reefgeek84 Posted August 29, 2007 Author Share Posted August 29, 2007 or this one... 75.00 bucks SAPPHIRE 100165L Radeon X1650PRO 512MB 128-bit GDDR2 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail Item #: N82E16814102064 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
civicsit Posted August 29, 2007 Share Posted August 29, 2007 or this one... 75.00 bucks SAPPHIRE 100165L Radeon X1650PRO 512MB 128-bit GDDR2 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail Item #: N82E16814102064 I think that this one would work great. Radeon is a good chipset (I have one in my laptop and love it) and 512mb would be plenty for what you want to do. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reefgeek84 Posted August 29, 2007 Author Share Posted August 29, 2007 Ok lets try this again... Case- APEVIA X-Dreamer II ATXB4KLW-BK Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 420W Power Supply - Retail Item #: N82E16811144026 Harddrive- SAMSUNG SpinPoint T Series HD403LJ 400G/B 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM Item #: N82E16822152085 Motherboard- Foxconn C51XEM2AA- 8EKRS2H AM2 NVIDIA nForce 590 SLI MCP ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail Item #: N82E16813186098 Video card- POWERCOLOR 26PRO 512M DDR2 Radeon HD 2600PRO 512MB 128-bit GDDR2 PCI Express x16 CrossFire Supported Video Card - Retail Ram- Crucial Ballistix 2G/B (2 x 1G/B) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model BL2KIT12864AA804 - Retail Item #: N82E16820146565 CPU- AMD Athlon 64 X2 4000+ Brisbane 2.1GHz Socket AM2 Processor Model ADO4000DDBOX - Retail Item #: N82E16819103774 With rebates 440.00 I could get a westerngate hard drive...for a little more and it comes with a 5 year warrenty, is it worth it? Do I need anything else to make this run? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nyles Posted August 29, 2007 Share Posted August 29, 2007 I don't totally agree with what your selecting but I tend to go for higher end stuff, but for what your using it for you should be OK, with that said the only thing I would really wish you to consider is getting a western dig hard drive, the rest can break but the drive contains your data, WD is the only brand I don't have trouble with on customers pc's, seagate running a close second, but samsung and especially maxtor are not at the top of the long life charts (MTBF charts) You may want to take a drive down to Frys to and see what labor day specials they are running (usually run the add in the paper). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reefgeek84 Posted August 29, 2007 Author Share Posted August 29, 2007 I don't totally agree with what your selecting but I tend to go for higher end stuff, but for what your using it for you should be OK, with that said the only thing I would really wish you to consider is getting a western dig hard drive, the rest can break but the drive contains your data, WD is the only brand I don't have trouble with on customers pc's, seagate running a close second, but samsung and especially maxtor are not at the top of the long life charts (MTBF charts) You may want to take a drive down to Frys to and see what labor day specials they are running (usually run the add in the paper). There were worse reviews with the WD hard drive over the seagate...I am going to do with either one of those and drop the samsung... As for higher end stuff...I really see your point, but I am on a budget and can not drop 750+ on this thing...or else I would do it... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reefgeek84 Posted August 29, 2007 Author Share Posted August 29, 2007 I am going to be using portable hard drives for alot of stuff...so does hard drive g/b matter as much then? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
impur Posted August 29, 2007 Share Posted August 29, 2007 If you'll be storing most stuff on portable HDs, just get something 100-200 gigs. Looks like a great budget computer that will run games, photo editing, and pretty much most other common apps just fine for a long time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
civicsit Posted August 29, 2007 Share Posted August 29, 2007 Don't forget about the cost of your apps and OS, unless you already have them. Windows, photoshop, office, and other programs like that are not cheap. Just something to keep in mind. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reefgeek84 Posted August 30, 2007 Author Share Posted August 30, 2007 Don't forget about the cost of your apps and OS' date=' unless you already have them. Windows, photoshop, office, and other programs like that are not cheap. Just something to keep in mind.[/quote'] I have all of that stuff :-) I run them now, but my lap is the bottom of the barrel toshiba, so it does not run them well... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reefgeek84 Posted August 30, 2007 Author Share Posted August 30, 2007 Do I need anything else, to make this hook up and run together? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reefgeek84 Posted August 30, 2007 Author Share Posted August 30, 2007 Ok, so if I bought windows XP from office depot, will it work on my computer or do I need windows as well? I am really confused on this... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
civicsit Posted August 30, 2007 Share Posted August 30, 2007 windows xp is just the newest version of windows. so xp is your operating system. You have all the monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc. right? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reefgeek84 Posted August 30, 2007 Author Share Posted August 30, 2007 windows xp is just the newest version of windows. so xp is your operating system. You have all the monitor' date=' keyboard, mouse, etc. right?[/quote'] Yeah, I have all of that...That is what I thought,but there are OEM versions and wierd stuff and on a version from newegg.com it is retail, but everyone who bought it say that you needed previous windows programs for it to run...so I was just wondering if I had missed something... Thanks to everyone who helped me out... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nyles Posted August 30, 2007 Share Posted August 30, 2007 There were worse reviews with the WD hard drive over the seagate...I am going to do with either one of those and drop the samsung... As for higher end stuff...I really see your point, but I am on a budget and can not drop 750+ on this thing...or else I would do it... Thats what I was trying to stress, the fact you don't really need to much, I run cs3 and it can be a hog, but it depends on what your doing, just keep in mind you should have more Bad reviews of WD than any other drive simply because they sell more drives than anyone else, when I was in the trade we would sell 7/10th's of our drives as WD but 90% of the DOA's where Maxtor and lower brands. I personally have only had 1 WD drive go out on me, I still have a working 50KB WD drive, but I have had 4 Maxtor drives go out in my house. The funny thing is they are very good at replacing... Lots of experience. LOL Good luck, I'm sure you won't have any trouble. I'm very please with the dual core x64 chips, especially with cs Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
civicsit Posted August 30, 2007 Share Posted August 30, 2007 Yeah, I have all of that...That is what I thought,but there are OEM versions and wierd stuff and on a version from newegg.com it is retail, but everyone who bought it say that you needed previous windows programs for it to run...so I was just wondering if I had missed something... Thanks to everyone who helped me out... Most likely the version that you found is an upgrade version that is cheaper, but requires a previous version of windows to install it. I guess you could say that it is microsofts way of being nice to their current customers and trying to make them want to upgrade. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
albertareef Posted August 30, 2007 Share Posted August 30, 2007 Ok lets try this again... Case- APEVIA X-Dreamer II ATXB4KLW-BK Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 420W Power Supply - Retail Item #: N82E16811144026 Harddrive- SAMSUNG SpinPoint T Series HD403LJ 400G/B 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM Item #: N82E16822152085 Motherboard- Foxconn C51XEM2AA- 8EKRS2H AM2 NVIDIA nForce 590 SLI MCP ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail Item #: N82E16813186098 Video card- POWERCOLOR 26PRO 512M DDR2 Radeon HD 2600PRO 512MB 128-bit GDDR2 PCI Express x16 CrossFire Supported Video Card - Retail Ram- Crucial Ballistix 2G/B (2 x 1G/B) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model BL2KIT12864AA804 - Retail Item #: N82E16820146565 CPU- AMD Athlon 64 X2 4000+ Brisbane 2.1GHz Socket AM2 Processor Model ADO4000DDBOX - Retail Item #: N82E16819103774 With rebates 440.00 I could get a westerngate hard drive...for a little more and it comes with a 5 year warrenty, is it worth it? Do I need anything else to make this run? Hey Reefgeek, sounds like a good deal for what you are going to do with it. The video card choices are always tough with many criteria to look at (piplines, fill rates, core clock speed, memory bandwith etc.) but, unless you are going to play high end games, this should be a good workhorse card for you. Powercolor has been around for a long time and Radeon is a pretty solid chipset in general. The only other thing I would check before calling it good is the power requirements for this card. Most high end cards these days have their own cooling fans and require power directly from the power supply (as opposed to just through the card interface on the motherboard). If that's the case, they typically will recommend a minimum wattage capacity to drive the card. You can often get away with less if you aren't running lots of drives but if you end up having problems the card manufacturer will point to that as a possible problem. Also, I would support the suggestion by Nyles to upgrade to a WD drive as I have also had good luck with these and seen a lot of other brands fail in our machines at work. As for the OS question, I think Civicsit is correct on that - make sure you get a full version as opposed to an upgrade version (which is cheaper) as the upgrade requires you to load it on top of an already installed, valid version of the OS. If you don't already have an older version to install before upgrading to XP then make sure you are buying a full version. OK... good luck man. Sorry this is so complicated. Looks like a great deal. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reefgeek84 Posted August 30, 2007 Author Share Posted August 30, 2007 Powercolor has been around for a long time and Radeon is a pretty solid chipset in general. The only other thing I would check before calling it good is the power requirements for this card. Here are the specs on the card... Model Brand POWERCOLOR Model 26PRO 512M DDR2 Interface Interface PCI Express x16 Chipset Chipset Manufacturer ATI GPU Radeon HD 2600PRO Core clock 600MHz Stream Processors 120 Stream Processors Units Memory Memory Clock 800MHz Memory Size 512MB Memory Interface 128-bit Memory Type GDDR2 3D API DirectX DirectX 10 OpenGL OpenGL 2.0 Ports DVI 2 TV-Out HDTV Out VIVO No General Tuner None RAMDAC 400 MHz Max Resolution 2560 x 1600 CrossFire Supported Yes Cooler With Fan Dual-Link DVI Supported Yes Windows Vista Certified for Will I be ok with the whole power consumption thing? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nyles Posted August 30, 2007 Share Posted August 30, 2007 I have a slightly larger radeon card with dual core x64 x4200? and I run it with a antec 550 smart power power supply, I honestly would not go much less on MY system. Worst case try it and for what your doing it should work fine, if not order a smart power or whatever you want in the 550-600 watt range. Being that your not doing gaming but graphics, I don't see it as an issue however with that cpu. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
albertareef Posted August 30, 2007 Share Posted August 30, 2007 Here are the specs on the card... Model Brand POWERCOLOR Model 26PRO 512M DDR2 Interface Interface PCI Express x16 Chipset Chipset Manufacturer ATI GPU Radeon HD 2600PRO Core clock 600MHz Stream Processors 120 Stream Processors Units Memory Memory Clock 800MHz Memory Size 512MB Memory Interface 128-bit Memory Type GDDR2 3D API DirectX DirectX 10 OpenGL OpenGL 2.0 Ports DVI 2 TV-Out HDTV Out VIVO No General Tuner None RAMDAC 400 MHz Max Resolution 2560 x 1600 CrossFire Supported Yes Cooler With Fan Dual-Link DVI Supported Yes Windows Vista Certified for Will I be ok with the whole power consumption thing? I looked this up on TigerDirects site and it says "400 watt or greater power supply is recommended" so it sounds like you should be OK. Realistically, since you aren't gaming and not running a lot of other drives off of the power supply it will probably be just fine. As Nyles says, you can always upgrade the PS later if you find yourself adding additional drives or other power sinks later and run into problems. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reefgeek84 Posted August 31, 2007 Author Share Posted August 31, 2007 All is ordered...now I will have to figure out how to piece it together, LOL. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reefgeek84 Posted September 4, 2007 Author Share Posted September 4, 2007 I do not think the case I got comes with a cd drive, which I need to load all my software...any recommendations on a certain one? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mister crabs Posted September 4, 2007 Share Posted September 4, 2007 yep.....get a DVD RW drve and skip the CD drive all together. a DVD drive will read cds as well. Doesnt really matter which one you get just check the local adds and look for a great deal. I recently bought a sony 24x DVD RW for like 30 dollars. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
impur Posted September 6, 2007 Share Posted September 6, 2007 If you don't have one laying around, pick up a dual-layer DVD RW/CD RW drive. I have a BenQ and its awesome, the best writing drive i've ever had. Cost me 40 bucks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drock59 Posted September 10, 2007 Share Posted September 10, 2007 Whats the word on this project? Ive been thinking about doing this myself for a long time. How are things going with the components you bought? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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