Final check and a case recomendation....

[Adams551]

Hi, I'm building a gamer for my brother. I think I have everything in order, just wanted a last doublecheck. I like the case I picked out but it is rather standard looking. Anyone have a recomendation for a flashier case? Neon lights and such. He's 16 and would appreciate that more than most of the components. He already has the monitor and keyboard.

COOLER MASTER Centurion 5 CAC-T05-UW Black Computer Case - Retail $49.99

ASUS A8N5X Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail $92.00

eVGA 128-P2-N368-TX Geforce 6600GT 128MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail $145.00

Thermaltake TR2 W0070 ATX 430W Power Supply - Retail $39.99

AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego 1GHz FSB Socket 939 Processor Model ADA3700BNBOX - Retail $235.00

CORSAIR ValueSelect 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered Dual Channel Kit System Memory Model VS1GBKIT400 - Retail $77.00

LITE-ON Black ATAPI / E-IDE DVD Burner Model SHM-160P6S - Retail $42.99

Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 ST3250823AS 250GB 7200 RPM Serial ATA150 Hard Drive - OEM $103.50

Microsoft Windows XP Home With SP2 - OEM $92.95

Total: $878.67


Any suggested changes that stay close to that price range much appreciated.

Thanks a lot.

[blue60007]

Get a bit better power supply, like the XClio 450W, it's about $12 more. Aspire has some flashy cases, but they are a bit cheap. Well, if this isn't a surprise Christmas gift, you could have him look through some cases to find one he likes.

[jayb1234]

Agree about the power supply, that one is only an ATX, you need an ATX 2.0 for that motherboard.

Here are about 300 cases without power supplies, you can get one that he would like and get a good power supply seperately.

With a few exceptions like Antec and Enermax, most cases with power supplies included use generic junk PSUs that are likely to fry themselves and take some expensive components with them.

Also you are likely to need a floppy drive during setup to load some of the drivers.

[Adams551]

Thanks jayb1234, I did not know there was a difference in ATX and ATX 2.0 power supplies. Could you or someone elaborate on what the difference is? Also, I did search newegg for the cases, I've just wandered if anyone actually had one to recomend as I've heard some cases just cause more trouble than they are worth.

[jayb1234]

The ATX 2.0 will have a 24 pin main power connector, while the ATX only has a 20 pin. The extra 4 pins provide the extra power the board needs for the PCI-Express slot.

[Cricket]

Originally Posted by Adams551 Also, I did search newegg for the cases, I've just wandered if anyone actually had one to recomend as I've heard some cases just cause more trouble than they are worth.

That Cooler Master in your first post is fine.

Cricket

[bwwhite2000]

It would be worth your while to price compare a few other sites. For my build in November, I split my purchases (see sig) between Newegg, ZipZoomFly, ClubIT, and Monarch Computer. My total shipping costs were less than $13.

E.g., the AMD chip you want is $20 less at ZipZoomFly and has free 2nd day shipping.

You might shave another $30-50 off your total price by comparing prices (including shipping) between the 4 places I mentioned.

All the best!

Bruce

[nickweb31]

This website has a big variety of cases, mainly ones with neons, if you show him and ask him to pick one out...http://www.atxcases.com/atx-cases.asp