I have been looking around at building my own computer and I think I have got all I need to start. What do you think of my choice of hardware? Here is the speak; ATX Midi Tower 300W ATX12V AMD/P4 K7N2G nForce 2 ATX Athlon XP1800+ SocketA Coolermaster SocketA up to AMD XP2100 Fan/Heatsink DiamondMax Plus8 40GB UDMA133 Two 128MB DDR PC2100 (runs best with it like that) AOpen 56x IDE Internal CD-Rome Drive Aries 3.5" 1.44Mb Floppy Disk Drive Aries V90 56K PCI Winsoft Modem That all comes to $466.88 not bad I think. I don’t need any high speak computer so I have gone for the cheapest parts at this time. What do you think? Thanks, William

If that mobo is the cheapest in your area you are lucky because its about the best you can get. It will turn that 1800+ into a 3000+ with no problem with a decent heatsink if the 1800+ has the right letters on it. See this link to learn about that. http://www.svc.com/lqtamdxp17tb.html I urge you to avoid a heatsink rated for 2100+ only even if you are not going to overclock. The first amd 2100+ was hotter than any amd cpu currently made so when amd says its only good enough for a 2100+ what they're sort of saying is that it was never really good enough for a 2100+. Otherwise they would say its fine for a 2600/2800 which are cooler than that first 2100. I hate typing those damn plus signs. Pc2700 is hardly any more money than pc2100 so its worth the extra few bucks. Sorry to see you are dialing up. Looks like you're getting the onboard nvidia graphics - let us know how you like it. If you want to stay cheap an sk6 sink with a 30cfm-40cfm 60mm fan will cool you well enough for $15-$18 but it will be loud. For $25 you can get the sk7 and 80mm fan or $40 the slk800 and 80mm fan which get quieter as you spend more money since the better the sink the slower the fan can be.

William: You may want to consider a larger hard drive. 40gig is kind of small nowadays. You can get an 80gig drive from Newegg for about $20 more, or if you are in California check out Fry's Electronics (this past weekend they had Maxtor's retail 80gig ATA133 hard drive for $68.99 after rebate.)

I built my in-laws a system with the same motherboard, and they're very happy with it. However, you're forgetting to include the video card which will bump up your price. For the price, it'll make a decent system and you'll have room for expansion or upgrades. Tony