I have been planning a new computer for over a year now and I'm finally in a position that I can buy it. Before I do however I would like everyones opinion on it.

Here is what I am planning on buying.

AMD64 3400+
MSI K8N NEO Platinum
Infinion 512MB PC3200 DDR400 (twice)
Sapphire Radeon 9600 SE 128MB
NEC ND-3500 DVD Burner
Antec SLK2650BQE Solution
LOGITECH MX510 Optical Mouse Blue

some notes:

I know the video card is underpowered when compared to the rest of the machine but this was done intentionally. At the moment the video card I would want (ATI 9800 PRO) is very difficult to come by and a little to expensive for my taste. My great brother has offered to buy the 9600 SE from me when I upgrade it to a better one in a few months time.
The choice of memory is limited to the types of memory my mainboard will be able to handle. This type has been tested with the mainboard and works
The choice for a case was a hard one. There was one I liked a lot but it was too expensive. The ones that were as cheap I would like it were no good. I finally choose the Antec one as a good in between model. I little too expensive but a lot better then the competition.

No go ahead and criticize.

Sound like you have really thought this over..

I think it will be a good purchase

So you are planning on buying 1024MB RAM!? If you do so, you will be very limited on dos games, because they can't recognize RAM of 1024 or more!

PS Will you make more games for prizes? I would be happy even with your mouse! :bleh:

Yes I'm planning on buying 1024MB of RAM. This might bring me into some trouble with older games but then so does XP that I will have on there and it is not meant to play old games but the very newest.

As for more competitions, probably yes but I will not be giving away my Mouse (sorry).

I would buy a better video card and a worse CPU. I don't know where you live, but in my country a 3400+ is about twice as expensive as a 3000+, and I think if you don't want to use that PC for something very power hungry, the 3000+ will have enough raw power for 99% of the games to come in 2005, if it's pared with a Radeon 9600XT.

I have a P4 2.4 and 9600, not even pro and there were only very few games which run slow on this.

I am planning on buying a better videocard soon but not right now. Even with a 4000+ the CPU is the bottleneck in current high end games (Doom3, Half Life2). Despite that I have given a slower CPU a lot of thought but since I can get this one inside my current budget I decided to go for it.
I will be using my computer for powercrunch things like video compression so the CPU power will be put to good use.

Well, I'm little out of PC-hardware news today, but I would say your graphics card is pretty weak compared to other specs. Your CPU is very fast, but the graphics card will brake it quite noticeable. But if you say you'll get better one, this PC is very good choice. ;)

Yeah I know the card sucks but it will have to do for now. Once I had decided I would wait to buy a good graphics card I also knew I needed something in the mean time. I first thought of spending only 50 Euro max on it but that would mean I got stuck with a GF4MX card. Barely better then what I have now and not what I want to use at all. A PRO version of the 9600 would be a lot more expensive then this one and my brother does not have the budget to take a more expensive card of my hands unfortunately.
The 9600 SE will give me some nice DX9 features for a reasonable price for now. Once I get the better card I will be able to turn the features on MAX!

This is SOOOOOOO over my head. I dropped out after:


*goes to find a topic that makes sense*

looks good. The vg card still would be enough to run games like HL2 and Doom3 with no FPS drop.