building experience. This is going to be more of a learning experience (hence the selection of incredibly cheap parts). Help me decide. Here's what I have so far. I know its not going to shatter any benchmarks, but its my first PC building endeavor. This will probably be used as a media-center PC and for some light gaming (Battlefield 2, Doom 3, Far Cry)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103300
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128376
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820104072 (x2)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102794
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136195 (x2)


I need help deciding on a cheap CD/DVD burner and a power supply. How do you know how much juice all the components need?

Those hard drives are a terrible value. You're way better off springing at least another $20 or so per drive and getting immensely larger drives.

Don't go for cheap on a PSU, You'll get burned.

Ugghh, AMD CPU, I strongly recommend going intel.

I'd go for a faster CPU if it's a true media center PC. They typically benefit more from a strong CPU, especially if they're doing a lot of encoding work.

Spend, Spend, Spend!

I don't know anything about parts, but check this out. In addition to price and performance, you can list cards and stuff based on how much bang they get for their buck, and then rank that by price/performance. Good info.

Ok, so I decided to ditch the 3450 and go with the Sapphire Radeon 3850 instead.

For the vid card I suggest this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121306&Tpk=asus%204550

I just picked it up for my HTPC and it actually has some decent (relatively, haha) 3d performance for semi-new games like TF2 and L4D.

Edit: arg ninja'd. 3850 is better than 4550 but 4550 is specifically meant for HTPCs so yeah.

For drives, I would suggest

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136319


The Kuma is a decent processor but you really don't need DDR2 1066 over DDR2 800. I'd suggest a 4GB kit instead of two 2GB kits.

If you do decide to up your processor, my suggestions are this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103649

Or this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103680

Or this if you're tight on budget: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103681

These all work on AM2+ boards (but might require a BIOS update) and can use DDR2

On the Intel side, consider E5200 and E7400. I personally think the Phenom IIs listed are better values, though.

PSUs (these should all be more than enough if you're using relatively low power components):
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139008
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139003 (a little more juice)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371006
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371007

The last one is solid and powering a friend's E8400 + 4870

Thanks Pommy, I'll definitely look into those options.

Can I still use DDR2 800 memory on a DDR2 1066 motherboard?