Need input for final decision

[Vanished]

I am building a system for a friend on a very tight budget of 550 bucks. This is what I have come up with for $554 shipped. What do you think? I am kinda torn on the mobo, either the Shuttle or the ECS K7S5A pro.

I am building a $600 dollar system for my bud, and wanted to see what you guys think of my choices.

EVERCASE Model# E4252BEF5 (BLACK) 10-BAY MID-TOWER CASE -

Lite On 48x24x48 CDRW Model LTR-48246S RetailBuffer

Arctic Silver's NEW Premium Silver Polysynthetic

SUNON 80x80x25mm, Ballbearing, Case Fan, DC 12V,

MAXTOR 20GB 7200RPM Model # 6E020L0 OEM, DRIVE ONLY

Samsung Original DDR333 PC-2700 256MB CAS2.5 - OEM

Shuttle Motherboard for AMD Processor, Model# AK32A


Dlink DFE-530TX+ Fast Ethernet Adapter 10BT/100BTX -

AMD Athlon XP 1700+/266 FSB Thorougbred

Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition

ATI RADEON 8500LE 64MB DDR CRT/DVI/TV

 

[o1die]

Everything looks good except the mobo. For $9 more, I would go for the albatron kt333 board ($71 at newegg). It has a faster chipset than the shuttle. Some mobos with both sdram and ddram slots aren't as stable.

 

[jlanka]

OR, you could omit the 8500LE and get an <A HREF="http://www.msicomputer.com/product/detail_spec/product_detail.asp?model=K7N2G-L" target="_new">MSI K7N2G-L</A> with integrated video. Newegg has it for $113. He can upgrade the video later if he wants. But this way you're getting the best chipset for K7 straight off the bat.

<i>It's always the one thing you never suspected.</i>

 

[jlanka]

oh, you also can omit purchasing the NIC with that board.

<i>It's always the one thing you never suspected.</i>

 

[Civilized]

<font color=red>why not just go ahead and get the epox 8RDA for only 88bucks from newegg....the nforce2 is the best chipset money can buy right now and you can run it in single channel ddr mode and not lose that much performance!! This is a much much much better motherboard</font color=red>

I would also get a different case...I definately recommend chieftec cases...you can also get one of these very nice cases from newegg for around 60 bucks

<font color=green>Cars are for people who are scared of riding on two wheels</font color=green>

 

[Spitfire_x86]

Get a nForce2 board. They have 100 times better stability and reliability than ECS K7S5A. Upgradability is also much better.

MSI K7N2-L is the mobo for you. It's a cheap and decent nForce2 mobo

Edit:- Why not get the 40 GB version of you selected HDD? It will cost very little more, and will be faster. No need to tell you will have 2x disk space.

You can buy Kinsgton PC2700 CL2.5 DDR instead of Samsung. They are very good and the 256 MB module costs only $53

<b> "You can put lipstick on a pig, but hey, it's still a pig!" - RobD </b>