Building up

[djunknown]

my budget for the whole system is around 500

sorry i thought i mentioned it here but i mentioned it in my motherboards thread

i have monitor, and 1gb ram so no need for them and of course keyboard and mouse i have

 

[semi-pro waster]

Ok this is a little under budget, you could get a bigger hard drive into the budget easily if you wanted or go for an Nforce 4 ultra motherboard or a Crossfire motherboard if you wanted. The graphics card is basically the same as an X850XT but just underclocked.

CA-001-AR Arctic Cooling T2 Silentium Silent Midi Tower Case - 450W Seasonic Silent PSU (CA-001-AR)
£45.95 £45.95
CD-028-NE NEC ND4551 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Silver) - OEM (CD-028-NE)
£28.70 £28.70
HD-095-MD Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 10 NCQ 80GB 6V080E0 SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-095-MD)
£33.95 £33.95
CP-121-AM AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego 90nm (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA3700BNBOX) (CP-121-AM)
£137.95 £137.95
MB-120-AS Asus A8N5X nForce4 (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-120-AS)
£51.95 £51.95
GX-055-PC PowerColor ATI Radeon X800 GTO16 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-055-PC)
£104.95 £104.95
Subtotal £403.45
VAT £70.61
Total £474.06

 

[djunknown]

I havent even used up 3/4 of my 40gb hard drive
But is a family computer so dont store too much on it of my own
80gb is perfectly adequate for me(dont need to go bigger,yet)
I thought maybe a better motherboard may come into it
As long as i can upgrade my graphics card easily in the future, then i am fine with a basic one for now thanks...
and as for the case - i will stick with the lanboy thanks
however, this does mean i will need my own psu

 

[djunknown]

would the mobo listed by semi-pro waster get the most out of my processor
and help me future proof slightly as somebody mentioned
also is there much difference in speed between the venice and the x2?

 

[djunknown]

edited

 

[semi-pro waster]

also is there much difference in speed between the venice and the x2?

Venice cores have 512kb L2 cache as do the lower X2s, the San Diego cores have 1mb L2 cache. As I recall it an X2 3800 is effectively about the same as having 2x A64 3200s on one chip so not as fast in single cored applications as the San Diego 3700 but better at multitasking or applications written to take advantage of the second core.

The motherboard isn't the best available, that is reflected in the price but it is based on the Nforce4 chipset, same as most socket 939 motherboards and will be a good solid motherboard with a fair bit of overclocking potential.