Well the processor and motherboard are kind of intertwined. For
example, the motherboard you chose there as the A7V133. IT supports
the 200/266 FSB. In order to take advantage of that you'll have to get
a processor that supports that. Currently the "smallest" processor
that does support that would be the 1200 MHz Athlon. (The box itself
says 1200 MHz, not sure why they don't go with the 1.2 GHz personally.)
But that motherboard only supports up to a 1 GHz Athlon. I found this
out after a later upgrade from when I put the machine together. The
1.2 GHz I have in the machine now, makes the motherboard think it's a
900.
I will say that the Promise Controller on board is VERY NICE! Very
fast and I love the speed of that. Nightly back ups on one 20 GB drive
and one 30 GB drive go really fast.
But there have been a lot of people on the list and a lot of
publications that have had problems with that motherboard. Another
member of UNIXTECHS bought a ABIT board just last week, the RAID works
great and the board is really fast. You may want to look else where
with the motherboard depending on what you want to do.
With that machine I'd suggest going with a ATX case. I have two of
them, and even with everything I have in there, I have room for more.
It also manages to keep everything in there very cool with out the aid
of a case fan. If only I had a picture of my case, or the make/model
of it. I highly suggest it.
I would suggest against not putting a regular CD-ROM in there. Since
the CD-RW need SCSI emulation, it's nice to have something that works
with no problem, and will faster. I have a 52x in my machine now, and
I paid $40. Go with the CD-RW still, just put a CD-ROM in there as
well.
The Sound Blaster card shouldn't be a problem. They all work, and I've
evern heard the platinum set working as well. With the card and the
reciever that sits in the front of the case.
NICs are going to be good pretty much anyway you go. I have two
machines that have 3Com cards, and then I have DLink cards. They were
$20 each and they work great! But the SMC card will work just fine.
I have that same speaker set, and it works great. Especially with
being able to adjust the volume on the speakers. Some Windows Managers
don't exactly work with sound the greatest, and it's not as loud or
crisp.
I haven't heard anything about that mouse. Personally I use trackball
mice, and I love them. I'm currently using the Expert Mouse Pro, and
despite some problems that Kensington had with LEDs, support has been
very helpful and have offered to replace my mouse. But they work
smoothly, and recognize the wheel as well.
I have floppies in all my machines, but most of them are disabled. I
have boot CDs with extra tools on them, and just no need for them.
Video cards are all up to what you want to do with them. I'm going to
be buying a G400 MAX tomorrow. I do no gaming on my machine, but it
does superb 2D graphics, and it supports dual monitors, something that
I need. So that's up to what you're going to do. I stopped doing any
real big time computer gaming a while ago, so I'm way behind on video
card "news."
Hope that helps a bit.
tdh
--
T. Holmes
-----------------
UNIXTECHS.org
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
-----------------
"Real Men Us Vi!"
Uptime:
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8:47PM up 5 days, 10:40, 3 users, load averages: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
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| Hi All!
|
| i'm considering the purchase of a box to run linux, but being brought up
| a Macintosh man i don't really know what i'm looking for in hardware...
| I got this quote done and would like some opinions on how good/bad it
| looks.
| I'm especially interested in the role the sound card and graphics cards
| would play - would it improve performance in GIMP for instance? would
| gaming be improved? is it worth it?
|
| Thanks in advance!
| - paul -
| ---------------------------------
| ACI Custom Build Computer
| Part Desc.
|
| 3301,3443,2247 AMD Athlon 900MHz
| 3359 Asus A7V-KT133 ATA/100 Motherboard
| 4332 ISP ATX Midtower 300 Watt Computer Case
| 2304 256MB PC133 SDRAM Memory
| 2963 30.7GB ATA/100 7200 RPM Hard Drive
| nocd No CD-ROM Drive (see below)
| 1082 1.44MB Floppy Drive
| 3472 Jaton nVidia TNT2 16MB AGP Video Card
| 1916 Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live! Value Sound Card
| nomod No Modem
| 2551 SMC EZ Card 10/100 PCI Network Card
| 3664 Altec Lansing ACS160 Powered Three piece set
| noprin No Printer
| SDKDSVS-190 New KDS 19inch Monitor .27mm Dot Pitch
| 1802 104-Key PS/2 Keyboard
| 1853 Qtronix 3 Button Scroll Wheel Mouse
| 4316 Mandrake 8.0 GPL (CDROM Only)
| 3236 Star Office 5.2 GPL CD-ROM
| 4085 Sony Spressa 8x4x32x CD-RW
|
|
| If you are interested in this product please
| follow this link:
| http://www.affordablecomputers.com/custombuilds/aci_linthun
Content-Description: Card for Paul McKelvey
------------------------------------------------------------------
