

And that AX-7 looks like a great design and is rated the best by a few sites I actually believe...... Thats a good pick. Everything else looks ok (good actually).

Yeah I mistook the harddrive for the 120gig one. Does that 80 gig version have the 8meg cache?

 

[Alex]

ok so after trading the megaworks for logitech z540s (which seem pretty darned good) and trading the alpha heatsink for an AX7 im at $1,222 for the entire system which seems pretty reasonable, as oxfordpc.com will prolly charge a lot more than newegg's prices...

why oxfordpc.com? well the particular company cuz i can order custom parts unlike falcon and alienware, where i have to select from a list and why im ordering one as opposed to building one, well my parents said they wouldnt pay jack for me unless it came with a warranty... lol too many overclocking experiments gone wrong at home

 

[Alex]

Originally posted by: WarCon
Yeah, if your going to be able to get the full $1500 then it looks like you may have a couple hundred still to spend. I still think you might want to sport for a better mobo, I just see alot of ECS problems on the forums I read, so I kind of shy from them. Heck you might get a well built one and it will run great, but that last thing you wanna be fighting is a constant mobo probs. I always spend the money on my mobo. It the root/core of my system. You going to be hooked up to dorm network, so you won't need a modem?

And that AX-7 looks like a great design and is rated the best by a few sites I actually believe...... Thats a good pick. Everything else looks ok (good actually).

Yeah I mistook the harddrive for the 120gig one. Does that 80 gig version have the 8meg cache?

the only reason im gettin 80gigs is cuz its the smallest size that comes with the 8meg cache!
yup college hookup = no modem

thing is altho im officially on a $1500 budget i gotta take into account that the retailers will add a couple bucks to everything to itll invariably be more expensive than at newegg, so i wanna keep it as low as possible...

 

[Alex]

Originally posted by: mchammer187
one change i strongly recommend is geting 512 MB samsung PC2700 from googlegear.com it costs the same amount

drop the lian li for an antec 1040 B

or they have a cheiftec aluminum version if you must go that route for $30 cheaper than the Lian Li
which IMO is much much prettier and has a nice window built in

you can get cheaper CD-RW drives just check out the hot deals forums their are 32x for $30-45 every week so I'd hold off on that

i would get a different mobo based on a KT333 chipset (epox)

stepping down to logitech speakers might be a good idea also

and definitely get a thermalright AX-7 +80mm fan instead of the alpha

the cdrw hotdeal is kinda out of the question cuz im not building it myself (need warranty) but im considering stepping down to a 24x write or 32x write drive instead of the 40x one.. all i want is burnproof and teac brand name.
the ECS mobo does seem a lil sketchy but KT333 = pc2700 ram = ends up getting dangerously close to $1500 and will prolly be over when i order from 3rd party maker (oxfordpc.com)

 

[mchammer187]

Originally posted by: franguinho
ok so after trading the megaworks for logitech z540s (which seem pretty darned good) and trading the alpha heatsink for an AX7 im at $1,222 for the entire system which seems pretty reasonable, as oxfordpc.com will prolly charge a lot more than newegg's prices...

why oxfordpc.com? well the particular company cuz i can order custom parts unlike falcon and alienware, where i have to select from a list and why im ordering one as opposed to building one, well my parents said they wouldnt pay jack for me unless it came with a warranty... lol too many overclocking experiments gone wrong at home

i say get the CD-RW seperately and if you void your warranty buy installing your own CD-RW than this company seems pretty shady

I would even say get a Dell in favor of that because their are some great deals

also at least step up to logictech z-560 from your 540's

540's compare to the creative FPS2000 line of speaker which IMO suck very badly

oh yeah dell home has a sale on the 1200 JB 120 GB hard drive for $150 just go to slickdeals.net and get details

i just ordered 2 for myself its raid time

i dont see the problem about warranty because every product you buy will be under warranty as long as you KEEP your reciepts and if you buy RETAIL parts over OEM
the only oem's i'd think you have are SB audigy which wont ever die on you lest you beat it or something and the CPU which you can pay 20 more for and get a 3 year warranty which will be replaced if you burn it out

everything else should be covered

how much are they charging you anyway for the build?

 

[Alex]

im not sure if id void my warranty by installing the cdrw myself... i should think so though cuz what if a total moron tries to do that and screws up the computer somehow... the company shouldn't really have to pay for the repairs cuz it wasn't really their problem or something. im just speculating though.

The reason im getting an OEM processor is cuz i dont want the stock fan and heatsink but if it is indeed only $20 more then i suppose its worth it gettin the retail box for the warranty...

as far as the building is concerned:

Barebones Assembly & Testing - $65
Assembly, Benchmarks, 72 hour burn-in and Software Installation - $175

I'm not sure which to chose cuz IMO that reads:

Half-assed rushed job - $65
Decent, tested job - $175

I particularly like the 72 hour burn-in cuz that kinda ensures that nothing will go wrong. How often have you built a computer and run it fine for a couple hours, then the next morning its just weird for no apparent reason and there goes your day trying to fix it?
Not everytime I hope but everyone gets this at least once or twice and I don't really want to bother myself with any hassles...

I'll send them an official budget request and see just how much above they'll charge and depending on whether or not its above $1500 I'll have to do the CDRW myself and then perhaps I'll do the same with some other non-essential parts for setting up a computer, like Sound, NIC and anything else I can think of...

I'll post back as soon as I get a reply from them.

 

[Alex]

oh i almost forgot:

i think ill get the Z540s instead of the Z560s cuz theyre quite a bit cheaper and according to a lot of feedback ive heard theyre pretty good. to be perfectly honest i was (still am) very impressed with my fps1000 so anything better than that will sound sweet