1st timer, low budget, me & wife project :)

After reading this article, $500 Gaming PC: Day 1, Component Selection http://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] ,1810.html ,
my wife and I decided to try building our first computer. Neither of us has built a PC since 2003? 2004?
I'm sure lots has changed. I'm sure lots is still the same.

Here is a wishlist I created on NewEgg. At first, all the components were nearly identical to the above TomsHardware article, but I've changed a few things.
Can yall take a glance at my wishlist? I want to make sure, everything will work well together.

Here is my wishlist:
https://secure.newegg.com/NewVersio [...] D+april+22
Here is a briefing:
Antec Sonata III 500 Black 0.8mm cold rolled steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 500W Power Supply
GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3L LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX All Solid Capacitor Intel Motherboard
XFX PVT88SFDF4 GeForce 8800GS 384MB 192-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card
Intel Pentium E2200 Allendale 2.2GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor Model BX80557E2200
G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F2-8500CL5D-2GBPK
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3250310AS 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
ViewSonic Optiquest Series Q201wb Black 20" 5ms Widescreen LCD Monitor
Pioneer 20X DVD±R DVD Burner Black IDE Model DVR-115DBK
COOLER MASTER RR-CCH-L9U1-GP 92mm Hyper TX2 CPU Cooler
Subtotal: $804.87



Our goal is to stay under $1,000.
I'm hoping to get this done within a week or two!

*EDIT*
I'm sure I'll be asked, 'What do you intend to do with this PC?'
Well, I am NOT a gamer. I'm a budding freelance web developer (90%+ of my time is spent coding xhtml/css/php). I use mostly OpenSource/Free software titles.
Perhaps the only graphic intense part of my daily use would be watching videos on YouTube, maybe a rented DVD! I do some of my graphic work in
Macromedia Fireworks (older version). I'm going to run XP Pro, and future plans involve dual-boot between Ubuntu 8 and XP.

Any and all help is appreciated!

HOWTO: Overclock C2Q (Quads) and C2D (Duals) - A Guide v1.5.2

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/ [...] uals-guide

Exellent choices. I would switch the hard drive to a 7200.11. Maybe... but may not be worth the extra money, switch out the processor with an E4500, it depends on how comfortable you feel about overclocking. I would definately switch out the memory to 2 x 2GB though, 4GB will only cost you another $25-$35 over 2GB of memory... on average, depends on the brands you like and what not.

Even for 175$ you can get
MSI NX8800GT 512M OC GeForce 8800GT 512MB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814127329

I don't think the 8800 series cards could be considered a bad idea at all. If you start considering gaming or try it later, you want a card that can handle it. That said, the 8800 gs will be perfect for your needs. In fact, look on newegg, they were carrying an overclocked edition of the 8800gs which should do as good as the 9600gt, which is not much worse than the 8800gt somebody suggested earlier.

Secondly, do you intend to overclock? If not, I might suggest an AMD chip and AMD compatible motherboard as opposed to Intel. Why? Well it is true that Intel is currently the performance king, if you are looking mainstream products, or toward lower end, or midrange and don't want to overclock price vs performance on those conditions, I think AMD will suit your needs better.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6819103212

Here's a board to compliment it.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813138081

Nice thing about this board vs an intel rig, is it will give you room to grow. As far as I know, when Intel's newer chips come out, the LGA socket 775 will be starting to get phased out. With AMD, that AM2+ board will give you breathing room, because later you can go to AMD's 4 core processors, or 3 core processors as they get down in price, and as they are better perfected, so I'd consider that as well, that say in a year if you want faster, pop in a new chip, reset your settings and your good to go again.

A little cheaper than your chip, but also faster. I have an Athlon X2 5200+, stock speed, and it runs fine. Mine runs cool, runs all my games and everything I could want it to. Very pleased with it. Also, if it comes with a heatsink as mine did, you'll save some money there as well. Mine at idle runs around 30 degrees celcius with the stock heatsink and fan.

Also, another thing, memory. Save yourself some money here too. The memory your getting is probably at least 60 bucks for 2 1 gb sticks. Don't need that fast right now. This is slightly slower, but is half the price.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6820161172

Save some money, or double your memory, your choice.

Last thing, hard drive, get 2 smaller drives instead of one larger one. Why? Redundancy. I just had to format our system as we were having problems with Vista getting really slow, and so I formatted it, but thankfully I was able to borrow a 500gb hard drive from my work to load all my stuff onto. It makes it nice when you can save everything onto a secondary drive, then if you have a problem, nuke the one that has your OS on it, reload it, and everything is still on the other drive.



You like open source stuff?

openoffice.org free office program. I even have a copy of Microsoft Office XP I bought sitting unused b/c I use this instead.

Need a program like norton ghost?

http://www.clonezilla.org/

I have never used this program, but it looks good, and for those times when you just want to keep your system like it is, if it does what norton ghost will, it should be able to take a kind of snapshot picture of your system once you get it running, then if you have problems, you should have an image you'd made from this program that you can reload and hopefully not lose anything. If it's like ghost, you should be up and running from a crash in 30 minutes. Very nice. I work in IT so tools like this make it nice, I've not tried this one myself, but I think I'm going to. The features look good and you can't beat the price.

Oh, since your a web developer, you'll appreciate this, find a program called icofx it's a freeware icon making program. Let's you edit icons I believe, but one thing I like, you can take a picture/photo, import it into this program and save a copy of it as an icon. Painless, nice quick and easy. Give you that extra touch if your doing pages professionally. That should get you started. Have fun!

I disagree on the video though, 8800gs can be found at 100 bucks with rebate, at that price, it's a steal.

Sorry about the double post. I have thread update issues.

I agree with ohiou_grad_06 about going with AMD since you're looking for a low budget non-overclocker. The 780G sounds like it would be perfect for your purposes. Here are my recommendations:

Case/PSU: Antec Sonata III w/ 500W Earthwatts- $99.99 (after $30 rebate) + free shipping
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ - $76.00 + free shipping
Mobo: Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H - $99.99 + $7 shipping
Memory: A-Data 2GB DDR2 800 - $39.99 + $5.99 shipping
HDD: Seagate Barracuda ST3250410AS 7200.10 250GB - $64.99 + free shipping
Optical: Samsung DVD±RW SATA - $26.99 + free shipping
Monitor: Acer AL2216Wbd Black 22" 5ms Widescreen LCD Monitor - $219.99 + $15.42 shipping
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total (including rebates and shipping): $656.35

My thoughts :
1. Why an IDE optical drive? Go with SATA!
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6827151153 for $27
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6827118002 for $27
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6827129020 for $31

2. Your power supply is way overkill. Buy this Corsair VX for $60 after MIR (you save $60)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6817139003
(offers better quality and enough power to add a quad core and a mid range graphics card (9600GT))

3. You want to run several OSes: Increase storage to a WD6400AAKS for $110 (you spend $50 more)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6822136218
(offers great performance and cost/gigabyte)

4. Your graphics card is wasted money if you won't use it (Sapphire HD 3450 for $50, save $80).

5. Change your CPU to E8200 for $190 (you spend $40 more)

6. You don't need 1066MHz RAM if you won't overclock.
Corsair 2x1GB kit for $26 after MIR (save $34)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6820145590
I still recommend going for 4GB (2x2GB) $76.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6820145184

Have fun.