Buildin' a PC

[TBFD]

So me and my mom have been wanting to build our own PC. We (I) were looking at some parts...

$180 for a MOBO/CPU combo- 3.0 ghz dual core with a 6mb l2 cache. 12 USB ports, built in soundboard...
$70 for 4gb (2x2024) of 800mhz ram
$30 for yer basic DVD writer
$50 for a 500gb HDD

and the onboard graphics card is good enough we decided to exclude an upgrade on that for now

oh, and $40 for a nice looking case (clear side) with a built in 450w PSU.

Grand total is $375. We are hopeing to get it with her bonus. I would get the one she has now.

2.4 ghz dual core, 320 gb hdd, 3 gb ram, 9400gt 1GB GPU, 300w PSU... Better than the one I have now... By a long shot

[stickcult]

What's the processor, and what's the motherboard graphic chip?

Some advice though, I bought a cpu/mobo combo because it was cheap and a nice processor, but it I also got a fatass video card, and it turned out the mobo was mini-atx. It was fine, but the video card covered up all but one of the SATA plugs! Ahh well.

Sounds pretty good though, hell, her old one sounds good..

[TBFD]

MOBO/CPU deal- http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... No=5024446

Case-http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1901962&sku=TC3J-4050%20P

[MichaelVash7886]

1 Not sure how that compares to your old GPU
2 Not much of an upgrade compared to the old computer, but for the price that's not bad.
3 Make sure you get DDR2 ram as that's what the mobo uses.
4 Unfortunately AMD do not preform quite up to par with Intel anymore, but for the price like I say, not bad.
5 Spend $100 on the HDD and you could find a 1.5 TB drive.
6 I would advise against getting the PSU with the case, generally they suck. Running that depending on how high end the GPU is I'd say get 600 watts.
7 Make sure your HDD is 3.5 SATA as you have a ton of SETA ports. You should consider SATA for the DVD burner too.

LAST YOU SHOULD CONSIDER GETTING A MOBO WITH MORE EXPANSION SLOTS! You only get 2 PCI and 1 PCI Express 16 and 1 PCI E 1 slots with that. If you want to add anything to it, you are going to be very limited. Also, it's unclear if they are PCI E 2.0 or not (though since it doesn't say 2.0 it's probably not) which isn't a huge deal, but stuff designed to run on PCI E 2.0 can't quite reach it's potential on non 2.0 slots, not a major deal, but least just say when I build my next machine it's going to blow my current one out of the water.

[stickcult]

That's either exactly the mobo/cpu combo I got or pretty close to it. It works fine, the cpu's pretty good. However, like I said, the graphics card slot gets in the way of the SATA plugs. Also, while the motherboard has decent graphics for being built in, the one in your old computer is better.

[twistedblister]

wow not much to add here but way to go hobyist