I'm planning to purchase a new computer later this week (at last!),
but first I would very much like some 2nd opinions from some of the
many knowledgeable folk in this group to hopefully spot any egregious
errors I may have made before I begin plunking my money down. I'll be
getting the core of the system as a barebone from mwave.com, and then
adding the hard drive and videocard myself. (I'm not quite confident
enough of my hardware abilities to do CPU and MB installation just
yet.)

Here is the system spec I'm planning on as of today:

CPU: AMD Athlon64 3000+ (socket 754)
MB: MSI K8N Neo Platinum (socket 754, NForce 3-250Gb chipset)
Case: Antec Sonata (w/TruePower 380 PSU, if I understand correctly)
Video: ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB DDR 8X AGP
HD: Samsung SP1614C 160GB, SATA, 8MB buffer, 7200rpm
DVD burner: Pioneer DVR-107BK 8x8 DVD-RW
RAM: Kingston 512MB DDR400 PC3200 KVR400X75C3A/512 (one stick for now)
FDD: Mitsumi 1.44MB
OS: MS Windows XP Pro w/SP1 (DSP/OEM)

All told, the entire system above looks like it will run me around
$1175-1200, which is just about the upper limit of my budget.

Here are the things I plan to use this machine for (sorted roughly in
the order of their importance to me):

- Software Development (for Direct3D, Windows, and web)
- Games (flight sims being the most power hungry examples)
- 3D graphics rendering (in Bryce, trueSpace, etc)
- 2D graphics editing (in Paint Shop Pro)
- Multitrack digital audio recording and editing (Sonar, Wavelab)
- DVD viewing (using PowerDVD, probably)
- Video editing (only infrequently, performance is not a major
concern)

Allow me to also ask a few pointed questions, and pre-respond to the
most obvious issues:

Q) Should I put in a separate DVD reader to avoid wear and tear on the
burner? In the past I thought it was better not to use a burner for a
primary drive, but perhaps that is not the same sort of issue anymore?
(I don't have any need to rip and burn simultaneously.)

Q) Is the Radeon 9800 Pro a good match for this system, or will some
of its power be wasted? Should I step down to a 9700 or something? I
do very much want good Direct3D9 performance that will last me for a
while.

Q) Will this model # of Kingston RAM do the trick? I don't know as
much as I ought to about various types of RAM.

A) I've read that the latest Audigy2 cards don't get along with this
MSI motherboard and/or the Athlon 64's (e.g., BSODs), so for the
moment I am just planning to see how well the onboard Realtek audio
works for purposes of gaming and DVD playback. I already have a Gina
2496 that I will be putting into the system for purposes of digital
audio recording. (If anyone can confirm or contradict the reports of
problems with the Audigy2 with this other hardware, I'd very much like
to hear it!)

A) I don't want to wait around for socket 939 MBs. For business
reasons I need to have a machine running XP Pro in a matter of weeks,
not months. (I also dislike being an early adopter of just-released
gear, MBs in particular ... been bitten by that before)

A) I expect to be using this as my primary machine for at least a few
years. Let's put it this way: my current machine is a P3-550 that I've
been nursing along for about 4 years now, and I'm still not TOO upset
with it yet (except when it comes to flight simming and 3D rendering,
where it just isn't pulling its weight anymore).

Any opinions would be appreciated!

- David