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General discussion

Did I get a good or bad deal?

Aug 18, 2005 2:02AM PDT

Ok, recently bought a desktop from a recommended small computer shop (computer was built on site) and now am unsure of whether I got a good deal or not. The owner is totally willing to make changes to the system if I decide to. I spent $870 so far and am able to go up to $1000. Here are the parts:

AMD Athlon 64 bit 3000+ 754 socket
ASUS K8S-MX Mother Board
Lite-on 16 X DVD+/- R/RW, double layer
Maxtor SIS 120 GB Hard Drive
512 MB DDR RAM
Network Card
Integrated sound and video card
17"Aopen 757JS LCD Monitor- blurry
ATX Case with fan, blue lights

Want it for email, word processing, surfing the web, downloading, and burning movies and music. Might watch some dvds on it, not really into games yet. Should I make any upgrades or changes or should I just return the whole thing and start over? As you may tell, not really advanced with computers. Thanks for any help.

Discussion is locked

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for your pupose
Aug 18, 2005 2:04AM PDT

that seems ok for what you need. of course, you could have went with socket 939 with pci express, but it doesn't look like you will need that since your computer needs are basic.

konny

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Monitor-blurry
Aug 18, 2005 3:45AM PDT

Not a good sign. This needs to be addressed while the sytem is new and under warranty.

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A couple of Qs...
Aug 18, 2005 5:21AM PDT

When you say integrated sound and video do you mean they are already on the motherboard? You shouldn't need the network card. The ASUS has one built in. If you are going to watch movies you might want a PCIe video card. Something with 128mb of memrory will work fine. The on board sound should be fine. As stated in another post, you do need to resolve the monitor issue. Trade it for a 19in flat screen. They're cheaper and still have great quality. You should have room for it. The only downside to the system is that you only have 2 PCI expansion slots. You'd better make sure you're not going to want to add a lot of stuff to it. You will be glad you have the 8 USB2 ports. Later on you might want to consider a faster SATA hard drive. Hope this helps.

and life goes on...

Jack