Advice on new superbudget Vista upgrade, please!

[-ix-]

Hi, new active member but have been reading now and then for the last couple of years.

It's time to upgrade my old computer with a new one, and would really appreciate some input. I've looked looked around in the forums and tried to figure out some parts of a suitable setup. But now my needs...

First of all, I really want it to run Vista Aero (and perhaps in the future Ubuntu+Beryl) whitout effort. Not much of a gamer, so any extra 3D power is just bonus for those rare occasions I launch a RTS-game.
Furthermore I do some photo editing (Photoshop), movie editing (Premiere) and sequencing (Sonar) but all just for fun; so performance don't have to be top notch.
And, of course, I want it to be cool and quiet!

Here's my shopping/keeping list so far:
(Text in italics are parts I plan to keep from my present computer)

CASE: Chieftec mid-tower with silencing material on the inside
PSU: Zalman 300W. Old and pretty loud (maybe to be replaced later with a SeaSonic SS-301HT) Is 300 W enough?
MOTHERBOARD: ASRock 4CoreDual-VSTA
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6300. No plans to overclock so I guess it's better than E4300 for the same price?
RAM: 2 x 1 GB DDR2-sticks. No intention of overclocking, so I guess it's OK with fairly cheap ones? What speed do I need for the E6300?
GPU: ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128 MB with Arctic Cooling-solution. Will it handle Vista Aero?
SOUND: ESI Juli@ + Soundblaster Audigy 2
HD: 80 GB Seagate Barracuda V + 160 GB Samsung Spinpoint
OPTICAL: BenQ 16X CD/DVD-Writer + maybe an additional LiteON DVD-reader
ANCIENT: Old school floppy disk drive in case of emergency

What do you think?
Anything that looks stupid or something I forgot?

As a student with a really tight budget it's important that the system is well balanced and provides "bang for the buck". Bottlenecks and/or overkill components to be found and eliminated!

Really hope to get some input from you guys!
Best regards,
ix

[schmiggy_jk]

I really like the pioneer dvr 111 for a optical drive solution.

[derekva]

Hi, new active member but have been reading now and then for the last couple of years.

It's time to upgrade my old computer with a new one, and would really appreciate some input. I've looked looked around in the forums and tried to figure out some parts of a suitable setup. But now my needs...

First of all, I really want it to run Vista Aero (and perhaps in the future Ubuntu+Beryl) whitout effort. Not much of a gamer, so any extra 3D power is just bonus for those rare occasions I launch a RTS-game.
Furthermore I do some photo editing (Photoshop), movie editing (Premiere) and sequencing (Sonar) but all just for fun; so performance don't have to be top notch.
And, of course, I want it to be cool and quiet!

Here's my shopping/keeping list so far:
(Text in italics are parts I plan to keep from my present computer)

CASE: Chieftec mid-tower with silencing material on the inside
PSU: Zalman 300W. Old and pretty loud (maybe to be replaced later with a SeaSonic SS-301HT) Is 300 W enough?
MOTHERBOARD: ASRock 4CoreDual-VSTA
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6300. No plans to overclock so I guess it's better than E4300 for the same price?
RAM: 2 x 1 GB DDR2-sticks. No intention of overclocking, so I guess it's OK with fairly cheap ones? What speed do I need for the E6300?
GPU: ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128 MB with Arctic Cooling-solution. Will it handle Vista Aero?
SOUND: ESI Juli@ + Soundblaster Audigy 2
HD: 80 GB Seagate Barracuda V + 160 GB Samsung Spinpoint
OPTICAL: BenQ 16X CD/DVD-Writer + maybe an additional LiteON DVD-reader
ANCIENT: Old school floppy disk drive in case of emergency

What do you think?
Anything that looks stupid or something I forgot?

As a student with a really tight budget it's important that the system is well balanced and provides "bang for the buck". Bottlenecks and/or overkill components to be found and eliminated!

Really hope to get some input from you guys!
Best regards,
ix

My concern with the system board you are choosing is that the PCIe slot is limited to 4x, which will throttle performance dramatically if you choose to go PCIe in the not-too-distant future. If you plan on replacing the system board and the video card at the same time at some point in the future, then it is a fine choice. Just don't expect to ever get good PCIe performance with this board.

When you decide to replace the PSU, the Seasonic S12-380 is a good choice.

Finally, unless you need it for Ubuntu, don't bother with the floppy drive - Vista doesn't need it (you can install drivers from USB flash drives...finally!)

Other than that, looks good.

-Derek

[ronrem]

Real sweet...love the dual soundcards- Juli@ for max music/movie audio and the Creative for gaming. You might look into M Audio Revolution as a nice compromise-not quite the Audio of the ESI..better than the Creative-available in 6 or 8 channell.

Sensible CPU/Mobo,I'd scan the New Egg reviews of the board before getting my RAM,nice way to find items that work well--or are not compatible-such as voltage issues. Often "Value Ram" from Kingston or Corsair is low price but real stable stock. The fancy stuff is great for tweakers/gamers,which you are not.

My next thing will be all about AV and silence. Chess is the only computer game I do. The new AMD x2 3600 65nm may not perform like a Core 2...but it's almost overkill for my needs,way beyond the XP1800 that still seems beefy after years on a P3. That AMD and a good Mobo is quite a bit less $. Spend the $ on some primo monitor speakers for your aud-vid rig...maybe get a bigger Spinright.

Core 2 or AMD X2,you still ought to get by with a passive Ninja CPU cooler and a single big slow fan.

300w won't handle some high end vid cards,the CPU,and other stuff here...no sweat.

[CA_Steve]

Regarding Aero:Wikipedia entry for Vista

Note that ATI/AMD and NVidia are far behind on having stable/working drivers for many games under Vista. Before you take the leap, you might want to go to their support websites and check the current status for games you want to play. I'm sticking w/ XP for a long while.

[-ix-]

Thanks for your great replies! They have been very helpful.

As I'm not in to gaming I'm thinking of ditching the core 2 duo and go for a Pentium 4 631.
They are approximatly half the price, and supposed to be pretty nice in their latest revision, D0 stepping.
Check out this article
65 TDP, as low as the C2D!
With EIST this would run really cool, wouldn't it?

A foolish move, perhaps?

My plan is to keep a really tight budget now and do a complete upgrade in the future when money hopefully is less of an issue. [/url]

[Buddabing]

The VSTA board will take DDR1 sticks as well as DDR2. So if you have some DDR1 sticks you don't need to buy any DDR2.

That's the main reason I got the VSTA board.

I would still get the C2D processor because they run relatively cool. I use the E6300 with the stock cooler.

[jojo4u]

Not much of a gamer, so any extra 3D power is just bonus for those rare occasions I launch a RTS-game.

My concern with the system board you are choosing is that the PCIe slot is limited to 4x, which will throttle performance dramatically if you choose to go PCIe in the not-too-distant future.

PCIe is comparable to AGP 4x. The performance hit in even with high-end cards at this point is not "dramatically". Anandtech says ~5% with a E6700 and a 7900GTX.
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2797&p=13