Bruce, What Kevin says is quite good. Since the monitor needs to be 21" take a look around town and see if you can get a reconditioned monitor for less money than a new one since a new brand name 21" will take 50% or more of your $2000.
The New ATI cards with built in cable TV, with picture in picture are very good and low in cost, under $200 for 8 Meg "all in wonder pro"
ATI seems to be on a par with Matrox and the voodoo, but has TV tuner built in.
As to sound?, taking a low level signal to a stereo system beats those large speakers attached to the computer, and most sound fanatics (people like you? GGG) have such sound systems already that can be rerouted to accomodate the computer as long as the physical spacing is possible. There are other sound cards that are higher end than the sound blaster, that have more wave and other effects as well as MIDI interfaces, but that is beyond me, I make do with a $10 Yamaha and $10 amplified speakers(not a sound fanatic). Take a trip to a few local clonemakers of the type that screw together customs computers. Never buy a Compaq or other brand name as they usually close off any upgrade path as they want to sell you another box.
Look on tomshardware.com and you will see comments about motherboards etc. getting a board that will run the faster 350M + CPU is what you need, one that can be overclocked, is what you should specify. You will need to get the memory that is fast enough for the CPU you intend to get later and since it all screws together you could buy the case from 1 place and the motherboard and CPU from another, same with Hard drives, CDroms, Monitors etc and put it all together yourself.. Save about $100-200 if you do that, plus sales tax, less freight?, but if you have a problem you must ship a part away and wait. If you buy the motherboard you want with the right memory and a good used 21" monitor.
Remember the cheapest systems advertised have the older motherboards and they have zero ability to go faster as they are currrently being sold with the fastest chip they can take.
Possibly Kevin is on top of what motherboard you would be best buying?
Bill |
