TopShelf's Journal: Help me build a new PC

OK, here's the scoop; I may, through my own stupidity, have fried the motherboard in my desktop PC at home, and am facing the prospect of getting a new one, and I'd like to get some input on which direction I should take, since it's been almost 5 years since I last did this.

The PC that may be dead has a P4 3Ghz processor on an ASUS P4C800 Deluxe motherboard, 1GB RAM (DDR400) and some peripherals worth salvaging (hard drives, DVD drive, etc.). I was trying to plug in some additional memory, decided to take it back out and check a few things online before proceeding, and closed up the box. When I fired it up, a rather nasty smell starting coming out of the case, and when I powered back down, I realized I hadn't taken the memory card out after all, and worse yet, it was sitting halfway into the slot. Now when I try to boot I get one long beep followed by two short ones, and endlessly repeating cycle that I haven't been able to get definitive info on as to what it means (some say main memory failure, others the video adapter).

I'm trying to figure out if perhaps the existing memory got fried and putting different DIMMs in might resolve the issue, but I'd rather not pay for that only to find out that's not the problem, and the mobo is indeed toast. So I've started browsing online for a new rig...

What I Do: A little gaming (NHL08), but mostly intensive database and spreadsheet work. I have a blog where I dig into statistical analysis of the NHL, and I'm in the process of designing a database that would be updated after each night's games.

Since it's been so long since I've had a box built, I don't even know where to start. AMD? Intel? 2 or 4 CPU? 2GB RAM? 4GB? 32-bit or 64? I assume, based on everything I've read, that XP is the way to go over Vista (Windows only, please). I'm not looking to blow huge sums of money here, so I like to find sweet spots where the diminishing returns for that extra $ start to tail off.

Well... for $600, today's Woot isn't bad

[Degrees]

It's a quad core [woot.com], 3GB RAM box with Winders Vista thrown in. You would end up with all your good parts left over. But you could add your current hard drive to the new box, and be set for a good while. I'm not a particular fan of Gateway, but I think they sold out to Acer a little while ago, so this box might be better than the Gateways of the past.

As for the BIOS beeps - Asus should have that on their web site. I had some RAM go bad on me, and I'm pretty sure that was how I found out what the beeps meant.

Re:

[nizo]

That is a good point; my first question would be, "how much do you want to spend?" Then you can figure out all the other bits.

Re:

[TopShelf]

Somewhere in the $600 range sounds about right, since I plan on cannibalizing as many components as possible (such as 2nd & 3rd hard drives) from the old box. In the few articles I've read the last couple days, it sounds like Intel is kicking AMD's butt these days when it comes to CPU power per $.

I did receive feedback from Asus that memory appears to be the issue, so I'll buy one stick of 512MB to see if I can bring the creature back to life; if not, it's time to start shoppin'...

Re:

[nizo]

If the motherboard can handle it, you might consider buying a gig stick; either way, you will be happy with the extra memory :-)

Re:

[jawtheshark]

Wut he sez...

Re:

[TopShelf]

I did pick up a gig stick, and that removed the "three beeps" message, but now when I power up there's nothing outside of whirring fans and hard drives. No POST, nothing on the screen, nada. Looks like it's time to spec a box...