Build my own

[fman74]

Well I have had it with the BIG computer companies. I will admit I have had a slightly above average experience with my current Dell. It’s about 4 years old  1.6 Pentium, 640 ram, 20gig HD and 64mb vid card. Well I have been looking for a new one. Checked out everything from Bestbuy, Dell, Gateway, Alienware, VooDoo and everything in between. The prices are very high and the biggest turn off is the heavy push on extend warranties. Basically what you are telling me is you are sell me a piece of $&*@. I was at best buy not to long ago and almost (gasp) bought a notebook there. I told the guy if started with the extend warranty crap I was going to walk out the door. Well, he did. After I informed hip that I would not pay 20% of the computers value to him I left.

So I am going to build my on computer and warranty it myself.  I need so advice befor I go out and buy all the wrong stuff. Oh yeah I don’t want to break the bank to much and I will be using it for more them just gaming

AMD or Pentium? And then which one?
Also what about the socket? Which one?
Ram- is 1 gig just right?
Vid card 128 or spurge for the 256mb?
And your vote for a good case?

[AaronM2]

well give us a price go to http://www.newegg.com/

[GunnerCAF]

Here is another good guide to getting started and selecting a processor vs. cost.  You can compare both AMD and Intel.

http://www.sharkyextreme.com/guides/WCPG/index.php

Gunner

[GRUNHERZ]

Here is awesome and very thurough  how-to build article for a modern AMD athlon 64 system  - dont be shocked by the prices since its not in US dollars.

http://www.hardwarezone.com/guides/amd-socket939/index.php?pg=1

[Ghosth]

Easy way to get most of it right is to buy a mother board bundle from a good company. IE newegg, or Mwave.
They won't let you put together parts that won't work.

Take note of half a dozen possible combinations. Go do some searching on those Motherboards. This takes some time, but saves you money in the long run.  Look for what you want on the board feature wise. 5.1 sound, lan port, etc.

Personally I prefer Abit mboards, although I have also owned gigabite, shuttle, and tyan's also. Assus also has a rock solid reputation.

However Abit boards are dead simple to setup, no jumpers to set, and come with good clear easy to follow directions.

Then its just a matter of picking a case/powersupply, Hard drive/optical drives. And a decent video card. You'll want to do some more research on video cards.

You also need to decide if your going for

A top of the line, (highest price)
B Mid range (better value)
C Best price (accept that your 2 or 3 generations back from the top)

You can spend as little as 130$ for Mboard/cpu/cooler/ram. Or much much more. Also Mwave offers the option for 9$ to preassemble & test the system.
Its the cheapest insurance policy you'll ever buy. You KNOW that when it arrives, its going to work.

Overall AMD seems the better bargain.
Prices are certainly better, and they consistantly are priced lower for the same speed.

As to video, there are very few games or applications that can actually USE that extra 128 mb of video memory.

Better to look for a 128 mb card thats fast.

Ram, 1gig? LOL call me the memory miser. I just upgraded to 256 of ddr after running this system on 128 for almost 2 years.

Sure buy a gig if you like. Although I'm willing to bet that half that would be plenty.

2 things on cases, look for one with good cooling. And a GOOD powersupply. I doubt I'd build with less than 400 watt at this point. 425, or up should be good.

[ebgb]

The smartest thing you can do is above all else - post here when you do make a decision and before you buy.  Guys here will steer you straight and help you to get the most bang for your buck.

I'll bet you can get one buttkickin rig for near 700 clams, complete and get 3yrs or more out of it with no upgrades.

[prz@net4u.ch]

I was running Abits and AMD for a while and albeit they tend be a tad faster than Intel/Asus, they tend to be more loving-care-needing as well. My last (before my dual Xeon setup here) was  Asus P4P800 (any P4.800 from Asus seem to be good go), lan on it, good sound on it, lots of USB ports. It was extremely solid, overclocked or not. Anything under 3GHz hyper-threading Pentium4 is good price and you can tweak it higher, given you buy _good_ memory. Make sure it's dual bank and 400MHz rating at least. Get a good, quiet cooler, a pound of copper at least with a silent fan. Get a nice aluminium case, it's worth the money, that's the one you'll keep for longer than the rest ;-) I like atcs but there are others. Get a _very good_ power supply, otherwise your life will be hell. Enermax is not the most quiet but very solid and relatively cheap. Very quiet, very good supplies tend to be expensive. Graphics card is a whole religious war, I have ATI now but used Nvidias before, the speed/feature optimum shifts all the time. Forget PCI-X for the moment, AGP and PCI is way cheaper and stable.

Don't buy from the cheapest place, give a good dealer couple bucks extra, for that they will take stuff back and even more important, they have the stuff available.

I highly recommend Tom's hardware website to check on components.

There are coiuple good sites about PC-building from components. It's not magic and you get the best of the breed albeit you'll spend time learning stuff you may not care for.

[stantond]

I'll echo the computer case emphasis.  Spend $70+ on the case and get a 400 watt power supply.  Assembling the rest of the system will be much easier.  Some of the better cases have several fans that can be noisy, but if you ever want to overclock your video card or CPU they are necessary.

The motherboard w/cpu installed is a good idea as well.  The site: http://www.pricewatch.com has quite a few dealers all displaying their wares and the   site is organized well.  I prefer Abit boards with Intel processors.  Others like AMD, and from what I have read AMD can out perform Intel in some cases.  I own Intel stock, so it makes sense to me to keep up with what I have invested in.  So, I am biased.

Video cards, drives, keyboards, mice, CD/DVD drives are all easy to install with a good case.   I recommend not scrimping case and the motherboard.  Good luck!  

Regards,

Malta

[boxboy28]

If i were buying intodays market it would be :

Asus Mobo with the Nvidia 4 chip set vs the via chipset
(GOTO http://www.tomshardware.com/) and read up on the boards

AMD 64 (939 type)  as this is there newest main stay desk top chips that you can upgrage in the future.
no need to go top of the line but some thing thats running over 2.3g's

RAM - check the recomended RAM for teh MOBO you choose from the manufacturer!  Deffinantly buy the fastest brand(Corsair, or i like OCZ)  thats approved with a CL 2 rating.   ***RAM is very very important inthese new AMD chips because you get more speed with faster ram.


Video cards .... thats up to you and what ya want to spend and what way you want to go If you want to be able to upgrade it in a few yrs go for a MOBO that supports PCI X, if thats not a big worry stick with AGP (its gonna stick around for a while)

I would go with atleast a ATI9600 or 9700 or base 9800(non XT, or pro)  I like ATI but have had Gforce's as well and they make a great card also!


Hard drive ----- get a SATA as it will be able to go into any new system you build down the road (hopefully) SATA is the newest tech. so it shouldnt be outdated in 2-3 trs

Power supply******* DO NOT BUY A CHEAP PS ****get nothing but good! just because it says 500W dont mean it can produce that in a loaded machine and be stable!  ANTEC is good and several others (Read Toms again)

the rest is up too you

[prz@net4u.ch]

Word of caution with AMD and NVidia chipsets from my side. Albeit it is true they are a tad faster and a tad cheaper than Intel P4/985 combination, they tend to be less stable and harder to get going in terms of hardware compatibility and drivers in my experience so for a beginner that may not pay off.

On RAM I disagree, get _good_ RAM, not the fastest, the Corsair top-notch stuff is a rip-off for 2-3% more performance. Kingston and such guys make nice, decent RAM for far less and again, I found that intel chipsets are more forgiving with RAM sticks (except when going over 3x512 or so). It is far better to have 512MB in the box of decent RAM than 256 of the best. For gaming I would say the buck stops around 512MB unless you're in resource hog games.

SATA comment is true of course.

Last but not least, ventilate well but be aware that the box becomes very noisy fast. I use Verax ventilation but they are _very_ expensive, albeit basically silent at any speed. Pabst makes very good ventilators that are fairly queit and indestructible and about 30% of the Verax price. I also use to line my casing completely with noise-killing mats but that's lots of work. I work 7x14 days a week in my office here so I am very noise sensitive. I managed to get my 5 HDDs RAID, 2 Xeons, 9600XT box (about 10ventilators ;-) running at ~25dB@1m but it is a lot of work.

[boxboy28]

All im saying on the RAM side is get the good stuff - stuff that runs a CL2 and lower memory timings AS LONG AS IT IS APPROVED FOR THE MOBO!

[38ruk]

if price is a big concern and your trying to build a system at the bare minimum, id go with a amd 64 socket 754, if you can spend a few bucks then go with the socket 939.  i use asus boards and have nothing but praise for them , stay away from chaintech nforce 3 boards though, i had a nightmare with one .  make sure you get a quality power supply , not a $40 dollar cheapy, it will be worth getting an antech or comprable PS, 430 watt would be the minimum id go with.  If you are going with a 64 amd , make sure you get good ram , cas latency 2.5 or better, i run cas lat 2 and notice a big difference from 2.5 or 3 , as for a video card right now i think the nvidia 6600gt is the best bang for the buck card on the market right now , also look for the x800 pro from ati as their new cards are comming out and the price might drop. If money isnt a issue the ati x850 looks like a kick arse card ,  GL   38

[DREDIOCK]

Originally posted by stantond
I'll echo the computer case emphasis.  Spend $70+ on the case and get a 400 watt power supply.  Assembling the rest of the system will be much easier.  Some of the better cases have several fans that can be noisy, but if you ever want to overclock your video card or CPU they are necessary.

Malta

You dont have to spend $70 on a case.
I spent $30 on the case for the  one I built for my wife for Xmas
Steel case (seems steel stays cooler then Aluminum or plastic)
400 watt PS and 2 fans and one of those little CPU exhaust cone thingies to channel the warm air away form the CPU and out of the case instead of just circulating around inside