What do you think?

Holy Questions Batman!

Here's my 2 cents...

for the cpu.. Retail box gives you a stock heat sink fan (hsf) and a longer warranty (a few years I think). If you are going to overclock, you'll probably want to just get the OEM cpu (short/no warranty). Most people get OEM cpu's and then pick a good hsf (such as the Volcano 7... which is good - I use one) The Volcano 7 is cost effective, and the variable fan speed can result in a quieter system. If you plan on agressively overclocking you might want to fork out more money for a top performing top-of-the-line hsf.

Also about the cpu... if you can wait until the thoroughbred is released by AMD in a week or two, you can either pick one of those up (which will likely overclock much better than current XP's), or at least it will drop the price of the current XP's if you don't wish to agressively overclock. (I personally got an 1800XP+ last month because it was the sweet spot for the price - jumping up an additional $100 to the 1900 didn't make sense)

512mb of RAM is fine for just about anything right now. My rule of thumb is to leave a RAM slot open on the motherboard to allow me to buy more if my needs grow in the future (so if you have only 2 ram slots... buy 1 512 stick?) Getting good brand name RAM can save a lot of headaches, and is absolutely necessary if you plan on overclocking. DDR rated at PC2400, PC2700 and PC3000 basically just give you a guarantee that the ram won't be a bottleneck in raising the fsb when you overclock. However, PC2100 from Crucial or Mushkin high performance DDR (and some other brands) will overclock just as well as some of the higher rated ram.

For the hard drive, you would almost certainly get better performance from a WD drive with the 8mb buffer. The 133 DMA drives don't get any real performance boost in current systems.

For the motherboard... it would be nice to get an upwardly mobile motherboard. Waiting a short while (a few weeks) might let you snag a nice 333 based mobo with good options It also fits nicely with the thoroughbred timeline

Finally... the OS... just about everyone and anyone will tell you to go Win2k or WinXP.

Win2k is a sterile, stable, kick-ass operating system. WinXP is Win2k with a teletubby interface and some goodies added (the activiation scheme sucks royally though). I personally suggest going to XP since everything will be geared towards it moving forward... driver support, etc, etc... and it is a sweet OS once you get used to the look of it. (you can make it look like Win2k if you really want)

Cheers! It's always nice helping out a fellow Canadian

<font color=purple><b>You have just proven that signature advertising works!</b></font color=purple>

OK, ill take a stab at this too....

1- Id get the CPU with best price/performance at the time of purchase. Waiting for the Tbreds aint a bad idea!

2- I am afraid I cant answer this one too well as I am not familiar with the MSI board, but I have not heard anyone bitch about it either. If the price is right and the Asus isnt around when you buy go for it, but maybe others can give better info.

3- If you get retail the fan is fine, otherwise I would look at a variable speed fan like the volcano. If you plan to OC you may need something better.

4- DDR333 is a good buy as long as the price is not a huge increase. The DDR333 does help performance and has the added benefit of being slightly more future proof.

5- Western Digital 8 meg all the way. 133 is a gimmick at this point and serial ATA will be better. Bottom line is 133 will have no impact on performance.

6- RAID! I love raid myself, but some may argue. However the apps you are using could take good advantage of RAID cuz disk access is important for image and video manipulation so even the doubters should agree.

7- Nope, cant tell you about the mouseman. I use a basic scroll mouse and love it!

8- 512 is plenty for most people. The apps you are using are memory hogs so more MIGHT help, but 512 will vertainly gett the job done. Just be sure to leave at least one slot open to expend if you turn out to need more =)

9- I like win2k. All the crap with XP annoys me, but you can disable it all so its not too bad. 98 is outta the question, it would hinder you painfully with your setup.

Hope this all helps =)

Jesus saves, but Mario scores!!!

1. The 1700+ and 1800+ are good price points. If you're not in a hurry, and looking to OC anyway, wait for the T-breads. Also, if you want to OC, get the OEM, as you void the retail the other way.

2. I love ASUS. I have yet to get an ASUS board I didn't like. If you are waiting for the T-Bread, waiting for the Asus board might not be bad. Especialy, with the KT333 chip and PC2700 ram, you can easily move the FSB up to 166 to OC your T-Bread, and they should be able to handel it. Otherwise, USB 2.0 isn't in much use yet, and ATA100 is hitting a wall on the motherboard bandwidth anyway, so ATA133 isn't going to do much, so the asus A7V266-e should do you well if you aren't going to wait.

3. The Volcano 7 is good. The Volcano 7+ is good for an OCer. It has better heat dissepation, and you can manualy control the fan for your own comfort level of noise and heat.

4. See my #2. If you aren't going to push the FSB, then don't bother spending more on the ram unless it's not much more. It will be usefull in later boards for later processors, but Hammer will not run in a Socket A anyway, so you would have to rebuild most of the computer anyway.

5. Go with whatever drive does the best performance in ATA 100 and you feel comfortable with. I usually stick with WD, but that's just a personal preference.

6. Both. Do not raid with your boot drive, but if you need lots of space anyway, Raid with a secondary drive. If you do raid on your boot drive, run in 0+1 RAID so you don't run the risk of loosing all your data with a problem with just one disk.

7. I have the Microsoft Optical Explorer (or something like that, it's got 2 extra buttons on the sides of the normal 2 buttons) and I like it a lot. Made me think of moving back to a mouse from my Trackman Marble. Ultimately, it's personal taste as to what you like.

8. 512 (2 x 256) will be enough, but if you can spare the cash, nothing wrong with going with either 3 x 256, or 2 x 512. See above for 2100 vs 2700

9. Win 2K Pro is very good and stable. Win 98 is asking for trouble with what you would be doing. Win XP Pro might work for you, it's still being smoothed out, but eventualy it will be a better platform for many things than Win 2K. It might be easier however to start with 2K and move to XP later.

10. Videocard, I would sudgest you look into the new flavor of Radeon that should be coming out soon. The 8500 tweek should have a faster clock speed and 128 MB of ram, and still be priced lower than the GF4 TI4600.

11. If money isn't an object, mind sharing some?

I do not like it Tom you see,
I do not like green PCB.

Wow, thanks a load for all your help guys! Everything makes alot more sense now. The last time I bought a PC (late 1998) I payed $3400 CAN for a PII 350, 128mb, 5 gig drive and a Matrox G400 (lol!) with a decent Optiquest monitor and a crappy burner (CDR) . I picked the parts for my 'beast' at the local shop and paid handsomely. This brings me to my LAST question. Where is the best place to shop? Online (all from one place or price hunt from various sites)? From the corner store? Through a connection? I suppose there is no concrete approach to this, but if some of you would like to share your experiences with buying and building a new rig, it would be awesome.

Again, many many thanks for all your input.

Have a great day!
Buck

"Better to shut your mouth for fear of souding like a fool then open it and leave no doubt"
-Mark Twain

I'll add a vote for newegg.com

If you are running only exhaust fans then the case will have negative pressure. What this means is that it will suck dust dirt etc.. in every opening in the case. CD,floppy,CDRW, and all input/output jacks.

It is better to have a slightly positive case pressure.

I aint signing nothing!!!