Hi to All,

I have lurking around the edges of this list for some time.  After
reading all the posts, I have decided to build my own computer in the
timeframe of around 26 June to 4 July.  First, I am not a novice, I have
build one before, but that was in 1996, mouse decades ago in the
computer world.

Second, I have 2 constraints.  I am in Asia, specifically in Singapore
and I have a limited budget of USD$1,375/-.

Here's my initial planned system:
- Celeron
- M/B to support Celeron
- 128 Mb PC100 SDRAM
- CD-ROM drive
- Mode5 10 Gb Harddisk
- 17 " 0.26mm Monitor
- 8Mb Graphic Card
- Creative Soundcard
- ATX 4-bays casing
- K/B + mouse

As this is a personal machine, I have several usage for it:
- testbed for overclocking - general optimisation of computer resources
- playing games (I am not into first-person shooters, so 3D performance
is not an issue, or is it?)
- some businesss apps for word processing, speadsheet and database.
- linux experimentation

Well...  you can see from the list that I have not decided a fair bit of
what I need to buy, just only the general outline.
The questions that I hope the list can help me with is:
1.    Should I get a Celeron or a AMD in the timeframe that I have
allocated myself?  If so, which clock speed should I get to?
2.    Which M/B chipset should I get?  There's so many variants, BX, LX,
ZX, 370, 810, SIS, VIA?  What are the differences?  Which chipset will
ensure longevity?
3.    Which M/B manafacturer should I get from and why?
4.    Am I buying too much SDRAM?  Which SDRAM should I buy?  What's the
differences between 1st party, 3rd party RAM?  How should RAMBUS affect
my buying decisions?
5.    Which Graphics Card should I buy?  Do I have enough onboard RAM,
too little or too much?  What are the reasons for for the graphic
chipset?
6.    Should I buy DMA-66 harddisk instead?  What's the actual
performance differences?
7.    What brand of monitor do you recommend?  Is 0.26mm pitch too
grainy or just enough?

I know it is a lot of questions - but I hope to resolve the confusion
once and for all.  Also, this may help all other newbies as to which
systems to build.  And of course, there are bound to differences in
opinions from the various gurus.  This should get very interesting.

Thanks in advance.

--
Lim Wei Siong Vincent

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