WHAT MOBO???

my friend is askin him 2 make him a pc w/ $800 budget, including monitor, speakers, and printer. I got most of the things down, but had a few ??? such as: He wants a 40GB hd, but i dont know which is best for my buck. 7200rpm is what i want, and i keep on hearing from u guys that ibm isn't the best in the world. Then what should i get. Also, he decided to get an Athlon 2100, but which mobo should i get? there's so many, and im still a bit of a newbie on mobo's. I want the mobo to have built in sound, modem (i dont know if thats possible), NIC, usb 2.0, pci slots dont matter, dimm slots dont matter, i wont be doing oc'ing... ummm i think thats it.

Last thing, if u guys can when recommending me a certain part, tell me from which place i can get it, because i'm gonna want to get it from a place that has good deals and has good customer support/(online or not) store warranty.

Your opinions and criticism will be most happily accepted. Please help me!!!

The greatest risk of all is not taking one!

hard drives... all pretty similar really. though i too advise against an IBM. if he wants a very quiet drive, i suggest a seagate baracuda IV, or for performance, either the maxtor D740X or westerdigital BB (both come in 40Gb capacities)

as for motherboard, i see you want alot of built in stuff. if thats the case then i suspect a Nforce motherboard will be your choice. they have alot of integrated stuff for only a slightly higher price. Nforce also comes with and without onboard graphics... if you plan to play games i suggest an external graphics card.
P.S. see if you can find any Nforce2 boards, they are even better.

as for online stores, if you are in america and canada alot of people here reccommend newegg.com, allthough not me personally as they dont ship to australia

<b>Before visiting THG i was a clueless noob. Now im still clueless, but look at my nice title!<b>

With an $800 budget, you should consider the best budget priced boards, such as the MSI 745 Ultra, and the less full-featured Asus A7S333.

<font color=blue>By now you're probably wishing you had asked more questions first!</font color=blue>

Many people says that WD's "Special Edition" drives are cool, so try to find it.
As board, you can choose MSI745 Ultra like Crashman said, but it has no USB2.0, just 1.1. But except that problem this card is built fro you! It's really a great budget-card.

"Don't necessarily listen to tersagun,he's been advocating AMD systems,he thinks Intel sucks ass.."

MSI KT3 Ultra is now the mobo of choice for Athlon. It is ultra stable, good performer and inexpensive. There are two versions of KT3 Ultra. They are-

MSI KT3 Ultra
MSI KT3 Ultra-ARU (MSI KT3 Ultra + RAID and 5.1 sound)

Both have USB 2.0 ports and onboard Realtek Audio chip.

nForce is good for high quality sound (audigy like) and Onboard NIC. They don't have USB 2.0

If you buy nForce, buy ASUS A7N266-C if you don't need integrated GeForce2 MX graphics. If you need integrated GeForce2 MX, go for MSI K7N-420 Pro

thanx quetzalcoatl... more than i needed to know... but more is always better than less. 1 questions though... what are the specs on the mobo? and you forgot the cd-rw or dvd.

The greatest risk of all is not taking one!

Need some changes:

MSI KT3 Ultra-ARU $115 ($95 for KT3 Ultra)
256 MB Kingston PC2100 CL2.5 DDR $65

or

ASUS A7N266-C $105
256 MB Kingston PC2100 CL2.5 DDR $65

An Athlon XP 2100+ buyer should not get ECS or similar value mobo. Good mobo is the base of tension free computing. Corsair PC2700 modules are waste for this guy, because he is not overclocking and performance difference between my suggested DDR is veeeeeeeeery small (1 to 2%). Kingston PC2100 CL2.5 DDR RAMs are pretty good (I am using personally).

These changes does not increase the cost and gives him a good platform.

I'd say the EP-8K5A2+ is the best choice. It's cheap ($105) and has KT333 chipset, LAN, sound, USB 2.0, and RAID. A bit more than the MSI, but is also better. The EP-8K3A+ was tooted to be one of the best AMD mobos out there, but with the new refreshed version of it, the EP-8K5A2+ is almost definitely the best you can get, for now.

<i>Past mistakes may make you look stupid, but avoiding future ones will make you look smart!</i>

If you're trying to save some money, forget the MSI Kt3 Ultra board. The ECS K7VTA3 not only has on board LAN, but the Kt333ce chipset, with better overclocking potential if you do decide to overclock. An Athlon XP 2000+ is also a good performer, and you can save from $20-35 depending on your vendor.

As for a DVD-ROM or CD-RW i'd suggest this
Sony 16x DVD-ROM
Lite On 40x12x48 CD-RW

Both run around $50 depending on your vendor, once again

I need my Hammer now to bash some newbies

Possibly MSI KT3 Ultra2 is based on KT333CE chipset.

I would buy a system for 800 bux like this:

MSI KT3 Ultra (special deal in newegg.com) 77$
256 MB Kingston PC2100 CL2.5 DDR 65$
AMD ATHLON XP 1900+/266 FSB PROCESSOR CPU 106$
Coolermaster HCC-002 HSF 24$
SAMSUNG DynaFlat 755DF 17" CRT MONITOR 188$
1 tube of Arctic Silver 3 6$
Seagate Barracuda IV ST340016A 40gb 7200rpm 76$
Any case with min. 350 Watt power supply ca.35$
Pine Technology 56k dial up modem 12$
SAMSUNG 1.44MB FLOPPY DRIVE 8$
Samsung SC152LEB 52X CD-ROM OEM 27$
Maxtop Multimedia 3+1 Beige Bundle with:
Enhanced Windows 2K keyboard, Speakers &
Beige 3 button wheel mouse 28$
VGA LEADTEK GEFORCE4 MX440 64MB DDR
VGA & TV-OUT. OEM BOX 89$

The sum is 741$
so it is pretty cheaper than you can afford.
Maybe you should buy with the rest of money a cdrw and a better speaker