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We have tried to put together a little list to help you choose what to get if you're upgrading your computer to run the latest sims/games, but are on a limited budget, this is what we think will give you the best performance for each dollar you spend. We're not saying that you can't get cheaper and/or better parts, it's just that these parts are stuff that will probably keep you going for a while and let you upgrade without too much expense some time up the road. One other note...this guide was put together on 4 March 2000, prices have already changed as this is being uploaded!
Case - Enlight 7237 ATX Mid Tower, 300 watt PS - $67 - That 300 watt PS will come in handy, especially if the user upgrades to an AMD Athlon processor in the future. If you're on a really tight budget and don't need the 300W PS, the AOpen HX45 can be found for $45, mid tower, 23W PS, with all the edges innside rounded off and plenty of space.
MotherBoard - Abit BP6- $120 - We chose this over the ASUS P3B-F because it is a dual Socket 370 MB with UDMA/66 built in for $8 more than the ASUS. The ASUS is a great MB but is Slot 1(so it requires a slotket adapter for Celeron), does not have UDMA/66, and is not a dual processor MB. The Abit can handle 8 IDE devices as well. For those that *know* they won't be running Win2000 and don't need the option of running dual CPU's and would rather have the option of upgrading to a P3 at a later date, the Asus P3B-F is a good choice, it will actually run 133mhz FSB CPU's like the "Coppermine" 533Mhz even though it has the BX chipset, price is $112 and you also need a "slotket" adapter that will set you back around $20.
Memory - 128MB PC133 DIMM - $89, 128 MB might seem a bit much if you're currently running Win95 on a Pentium Classic or MMX with 32 MB of RAM, but in our opinion, it's worth the extra money even if you're on a budget.
CPU - Celeron 500 PPGA - $85 or Dual 500s for $170 - What more can ya say....Win2K with dual processors on a budget...ROCKS!! We chose the 500 over the 433 (currently the low end CPU from Intel, lower spec CPU's are no longer in production) as the price difference is only about $20, but if you're into overclocking, the 433 will probably go almost as high as the 500 with a bit of tweaking, but we'd still go for the 500 and less overclocking for stability reasons, having your PC lock up on you during an online league race in N3 is not much fun...
Hard Drive - Quantum Fireball Plus KA 7,200rpm 9.1GB - $129 - Simply the best performing UDMA/66 IDE hard drive on the market. For those on a tight budget, the Seagate Baracuda 10GB 7200 RPM drive is a tad slower and $20 less....
Video - 3Dfx Voodoo3 3000 - $105, yes, the TNT2 cards can be had very cheap these days too, well below $100, but it's not the best card for GPL as it will only run GPL with a BETA OpenGL patch, if GPL is not on your list of sims, then the TNT2 cards are an excellent choice as well.
Monitor - 17" Viewsonic - $181, Viewsonic is a good and reputable brand so we chose this as an example, 19" monitors are coming down in price as well, but if you're on a tight budget, then 17" is a still a good choice, if you DO have a little extra money to spend, here's where to spend it though, a good monitor will last a long time and if you are like us and spemd a lot of time in front of it, it might be wise to do just that.
Sound - Creative Labs SB Live! - $45 - Simple and dependable, great sound, low CPU overhead and one of the best gameports of any soundcards.
Speakers - Creative Labs PCWorks FourPoint Surround Sound 5pcs Speakers w/Subwoofer - $74
DVD/CD-ROM - Pioneer DVD-114 10X DVD ROM - $92 - High quality 40X CD and 10X DVD made by Pioneer. If you want to save a few dollars here and don't feel the need for DVD, then the 48X speed CD-Rom drives can be had for as little as $35 ($25 if you don't care what brand it is, but for $35 you get Samsung and LG, many OEM manufacturers uses these).
Wheel - Logitech Wingman Formula Force with USB - $116 - A little pricey, but what are we building this machine for, anyway.
KB/Mouse - Generic or Microsoft to suit personal taste. - aprox. $35.
Floppy drive - You still need one :-), $10-15 or less, if you spend $60 you get a LS120 Super floppy (120 MB) to back up those carefully devloped setups and paintschemes, not to mention all those little utils you have downloaded from "The Pits" over the years, no need to waste precious sim time waiting for the carsets you downloaded only month ago, but was lost in a HD reformat, to finish. If you plan to buy a CD-RW at a later date, go with a regular FD.
CD-RW - Sony Spressa 4/4/24- $200 -not an essential part of a sim PC of course, but once you've bought one, you'll never know how you survived without one, replaces the 120MB super floppy option we mentioned earlier.
Operating system - Win98SE -$50 (OEM, perfectly legal if bought with either a HD, Motherboard or a CPU) yes, if I was still running Win95 and decided to upgrade my PC, I'd switch to Win98SE at this point too, it has a far better support for large HD's and is better optimized for internet and online stuff. For those opting for our dual CPU suggestion, you'd need Win2000 Pro, approx $125 (OEM as above), but Win2000 can be a bit intimidating if this is the first time you are building and setting up your own computer, and it won't run ALL your older games/sims, but most new ones will run just fine, we have tried both GPL and N3 and had no problems, frame rate about the same as Win98SE.
Since we put together our "cheap and cheerful" recommendation a couple of months back, lots has happened, the good old Celron is no more, even though you can still get them at some retailers, the 533 being the highest speed available, in fact, Intel dropped the whole PPGA socket alltogether, which makes any old Socket370 board useless, or so it would seem. There is actually an FC-PGA->PPGA(Socket370) adapter available, BUT, at present they won't work with the BP6 we mentioned in our last writeup, at least not with a dual CPU setup, and that's the whole point isn't it?
The ASUS P3B-F we mentioned is no more either, but the BX chip set is still running strong, and is still one of fastest, and the good news is that many of the not too old boards, such as the ASUS P3B-F and the likes, will accept both Coppermine CPU's and the new Celeron II chip. Good news indeed for those that can't spend a small fortune every 6 months, and even better is how overclocking friendly these new CPU's are, the Cel566's are currently being run very stable at 800+ Mhz on many "older" boards, so if you followed our advice back then and are looking for more power, then this could be the one for you. If you spend some more cash, the "Coppermine" 700's (P3) can also be tweaked for some extra Mhz, but that means running your MoBo "out of spec", and *can* cause instability, there's nothing more infuriating than having your PC lock up on you during a league race and wondering if it was the "tweaking" that did it or if it was simply one of those nights....
If you're building from scratch however, things look even more different, back when we wrote the article, the only alternative to the Celeron was the AMD K-6 2/3....now I know there's plenty of AMD fans out there, but let's be honest, if you were building a PC from scratch, the K6 wasn't the best of choices, but now, with the "Duron" CPU, AMD has struck gold, or at least that's what initial tests are showing, and since every major hardware site seems to agree on this, I guess I'll for the first time in my "professional" career will have to say;
"Get the AMD, it's clearly the better choice right now"
...ouch, that hurt :-), even over here the Duron 600 is cheap, and MoBo's don't cost much more than a good old BX based board, so......get a Durn if you're building from scratch on a "limited" budget right now.
Another thing that has changed is the video card market, we recommended the V3-2/3000 last time around, and one of the factors that made us choose this one is the fact that a gaming rig, even a budget one, should be able to run GPL, I mean, every serious sim racer *has* to run GPL every now and then, right ? :-)
But, with the release of the D3D patch, we can pretty much pick and choose whatever we want, and, and this is another I don't like to admit as I really like 3Dfx's products, the Geforce MX cards being released now are both fast and fairly inexpensive, the scales are tippng in the favour of the Geforce MX now that we no longer *need* a Glide capable card.
As for the rest of the stuff, things have been somewhat quiet, Creative doesn't have any real competitors in the sound card market with Aureal's financial troubles, and a CD-drive is still a CD-drive! :-) Monitors keeps dropping in price, slowly but surely, so if you shop around, there's some good bargains to be made, the only real change has been in the Hard Drive area. IBM has released a new HD, the 75GXP, an ATA-100 (UDMA5) capable drive, and in typical IBM fashion this drive is both fast and very quiet, and more suprisingly, fairly inexpensive as well.
