Answers on a postcard...

[Q]

Hi all,

As you might be aware, I'm going to be in the market for a complete new system next week (well, pending payment anyway, see FS: IBM Thinkpad 600X (http://www.kustom.co.uk/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=3&t=000029) thread).

I've already decided on the case, but I was just wondering what everyone's thoughts were on my choice of motherboard, cpu, hd, vga.

I've got £950 to spend, and so far I've come up with this setup:

Black Yeong Yang server cube + 300W PSU (£ 179)
I-will KK266-R (approx £ 135)
1Ghz Athlon (approx £ 130)
256Mb Crucial CAS-2 PC133 (approx £ 60)
20Gb IBM Deskstar 60GXP (approx £ 85)
Matrox Millenium G450 Dual Head (approx £ 90) or ATI Radeon VE (approx £ 75)
Hauppauge WinTV/FM PCI (approx £75)

I won't need a monitor/keyboard/mouse as I can get these from my work (sort of ;) ).

Any (other) suggestions?

[Tami]

I love my G400 dual and hate my win tv card, would suggest the G450Etv, abit more money but real time editing. :)

[Q]

The reason why I chose to have them separate is that I want to be able to watch TV on one screen, and fiddle about on another screen. Is this also possible with the eTV one?
The cost is probably not so much of a problem since it's either £165 for both cards or a similar amount for the eTV...

[Tami]

You can do that with the Etv You can also do it with the wintv and g450, the benefit is that with the etv you can stream to hard drive, you can even pause live tv. I got to "test" one for a few days and it was lovely. you can even put another vidcard in pci and do three (or more), my G400 runs well with a Milenium 2 pci and can run vid in a window anywhere on three mon. :)

[GTi]

Q

You are going to use this to play DVD's right? if so I would say that a good sound card and good speaker system would be a priority along with a DVD drive of course. I would also say that at the prices that they are at the moment a 40Gb HDD would in the long run be better value especially if you want to store some of your music as MP3's. The Radeon All in wonder is supposed to do all that you could want in a video card but is a little costly. You could also think about a DDR setup as the mobo, memory and CPU are almost the same price (£25 tops to upgrade all three!) and DDR will soon be the norm.

Glad you chose the Cube :) .

[Q]

Tami, thanks for the input on the card. I will certainly reconsider my choice in that area.

GTi, what I want to build is a PC which replaces VCR, HIFI, DVD player and Satellite receiver (hence the choice for a Qube :D ). The reason why I chose not to include a soundcard is that the I-will has onboard sound and that will do for now (ofcourse in the long run it has to be upgraded to 5.1 or so). Also, my choice of graphics card is based upon the fact that I'm not interested in playing Quake Arena, et. al. as I'm not too keen on gaming (haven't got the patience/persistance).

I did think about going for a DDR setup, but some reviews put me off for now.

[jon_e]

Q
Go with DDR 256mb for £48 at the mo from crucial, and I'd recommend the Asus7M266 mobo.
Forgot to mention it has an on board audio option as well.

[ 20 June 2001: Message edited by: jon_e ]

[GTi]

Got you on the sound but remember that Iwill also do DDR motherboards KA266 and it also has built in sound. the boys have just upgraded my system with a Iwill DDR Raid motherboard and things are looking pretty good. I stick to the HDD statement though if you want to play music without too much CD swapping, over 16 hours of music per gig at CD quality!

[Q]

I chose a smaller HD over a bigger one as I am first trying to keep the price down, before I start looking at individual components to get upgraded.

Talking about the raid MB, does it work? I've read a review that said that they couldn't get it to work in win2k and had to revert to a separate raid controller card to drive 2 hd's.

[JADS]

There is always the Gainward Hollywood GeForce 2 MX 32MB AGP RP VIVO+TV Tuner for 160 odd pounds...

Cheaper than the all in wonder and faster than the G450, :D

James