LITE-ON Black IDE Combo Drive Model SOHC-5236V BK RTL - Retail

CODEGEN CAT-1012-CA Black/Silver Steel/Plastic MicroATX Mid Tower Computer Case 300W Power Supply - Retail

Western Digital Caviar SE WD800JB 80GB 7200 RPM IDE Ultra ATA100 Hard Drive - OEM

ASUS A7V400-MX Socket A (Socket 462) VIA KM400A Micro ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail

LITE-ON SK-1788/BS 2-Tone PS/2 Wired Standard Keyboard - Retail

KEYBOARD-2000 HZ3003/UP 2 tone 3 Buttons 1x Wheel USB + PS/2 Optical Mouse - Retail

CORSAIR ValueSelect 512MB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 333 (PC 2700) Unbuffered System Memory Model VS512MB333 - OEM

AMD Athlon XP 2800+ Barton 333MHz FSB Socket A Processor Model AXDA2800BOX - Retail

ARCTIC COOLING Pro 2LTC 80mm Blue LED Light Cooling Fan - Retail


I am building a computer and want to stay under 350. I have used this case and keyboard before and had very good luck with both of them. I usally go with kingston RAM because it is a good name brand. I hear that Corsair is an ok brand so this is my first time using them. This computer is going to be used for billing and the internet so it doesn't need to be fancy. Please give me any suggestions on how to improve this computer.

Thank you
Brian

Hmmm; you say you want to keep the cost down? Well, you might not agree with my suggestion, but I would suggest that what you have described is overkill.

Used for the Internet? There are (at least) several hundred thousand applications that run on the Internet; some of them will work with this machine and others won't.

I assume that you mean Web (HTML) browsing, in which case you have two main options: Mozilla Firefox and links. links is very fast and takes almost no resources, while Firefox needs big X servers and things. For email, you could choose many different applications, but I'd tend to go for pine; it's simple and it works.

If you can afford to go with Links and a text-mode billing program (LaTeX will produce very attractive PDF files from a text-mode front-end, although there's no billing logic in it per se) then you can dispense with X Windows, shove a nice Pentium or K6 processor in it (and a cheaper motherboard), and have a very reasonable system that's more than suited to the task, at a fraction of the price. Edit w.r.t. Electro's post: The problem with X is not so much the server load as the fact it pushed up the cost of the processor and graphics card/chipset, but I guess that's becoming less and less of an issue these days; point conceeded.

Just my two cent's worth…

I understand that it is an over kill system. I infact have 7 1.1ghz pentium IIIs with mobos sitting in my room right now doing nothing. But the people who i am building this for said they wanted a good computer for 400 dollars. They were going to buy a cheap 400 dollar dell but they desided to give me the job instead. Although I probably will have to charge them 450, I think this is the best bang for there buck. The processor is the cheapest amd xp retail processor which comes with a longer warrenty. The mobo is cheap but it also has the asus name. (Asus my personal favorite brand). 512 RAM is just in case they ever use windoze. The name brand of the ram is to save me time so that I dont get crap RAM and have to problem solve an hardware error. An 80 gb harddrive is only like 10 bucks more than a 40 gb. I mean the price isn't really the problem. I just need to keep the parts under 350 or so. What I am asking is do you think it is a good setup. Is any of these pieces are problem likely.

Go with white bezel panel for the CD/DVD drive because the case already has a white panel. It will look stupid to have black on a white panel. Do you really need 52X for CD disc. I suggest go a little slower. I think 40X is way over enough. A 16X DVD drive is overkill. I have 4X and a 8X DVD drives They are fast enough for me. I suggest spending more time finding CD/DVD drives with lower accessing times. This is where most of the time the computer will be spending.

Black keyboards are a little harder to read than a white keyboard because the letters are not big and thick enough to stand out. Since the user is going to spend a lot of time browsing web sites, spend extra money on the mouse. Logitech MX300 or Logitech MX500 will probably good mice to use for web browsing. I have a Logitech MX300 and it works well in Linux.

Do you really need to add a lighted fan because you will not see it. Just get a standard 80mm fan. Do not forget the cork to minimize vibrations from the fan.

The case is alright but it will need a back fan too. The power supply does not count for the back fan. You can buy two 40mm fans and cut two holes for the 40mm fans.

I suggest buying a better power supply such as the one from Zalman. If you do, the customer will not have any problems because Zalman power supplies are power factor controlled (PFC) and they filter DC well. A PFC power supply adjusts when the input voltage varies. Also there is no 120/240 switch which makes it fool proof.

A socket-A motherboard is alright, but try looking at socket 754 or socket 939. AMD Athlon 64-bit processors uses a lot less electricity than AMD Athlon 32-bit processors. Socket-A processors are now obsolete and a year or two from now the customer have to buy a completely new computer.

I do not know why rjlee is complaining about Firefox. Firefox is light-weight if you do not install tons of extensions. Also X is not heavy at all. With 512 MB of RAM, the computer will rarely go to the hard drive to load more libraries. At the end of the day the computer will rarely access the hard drive.

I would say go with the system you said it"s not an over kill it will just be fast.



don't worry about the CD ROM drive or any DVD burners and the like

don't worry about any hard disks except for serial

don't worry about mouses keyboards as long as they are all wired



worry about sound card should be O.K though, but do note

worry about network card should be O.k Though

how are you going to connect to the net?

The case is acutally black and silver. So the black doesn't look bad on the silver. I have used the case before and it looks ok. The keyboard is the keyboard that I use at home and really like. Secertaries probably never look at the letters on the keyboard anyways. The mouse I do worry about. But it matches the black and silver theme and does look like a logitech off brand. The fan will not be placed in the back. I will install 2 fans On on the side panel (the blue one) and a second one on the PSU next to the CPU to suck up what the cpu fan blows onto the heatsink. I have used this psu before and it worked very well. The replies that the psu has recieved on the feedback is very good also. I did not want to get a 64-bit processor I did want to get a xp.

Either they will connect via the wired connection that is intergated or I will use a d-link wireless connection to connect to there wireless connection. I do need to ask them what they want to do about that. I do have extra sound cards and nic laying arround so if they do become a problem they will have simple solutions.