new computer for me

[Calypson]

I'm building myself a new compy from newegg.  Here are some key features...

Western Digital 250GB Hard Drive
1GB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM
ASPIRE X-Plorer (2tone - Black/Silver) Steel Computer Case
AMD Athlon 1GHz Dual Core Processor
HP Silver-Black 17" LCD Monitor
ASUS Radeon XPRESS 200 CrossFire Motherboard
LITE-ON DVD-ROM Drive
LITE-ON Black ATAPI/E-IDE DVD Burner
two Radeon X1600PRO 256MB 128-bit CrossFire Ready Video Cards (two of them for crossfire)

whatcha think?

[kevin]

Nice! .... I'm in the upgrade market also, but that's a lot higher than the spec I was aiming at :)

[Ian Price]

Should make MS Solitaire just zip along :P

Only a 1Ghz AMD? You might want to rethink that with all that graphics card power. Even if dual core doubles the speed (which it won't), that's going to be outdated pretty quickly the way the world is moving.

The rest seems mighty fine though. One thing I would check is the sound and number of USB ports. I thought I'd have enough with six, but I added on another 8 via hubs (actually making an additional 6 as you lose two plugging the hubs in). And these are pretty much all used all the time - I have joypads and zip and thumb/flash drives plugged in permanently.

On-board sound quality is never as good as independent sound cards.

Does it come with a floppy drive? They may seem outdated, but I've made some use of mine.

What about speakers? Does it come with speakers?

Also, is there a monitor size upgrade available?  If you can afford the extra it's definitely worth it.

If you are building this yourself you might also want to ensure that you get a fan that's able to cool it all suffieciently - those cards will probably have their own fan, but it's still going to get very hot in there.

Although I guess you already know all of the above. :)

[Calypson]

well i was on a budget so its lot like i could get the best of the best - but this will last me about 5 years if i upkeep it and upgrade it occasionally.  And it does have a floppy and i already have some speakers i can use that are pretty good.  The 17" was picked because I can't work on anything larger.  its big, but not too big.  and I agree with the cooling and USB ports - but i have yet to purchase those items

[stevmjon]

i agree with the cooling.

add a fan on the front of the case blowing inwards.
add a fan to the back of the case blowing outwards.

this keeps air flow the same as the power supply fan.

also add a hard drive fan if you have space. these clip to the bottom of the hard drive itself. hard drives can get quite hot.

on my own computer, with the above fans listed, i also added an after market heat sink with larger than standard fan to the cpu. i am in a bungalow that gets very hot in summer. it reaches 44 degC on hot days, and my computer still keeps on going.( i nearly pass out though).
unfortunately my plug-in air conditioner cuts out if it gets too hot.

 cheers stevmjon