New PC

[Liquid Snake]

Yup I'm going to be building a new PC. Unforunately it's for my friend and not me. He's going to be using the PC for mostly gaming. This is what's going in it; just looking for some comments or suggestions:

AMD Athlon XP 1800+ (1.53GHz)
Asus A7V266-E
256MB of Crucial PC2100 DDR (CT1664Z265)
IBM 40GB 60GXP
Pioneer DVD-106S
Linksys LNE100TX 10/100 NIC
Sound Blaster Audigy (OEM version)
ATI Radeon 8500
Sony 19" G420S
Klipsch Promedia 2.1
3.5" floppy, keyboard, mouse etc

Still need a good, but relatively quiet HSF for the Athlon. A lot of the good HSF's I've seen are using those deafening Delta fans. Any suggestions?

[borat]

nice spec but dont get the ibm hard drive get a western digital ab or a maxtor 740 .

[Nuno]

If your friend doesn´t intend to overclock why don´t you get a ECS K7S5A and save him $100?
Seagate Barracuda IV is also a good option for the hard drive and could save a few bucks also.
And better yet, use some of the money saved and get another 256 Mb crucial stick. 512 Mb for Win2k or WinXP really gets handy.

[Novdid]

Get an Alpha PEP66U with the Sanyo Denki fan that comes with it, good and quiet. It should fit that board to I think.

The IBM is good enough, if it works that is, mine does.

[Paddy]

The IBM is good enough, if it works that is, mine does.

Mine worked too...

[Fat Tone]

Save some more money by getting an 8500LE and flashing it with a retail BIOS! Mine cost £165 vs. £235 for retail (ok some advertised at ~£200, but were never in stock).

Get a 2nd monitor while your at it

[rubank]

I would go for the Soltek SL75DRV2 m/b, that´ll save you enough money to get an extra 256 mb stick. If you´re going for XP or Win2K it will be needed.
(I have that same m/b myself and I´m very happy with it - perfectly stable and extremely fast. As an old ASUS fan I was sceptical, but I´m pleasently surprised).

The 40 gb IBM is just fine in my experience- fast and quiet.

rubank

[borat]

your ibm drive may work but the western dig is just as quick but quieter and more reliable while the maxtor is simply faster even if its louder

[Liquid Snake]

Thanks for the suggestions, guys. I've been uncertain about the IBM drive as well because of the reported reliability problems. But two of the machines I've built have 20GB 60GXP's and another two have 15GB 75GXP's. None have died yet; the oldest one is a year and a half old. Also have been re-considering the mobo, as the Asus board is pretty expensive compared to some other boards with similar performance. My friend is reluctant about getting the ECS board because of past unfavorable experiences with SiS products. He's going to get an extra 128MB stick of DDR for a total of 384MB, since he's decided on Win2K.

Tony, where can I find more information about this 8500LE -> 8500 mod? Wouldn't that be overclocking the board? Or is the 8500LE just a regular 8500 with lowered clock speeds?

[Fat Tone]

LS - look on the forums at rage3d.com. When you've worked out what you need, if you can't find it let me know Apparently it involves modding the ATI flashing prog, which they aren't too happy about.

The Super Grace 8500LE is an 8500 made by ATI, just with a different BIOS. This clocks it at a lower speed, and seems to change other settings to make o/c more difficult until you flash it.

[[GDI]Raptor]

The ASUS motherboard is very good! I use it myself! This looks like a very good setup. Perhaps use a Western Digital disk instead of the IBM disk.... We have some problems with those IBM disks at work...