My planned build, any problems?

[aerinon]

Case: Antec Sonata III
CPU: AMD Athlon 65 X2 4200+
Mobo: Gigabyte GA-MA78CM-S2H
Mem: 2 sticks of Crucial Ballistix 1GB DDR2
Vid: eVGA GeForce 8600 GT

Pending spousal approval:
Optical: Sony DRU840A Combo Drive
Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar 320GB SATA

Without spousal approval, I'll be using our non-burning Combo drive and an older IDE drive that has operating system and software already installed.

Most demanding game we play: Civilization 4.

Monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, floppy drive will all be from my old comp.

What do you think? Am I getting good enough bang for my buck? (Top five things estimated at $388.95) Did I miss any compatibility issues?

Thanks for your feedback!

[RickyTick]

Looks fine.

The Ballistix ram is a little overkill. You can use just regular ram and be fine.

For only a few dollars more, you could step up a grade or two on the processor. Maybe the 4600+ or 4800+ Brisbane instead.

[shyster]

Yeah like Ricky said the Ballistix ram might be too much, just considering you are building a budget pc.

You might want to check out corsair, or G-skill ram, they are usually pretty cheap and very highly rated.

Other than that I do not know much about AMD builds, but it looks like you browsed over the Budget build section. If you have not however, feel free to check it out, just for giggles.

Just one question, failing spousal approval, you are going to ransac the old computers hard drive and CD drive yes? Is the version of windows installed on it from a Dell, or HP series of computers or is it a retail version?

I just want to know, because if it is a Dell, etc. then it will probably be an OEM version that might not work with the new parts.

[aerinon]

I'll look at the other RAM options but 31.99 for each stick doesn't seem like a bad deal...

I actually bought an OEM version of Windows XP when I built my last computer five years ago. I'm aware that the new parts may cause trouble but I'll work out the software issues once I get there.

[RickyTick]

I'll look at the other RAM options but 31.99 for each stick doesn't seem like a bad deal...



No, its not a terrible deal, 2gb = $64. You're not going to see a peformance difference though, so it just seemed like a waste of about $20. Not a big deal.

[aerinon]

Are you thinking off something like this that I found at Newegg for 41.99?

CORSAIR ValueSelect 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 533 (PC2 4200) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory - Retail (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145527)

[partyman97_3]

This is one of the favorites around here and it has free shipping.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145034

[RickyTick]

The one Partyman linked to is more of what I had in mind.