I am looking at building a new pc my first attempt.

i want to use the computer for my educational use, like word typing, creating web pages, storing wedding pictures (really loads of them), want to store them on dvd, i lalso use programming languages like, visual basic, python etc to make programmes.

and after much trawling through the internet I have come up with the following spec:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ 2.0GHz
Gigabyte GA M59SLI-S4 AM2
400 GB SERIAL ATA II HARD DRIVE
2GB RAM (1GBx2)
LiteOn DH-18A1P-18C 18X DVDRW
Microsoft Windows XP

i am not into gaming! will the onboard graphics cards do?

which garphics card would you recommend?

how much can i sell it for? any ideas?

I would apreciate any comments or advice on this spec.

thanks Windog

http://forumz.tomshardware.com/har [...] internal=1

oops double post

Hi windog,

I wouldn't go with anything from AMD until they introduce some worthy cpus. Also, with the current price of XP and its limited life expectancy (01/28/2008) and especially with the fact that you are not planning to stress your things too much, I would surely consider the cheaper Vista Premium OEM package (and you can learn about the future too ). Since you do not need HIGH fps, I would also suggest a 1600 series ATI graphics card; they are cheap, very well supported and will give you all the performance you need.

Those are just my thoughts, I am sure others may have better ideas (and possibly not so rude as you have seen so far).

--DD

Rough Suggestion:-

Cheap dual core CPU (X2 3600/E4300? - Avoid Pentium Ds)
Decent motherboard (P965 chipset for Intel, Nforce chipset for AMD - I like ASUS and Gigabyte boards)
2GB DDR2 Ram (667/800mhz, Corsair value ram is good stuff)
Cheap video card (7300GT or thereabouts)
HDD (Seagate or Western Digital SATA, how big does it need to be?)
DVD/RW drive
Case ( Anything will do)
PSU (Something around 400 -> 500W from a decent brand like Antec, Thermaltake etc)
XP Home or Vista Home Premium

Something like that would give you a decent PC with a good upgrade path for the future.

Mandrake's list does look nice. From his selectables, I think I would go with any Intel duo cpu; Seagate (7200.10 cause of the price/performance ratio); the bigger PSU, 500W min (bigger is better ); and Vista Premium OEM for ~$112,

One place to save a little money with your stated requirements; you should get the cheapest memory you can (with the lowest latency). A lot of issues are involved but 533Mhz 4,4,4,12 memory will give you very near the same performance as 800 5,5,5,15 on a 1066 fsb. I have 4G of 5,5,5,15 on an x6800 and memtest86+ says I get about 3.6G throughput. When I slow the memory down to 533 4,4,4,12 I still get around 3.6G. I do overclock my memory and I get around 4.1G but it cost a lot extra to be able to do 900 4,4,4,12. See, it can get complicated so just go for any 2G ddr2 kit using 4,4,4,12 corsair memory and you'll do just fine.

Best
--DD