Building a new Machine

[awcajnn]

Everyone tells me the best way to go is build your own system. Well I’m about ready to tackle that baby

Could some of you guru’s give me some ideas on OS, mother boards, boxes, drives, blah blah blah…

I was also told this could be done for $300 – $500, also would it better to buy a new machine instead of building one?

I have a Turtle Beach Montego Sound Card. (I don’t use this as a stereo so I would think I could utilize this card in the new machine)
I have a ATI 7500 Radeon that I just installed in my current machine I would be moving to my new machine.
I just installed 384mg of 100 RAM (not sure if its SDRAM or DDRAM or PDRAM )

Thanks for the help!

cajnn

[Lephturn]

If you want the cheapest price, have the time and interest, and are willing to be your own "tech support", then building your own machine will be the way to go.  If you don't have the time to work on it yourself, learn more about your PC, and fix it when it's broken, then you should buy one from a reputable vendor such as Dell.

Ok, so you have a decent video card, and your sound card MIGHT be ok.  What OS are you planning on running, and can you get drivers for that sound card for that OS?  Check first.

BTW, you have (it sounds like) PC100 SDRAM.  You should likely sell that along with the mainboard/chip and anything else you won't use in your new machine.  Is your case ATX compatible?  What sort of power supply to you have?  Gotta check what you can use, and what you need to buy new.

That said, in your position I think I would look at one of the nForce boards.  I'm waiting for this one to hit the street:

http://www.abit-usa.com/eng/product/mb/nv7-133r.htm

Pretty good performance.  Built in Ethernet.  Good quality built-in sound.  Combine with some DDR SDRAM and the fastest Athlon you can afford.

[SKurj]

When I build a system I spend the money on the motherboard.  I stay away from 'onboard' stuff, though I don't know anything about built in NIC's.

So when looking at the mobo, pay attention to what CPU's it will take.  It may be best to research this on the internet and not on the mobo 'box'.  BIOS's often increase the range at which a mobo can operate extending the life of the board.
I like ASUS boards myself, and have no problems with the A7V series.

You really should let the RAM go.

DDRam is the way to go.  Plan on purchasing 256mb to start.

More than likely the case you are using now is ATX compatible, pay attention to what Power Supply it has.  You really should have a 300w or better power supply these days.  If you don't have 300w now, you can just replace the PS in your old case.

So after all this, you may only need to buy a CPU, RAM and a mobo, which you should have NO problems doing for the amount of money you mention.

If you want to buy a HDD, 7200 ATA100 will give the best performance these days.


SKurj

[Pongo]

I just put an ata133 Maxtor on a mother board that supports it. I think that out performs an ata100 hard drive but I havent benchmarked it. Worth considering if you are getting a new MB and HD though.

[awcajnn]

I do plan on using Windoze 2000 as an OS.

What is RAID technology?

Thanks for the help so far!

cajnn

[Puck]

Windoze2K will cost you some frame rate, but otherwise seems to work.  I had XP on my existing machine for a couple days before it annoyed me too much.  The laptop (which tecnically belongs to work) has XP Pro, and it works.

RAID used to stand for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks.  RAID0 takes two disks and makes them look like one big disk.  RAID1 takes two disks and makes one a copy of the other, so if the primary disk dies the other disk takes over.  There are many other flavors (RAID5 with a hot spare is the one I use mostly) but those are the two you're most likely to see.

I've just ordered a new MB/CPU/RAM, and I'll be building up a new box when it gets here.  Still debating between SCSI2UW and ATA100 RAID0 for the system/paging disk.  Haven't decided which will give me the fastest paging performance.

R