Hmm . . . on one hand, it seems a waste not to have someone at least look at it. (Power supplies are cheap.) On the other hand . . . you seriously need an upgrade.

XP will run on a 300MHz machine?

All very odd that all this would happen at the same time. Do you kick your machine a lot? Do you smoke? Have you been reading this article?

 

Well, I'm not the guy in that article, but I do think like him. I just don't have the money to go out and constantly be buying stuff. So I will probably end up trying to fix the old machine to see if I can get a couple bucks for it, but I decided to spring for a new system. I'm going to post the stuff I bought, so please save the "oh sh*t, you bought THAT piece of sh*t, you're totally screwed!!" comments. Keep in mind that I am going for value-minded foundation here, with the option to upgrade in the future. Also that the performance of this system will be compared to a 5 year old Gateway machine running a 300mhz Pentium 2.

Mobo: ASUS P4S800 w/ SiS 648FX chipset supports hyperthreading, 800mhz FSB, 400mhz DDR, and has LAN, sound built in.

CPU: Pentium 4 1.8 GHz

RAM: 256MB DDR PC-3200

Vid Card: ASUS 64MB V7100 w/ GEForce MX400

Case: RAIDMAX MidATX w/ hElLa PhAnZ y0!!!

Also, keep in mind that I don't play video games. The only thing I do right now that requires any graphics capabilities whatsoever right now is watching hi quality mpegs of sweet car videos, something that my current machine can't always handle. If I need better graphics, I can always get a better card, but I think this machine should blow the freaking doors off my current machine and I'm freaking excited to get this stuff so I can put it together. Any tips on stupid mistakes to avoid and pretty much anything coming from someone who's put together a machine from scratch is definitely welcome.

I paid $370 to my door for the above parts by the way.

 

Dood its weird, the best luck I've ever had with a computer is with my current home setup (formerly used at the restaurant)

Running original install Windows 2000 Professional:
'01 Compaq EVO D300V microtower
1.0Ghz Pentium III
Intel 815 chipset
Compaq 15" flat LCD screen
Microsoft Wireless Natural Desktop (keyboard & mouse)
UMAX 1200 scanner
HP 932 color deskjet
Brother MFC 4800 printer/fax/copier/scanner

Upgraded from 128mb PC1300 RAM to 512mb
Upgraded from AT100 5400rpm 20G drive to Maxtor 120G, 8200RPM, 8mb cache (for mad ****, yo!)
Installed Sony DR500U CD/DVD multi-format burner

Mods:

Locked Windows Kernel into RAM
Same paging file min/max size for Virtual Memory
Converted to NTFS with new HD
All drives using UDMA

I've never had to reinstall Windows, and this computer screams...

 

awesome, that's definitely good to hear, but i'm surprised because i've heard a lot of horror stories about compaqs but that's awesome that yours kills it. and as far as speed, i just didn't think that extra couple hundred megahertz was going to make that much of a difference when i'm already going from a 300 mhz CPU to an 1800 mhz one. especially going from a 66mhz bus speed to a 400mhz bus speed. i think it's gonna take me a while to get used to that isht. i'm so excited, and i just can't hide it, you know, you know, you know i like it!!! lol!!!

 

You're talking to someone on a 700MHz P3, I'm not that far ahead of your old machine. Oh yeah, and the 150MHz P1 in the other room.

Sounds like a nice setup and a really nice price. The only tweak I might suggest is more memory. Memory is cheap and makes everything work better. If you double what you have, it will be worth it.

 

yeah, that's what i was thinking. it's something i can add later, but that i certainly don't need at this point in time. it should be here tomorrow. the funny thing is that i'm gonna get home from work tomorrow and be super excited to get it all up and running, and i'll have it all ready to go, but i'll end up needing some stupid little clip or cable or something in order to start it up, and i'll have to wait until like monday before i can do anything about it. oh well, that's what you get for getting excited about something i guess...