what to do with 300 dollars

[currybreakfast]

Hi. I am designing a system and have come about 300 dollars under budget so was wondering what I could get with that 300 dollars. Dont need to buy a case or speakers, dont need a monitor but can upgrade. My system is gonna be:

AMD Opteron 165 (thinking of 170?)
ASUS A8N32 SLI (sticking with that, doing mild OCing but am a noob)
ANTEC NEOHE 500W (think it should be fine)
KINGMAX 2x 1024 PC3200 RAM (dunno what to get )
WD 320G SATAii 8M CACHE (dunno if the extra 8 is worth any extra money)
XFX 7900GT OC 520Mhz (seems like an awesome card for value)

Any help could be greatly appreciated. Any tweaks, issues, or general help please.

 

[CalvinHobbes]

Save it. You can use it on the next gen video cards.

 

[currybreakfast]

the next gen? i must have missed that, I only thought that the CPUs were changing, not the GFX. Please indulge me

 

[EffeX]

The DX10 cards will be out Q1 next year... or maybe before then.

 

[Bobthelost]

Don't get the Neo He with an Asus motherboard, have been compatibility issues. If you're not going SLI then anything upwards of 400W will do the job (from a good brand of course).

Might as well save it for the next upgrade, that is if you don't want to go SLI which you can on that budget.

 

[jcmuse]

I could be mistaken but i believe the compatibility issues between the NEOHE and some motherboards has been fixed.

 

[Bobthelost]

Wouldn't surprise me if it had, of course that doesn't mean that the PSU the OP is getting will be a fixed one. The problem was "fixed" last year according to one forum i was on, but there was someone with a text book example of it only a few weeks back on here if memory serves. The NeoHE is a nice PSU, but it's not so nice or so cheap that it warrants taking the chance of a dodgy model imo.

 

[Troll4Hire]

Originally posted by: currybreakfast
Hi. I am designing a system and have come about 300 dollars under budget so was wondering what I could get with that 300 dollars. Dont need to buy a case or speakers, dont need a monitor but can upgrade. My system is gonna be:

AMD Opteron 165 (thinking of 170?)
ASUS A8N32 SLI (sticking with that, doing mild OCing but am a noob)
ANTEC NEOHE 500W (think it should be fine)
KINGMAX 2x 1024 PC3200 RAM (dunno what to get )
WD 320G SATAii 8M CACHE (dunno if the extra 8 is worth any extra money)
XFX 7900GT OC 520Mhz (seems like an awesome card for value)

Any help could be greatly appreciated. Any tweaks, issues, or general help please.

Topic Title: what to do with 300 dollars
Topic Summary:

Get a hooker.

 

[tiejiba]

Originally posted by: Troll4Hire

Originally posted by: currybreakfast
Hi. I am designing a system and have come about 300 dollars under budget so was wondering what I could get with that 300 dollars. Dont need to buy a case or speakers, dont need a monitor but can upgrade. My system is gonna be:

AMD Opteron 165 (thinking of 170?)
ASUS A8N32 SLI (sticking with that, doing mild OCing but am a noob)
ANTEC NEOHE 500W (think it should be fine)
KINGMAX 2x 1024 PC3200 RAM (dunno what to get )
WD 320G SATAii 8M CACHE (dunno if the extra 8 is worth any extra money)
XFX 7900GT OC 520Mhz (seems like an awesome card for value)

Any help could be greatly appreciated. Any tweaks, issues, or general help please.

Topic Title: what to do with 300 dollars
Topic Summary:

Get a hooker.

I am Laughing my A$$ off

 

[thorin]

Put it in the bank. Take your wife (or significant other) out (before you get in trouble for gaming too much and ignoring them ). Save it for a rainy day. Pay off some debt.

The system you outlined above is great. Don't let the leftover burn a hole in your pocket, don't waste it, put it to good use.

 

[Powermoloch]

another 7900GT or

save it in the bank

 

[phantom404]

Save it for nintendo Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii, they just had press coverage and it looks pretty sweet.

 

[aniruddha23]

Invest in INTC

 

[roemer21]

What monitor do you have? You might want to go with a Dell widescreen... or save towards one. Or... invest it!!!!

 

[shortylickens]

www. a n g e l s l a d i e s b r o t h e l.com

OR.....
Save it for a future upgrade. Crysis and UT2007 will be out eventually and by then 300 bucks will buy a card capable of playing them.

 

[SparkyJJO]

if you didn't use it, then save it. No need to let it burn a hole in your pocket.

 

[pkme2]

Get a Seasonic S-12 500W.

 

[fire400]

Originally posted by: pkme2
Get a Seasonic S-12 500W.

skip this PSU if the rest of your parts are not going to be silent built. it's like getting 2 gigs of RAM for a Celeron, fallback on system parts wouldn't make sense if the gain of one peice of hardware can't be noticed all together.

they have for under a hundred bucks, 16mb cache drives with NCQ, which is a very good deal I think.

 

[pkme2]

Originally posted by: fire400

Originally posted by: pkme2
Get a Seasonic S-12 500W.

skip this PSU if the rest of your parts are not going to be silent built. it's like getting 2 gigs of RAM for a Celeron, fallback on system parts wouldn't make sense if the gain of one peice of hardware can't be noticed all together.

they have for under a hundred bucks, 16mb cache drives with NCQ, which is a very good deal I think.

For $125 (Newegg), the Seasonic 500W is only $25 more than the Antec. You can let Currybreakfast decide if he wants one of the better PSUs.

 

[pkme2]

You can get OCZ Titanium 2GB for $165 after $40 rebate
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820227056

Seasonic
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817151024

 

[t3h l337 n3wb]

Enermax Liberty 500W FTW! Efficient, quiet, modular, and very powerful. Pretty good price too. Oh, and upgrade to the 16MB version of that hard drive. It's worth the extra couple bucks. Just save the rest of the money to upgrade later.

 

[6000SUX]

Buy a nice photo printer, and print more money.

 

[currybreakfast]

LOL ok guys, im in australia and the prices are a bit inflated due to the weaker dollar. A 7900GT OC (520mhz) is $520 . I am upgrading from my curent system and I can wait but dont want to. It has random problems which come up and are a pain to fix, but are fixable, just recently the BIOS clock went haywire. I do need a newer PSU cos the current one (raidmax 380) is not very good, the voltages are all spastic and it sounds like a cricket when under little load. I am happy with my ANTEC case and went for the NEOHE cos apparantly the case was designed for it (P180) but this item is not a must, any other good brands/makes? are any other ANTEC PSUs any good? The system I posted came to about $1900AU which is pretty good seeing as it started at about $2100AU.

I have decided to save the money cos spending it on an already good system is pretty silly. Just out of curiosity, how do u guys think the AM2 socket will go compared to the Conroe when AMD get the new DDR2 memory controller happening cos atm it sux and is holding back the tested CPus. As I said earlier I can wait but am unsure if the conroe is worth while waiting 2 months for, or paying the premium of a new technology (mobo etc). The designed system should last a few years until an upgrade so by then a newer technology will definately be out and the system obsolete, the same with the AM2 or the Conroe, but is waiting the 1-2 months worth while? will it last another year or so?

Thanks for the multitude of replies

EDIT: a modular PSU is essential cos the cable management in the P180 can be a bit weird.

 

[T9D]

I cant believe no one said this..... it's exactly the price...

Get the PhysX card. Might be fun to piddle around with. And who knows may pay off some day if they get it all together better

 

[Corporate Thug]

second 7900