I've been "out of the loop" when it comes to hardware for probably 3 to 4 years now...Getting married, having a baby, going to Iraq, moving, etc...Tends to make it where you can't afford new hardware that often

Anyhow I'd like to build myself and the wife two new, identical machines with my soon-to-be tax refund in the sub-$800 range. No monitors/keyb/mouse needed, just a case and everything in it.

I'd like to stick with the current manufacturers I've chosen, aside from the mobo as I've had good experiences with MSI, ASUS, ABIT, and Gigabyte. I'm a die-hard AMD fanboy over Intel though, and Nvidia (oddly enough) over ATI. Video cards I'm hoping to stick to EVGA for the step up program as I not long ago had to purchase some AGP cards when my two current boxes crapped out

Here's what I've been eyeballing for a few months now and keep watching to hopefully see the prices drop before I actually make the purchase. Any feedback would be much appreciated

SONY 1.44mb floppy drive $7.29
WD 160gb 1600ys SATA raid 16mb 7200rpm $65.90
LITE ON LH-20A1L-05 20x superallwrite SATA+lightscribe $31.90
EVGA 512-P3-N802-A1 e-Geforce 8800gt superclocked 512mb $288.90
COOLER MASTER cac-t05-uw centurion 5 (silver/black) mid tower $49.50
ANTEC EA500 500W $84.70
AMD ATHLON 64 X2 4200+ 2.2GHZ (BRISBANE) $66.00
MSI K9AG NEO2-DIGITAL $76.25
KINGSTON 2GB KIT KHX6400D2LLK2/2G $79.75

Total (pre-shipping) $737.94

All my pricing is done at mwave. I know they're not -always- the cheapest, but their customer service has been the absolute best to me in terms of RMA, even replacing an out-of-warrenty (both theirs and mfg) part that the mfg wouldn't service

So, yes, please, any feedback welcome Will that case keep things cool enough? Is the PSU enough juice? The computers will be sitting at floor level in a desk attachment and I do have a dog, so pet hair is going to suck . Just trying to get sme reassurance my parts will all play nice together before I drop the change

Oh, and sorry this is getting long, but to those who might ask: We plan to do some gaming and mostly web surfing. We're not huge into the top-end FPS/action games so this doesn't need to handle Crysis or something crazy. We mostly play WoW or RTS like Warcraft III.

I'm a diehard AMD fanboy also.

For the specs you gave, you're going a little cheap on the power supply. I believe 450W should be enough, but I would be concerned about any power supply cheaper than about $50. You tend to get what you pay for with them. I would recommend Antec or Enermax instead.

Also on the processor, for $10 more you could get a 4400, or for $20 more you could get a 4600. The one you picked should be enough for what you're planning on doing, but that's just something to consider. Doesn't hurt to be a litle faster.

But other than that, the system looks fine. It should even be able to play Crysis, just not at the highest detail of course.

Thanks for the info

Swapped out the PSU to a ANTEC EA500 500W (at quite the price gap ) and, an extra case fan ($4, why not?), and up to a 4200+ for another $6. Mwave isn't carrying 4600's or I may have gone there, no big issue though

One other thing I noticed is that you picked faster memory than what the board lists. I don't believe that should be a problem. The memory should just run at the slower speed. However, some motherboards can be pickier about the memory. Even with the voltage of it.

It might be a good idea to check out a few reviews, and see what type of memory other people are using with that board. Like I said, the memory you picked would probably work fine, but just be warned. That's one potential trouble-spot.

I didn't even notice that honestly! I just assumed since it was listed as an option for the bundle it was ok.

Dropped to a PC6400 instead that actually has better latency, lower voltage, and lower pricetag

Good catch

Reading more about the board specs now though it supports up to 1.8v and I'm looking at 2v memory...Time to check out different boards to avoid issues.

I'd ditch the floppy drives and put the extra 14 bucks to a better cpu for you

Ah, for $7.29, you almost HAVE to get the floppy drive. At least 1, anyway. You just never know when you're going to need the stupid thing!

I wouldn't put a floppy drive in my own computers anymore. I like a ribbon-free system. However, I did buy a USB floppy drive. That way if I ever needed one in any computer, I'd have one.

But so far I never haven't needed it once yet.

Never know when I'll need it except for soon Building an image in VMware with all the standard software and patches done (Firefox, Thunderbird, Open Office, etc). Sysprepping it to use a different HAL for the new boxes, dumping it to my fileserver, and network ghosting it when I get them. Ghost is still a lot easier to make a bootable network floppy on than hassling with cdroom boot sometimes

But rather than using network boot floppies, you could use Windows PE (which is included in the Windows AIK). You could do a lot more in Windows PE, and I have noticed it tends to transfer data over the network much faster than network boot floppies.

I have gotten to where I use Microsoft's ImageX for most of my imaging. But you could still use Ghost under Windows PE by running ghost32.exe.

Well, I'm just doing my part to push floppies out the door. I mean, the damn things just hold 1.44MB. I can't believe people still use them.

I agree on the floppy front, new motherboards should be able to boot from USB disks, which is just a far better idea, faster, greater capacity, etc. I definitely wont be buying any more floppy drives. I only use mine to do partitioning, and I'll just migrate to flash.

I've got a very, very old version of WinPE sitting around ... someplace. It has its merits and has helped me do data recovery on my HDDs before among other things. As for the newer(?) version and the AIK: Aren't they just for Vista? I'm planning to stick to XP. I'm not extremely knowledgeable on most things Vista, but the top line off the link you provided states "The Windows Automated Installation Kit (Windows AIK) helps you to install, customize, and deploy the Microsoft Windows Vista™ family of operating systems."

It's just an updated version of WinPE that's based on Vista. It has some new features and abilities. You can still gather or deploy XP images with it.

But you might as well learn Vista now though. You don't want to end up stuck in the past!

Thanks for the heads up I'll go poke around in it and see if I can do what I want to easier than with sysprep and a ghost load.

I'm not too worried about being stuck in the past, but I'm not willing to drop the money on something that offers me no added value. I'm sure that Vista is great for some folks, but it just doesn't give me any compelling reason to change over when all the software I use still works perfectly (or better) in XP

With looking at a 4200+ Brisbane and the half-multiplier stepping, how bad of a performance hit is it really with DDR 800 only clocking at 733? Is it worth twice the cost on the CPU to go to a 5400+ just to run the memory at full speed?

Well, the 4400+ is $65 right now with the [H] deal code:

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1270666

They've also got 4GB of non-OC'able DDR2 for $89 right now, which is a real steal.

As long as the RAM does the speed needed, it's fine. Don't go any lower than DDR2-800, for future proofing. If you mobo is decent enough, you can even run the mem at 800 without overclocking the RAM for a performance bump.

I would make sure whatever mainboard you get is capable of running a Phenom proc, just for future-proofing. If it costs you an extra $10-15 to be able to upgrade to a triple or quad core a year down the line when prices are down, that's money well spent today. I'm still running a s939 x2, but I planned ahead with the mobo, and was able to upgrade from a single core 3000+ to an x2 4400+ for $65 two years later; that made the performance bup a real bargain.

Wow that RAM deal is nice! I think I'm about to snatch up two of those right now before I even have the tax return to build the rest of the machines I've never heard of G.Skill but it had awesome reviews on what I googled.

I don't think it's possible to future-proof into Phenom. 64 x2's are using AM2 sockets while Phenom is using AM2+, I don't think it's backward compat with AM2 CPUs, but I could be wrong!

edit: And not 2 minutes later I prove myself wrong "Socket AM2 will support AMD Phenom processors. ... Socket AM2+ is an intermediate successor to socket AM2, which features DDR2 SDRAM and HyperTransport 3.0 support. Socket AM2+ chips can plug into a socket AM2 motherboard, but operates only with HyperTransport 2.0." so my original mobo choice is still WINNAAARRR

It's important to look and make usre the specific board lists AM2+ compatibility as a feature. It requires a BIOS update, and not all boards get one. Like I said, it's an easy upgrade later, but you have to make sure you can do it before you buy.