Thinking of a whole new system......

[cumminspuller]

I have never built a system before. Currently my wife and I have a PIII 600. I really have no idea what alot of you guys are talking about, it is all a bit over my head. I do know that no overclocking will be involved. I was kind of lurking around here looking for a guide on what to components to purchase for a complete system but did not see anythiing. I do know I do not want on-board video or audio. The computer will be used for some gameing and my wife uses it alot for her small photography business, example: photoshop, for editing and touching up photos, etc. So if you guys could please help me out it would be greatly appreciated. If more information is needed please let me know.

Thank you,

Jay

 

[rogue1979]

OK, here goes....

There will be alot of different choices, this is just one of them.

$42 Athlon XP 1800+ t-bred. (multiplier will most likely be locked, so you want a 11.5X or lower multipier.)
$40 Newegg refurbished Nforce2 motherboard (extra overclocking options not needed.)
$35 generic 500-watt case with 80mm fan ports on the back and side panel.
$64 - 2 X $32 for generic PC3200 (you only need 333MHZ)
$15 for a heatsink, many at this price, an expensive one isn't necessary.
$60 Newegg refurbished Geforce4 Ti4200 128MB.
$10 for floppy drive
$30 for generic CD-RW
decent sound and lan will be on the motherboard
$45 for a 40-60GB IDE 7200rpm hard drive

total $341

These are current pricewatch costs, a good deal with rebates on a hard drive, CD-RW and memory might be possible at Office Max, Comp USA, or Best Buy saving another $50-$75.

Don't be afraid to overclock, this is as easy as changing one fsb speed setting. You will simply set the motherboard to run at a 166MHz fsb for 1909MHz, no higher core voltage should even be neccesary, and you will still run cool at the stock 1.5v.

Use coolbits and the Det 44.03 on the GF4 Ti4200, your mileage will very but Ti4400 speeds should be expected at the least.

This should get you at least 12,000 pts. in 3DMark 2001. Of course you could add more money on a video card, cpu or memory and go faster, but this minimal set up should make a good all around gaming system, unless you need to play Halo or UT2004 at 1280 x 1024 or higher.

 

[SneakyStuff]

Here's my spin on it Enjoy! (BTW, do you have a copy of windows? That always helps)

CPU- AMD $57
MOBO- Biostar $51
RAM- Kreton $45
Hard Drive- Maxtor $51
Case- Antec $57 (With shipping)
Case Fan- Speeze $6
Video Card- Radeon 9200 $66

Grand total comes to..... $333 ENJOY!

And since it's a beige case, you can just use your floppy drive and cd drive from your current case

 

[Dman877]

Anand posts weekly pc building guides/recommendations for all types of systems on the front page.

 

[TipsyMcStagger]

If there's a Fry's in your area, perhaps you can pick up one of those Motherboard/CPU combos

Like an XP2400 w/ Board for $70-80

 

[jeffgson]

Just a mention on the last comment. I bought a mobo-CPU combo about a year and a half ago. The CPU was an AMD 1300+, and I don't recall what mobo came in the deal. Later, when I wanted to upgrade my CPU because I was running some computational heavy graphics editors, I learned my CPU was hardwired to my mobo. To upgrade I had to replace both the CPU along with the mobo.

 

[Soulkeeper]

Yeah the Athlon XP is prob gonna be your best bet
if your playing games then the money you save by not forking out 400 bucks or so on a P4 and motherboard for it can be put into a better graphics card or more memory

for sub 500 i would recommend athlon XP from the desktop 1700+ to the mobile 2600+ are all good depending on the budget
a barton version is worth it if the price difference is under 10 bucks or so
512mb should be plenty of memory and if you really wanted to a cpu and proc could be had for under 150 bucks or so
video card i guess that depends on if you play new games or not but i recommend getting atleast dx8 support dx9 if you can but some of the "budget" sub 100 dollar cards are kinda pathetic with newer games, even if they do support them, so choose wisely
newegg.com is a good place to shop imo for parts
excaliberpc.com is also good
pricewatch.com is nice if you know exactely what you want and don't like the prices on the other two sites or can't find it there (it's nice to compare hundreds of site's prices on products).


good luck

 

[Zebo]

I learned my CPU was hardwired to my mobo...no such animal. I see you've been listening to "sales professionals"


Anyway here what I recommend for a blazing fast system at newegg.com


$42 Athlon XP 1800+ t-bred.
$79 Shuttle MN31N motherboard with digial soundstorm sound and GF-MX graphics
$22 POWMAX case w/ 400 PSU
$84 - 2 X 256MB for Mushkin PC3200
$8 for Dynatron all copper heatsink
$8 for floppy drive
$50 for Quiet samsung DVD/CD/CDRW combo drive
$50 for a 40gig quiet samsung harddrive with 3yrs warranty
$30 For microsoft cordless keyboard and mouse combo

=$323

Then choose whatever speaker and monitor U wish

 

[cumminspuller]

Thanks guys for helping me out. I have been takeing your suggestions and looking at each one and reading about them on newegg and other sites. Trying to understand all the terminology and such. I do have a couple of questions at this point. At what point does one need a fan directly cooling the processor? And How many fans are needed? Is there a rule to follow such as this "speed of processor"=# of fans. As far as RAM goes, is it better to go with 2x256 or 1x512....What are the advantages and drawbacks? On-board audio and video kind of scares me. If the audio or video goes out, does it take the entire board with it thus needing a new processor and mobo? Thank you guys for listening and lending a hand.

Jay

 

[L00PY]

Originally posted by: Zebo
I learned my CPU was hardwired to my mobo...no such animal. I see you've been listening to "sales professionals"

There are tons of Socket A ones -- Mercury 740CFDMx, PC-Chips M810CDLU, ECS K7SEM and L7VMM3, etc.

Oh, if you're just getting into system building and considering an AMD build, read their guides.

 

[RickH]

"I have never built a system before. Currently my wife and I have a PIII 600. I really have no idea what a lot of you guys are talking about, it is all a bit over my head". Save yourself a lot of trouble--get a Dell. They?re a lot of deals to be had. It will have support. It has an operating system. Just do It. Rick

 

[ponyo]

Originally posted by: RickH
"I have never built a system before. Currently my wife and I have a PIII 600. I really have no idea what a lot of you guys are talking about, it is all a bit over my head". Save yourself a lot of trouble--get a Dell. They?re a lot of deals to be had. It will have support. It has an operating system. Just do It. Rick

I second this.

 

[cumminspuller]

I was trying to build a system and learn more about computers. Actually, I have a friend who is going to help me get it together and get it running.

Jay

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: RickH
"I have never built a system before. Currently my wife and I have a PIII 600. I really have no idea what a lot of you guys are talking about, it is all a bit over my head". Save yourself a lot of trouble--get a Dell. They?re a lot of deals to be had. It will have support. It has an operating system. Just do It. Rick

I'll also second this, with a reservation. Make sure it has an AGP slot. The cheapest Dimension 2400 systems do NOT have an AGP slot, and those are the "deals" out there in your price range.

Overall I do recommend building your own system. It is a great learning experience and can give you a better understanding of your computer and a sense of accomplishment. It can also be a tramatic and expensive lesson if you attempt it without some in person assistance for your first time. Find a friend that has built them (more than one or two) to come over for some sodas and a barbecue in exchange for watching over your build and giving tips and warnings as needed.

If you don't have any friends who build their own, you may be able to find one of those small mom&pop repair shops to assist you for a small fee.

Tonight I'm going to be helping my GF build her new computer. I helped her with the last one, so this will be her second build. She seems to enjoy it. Mix of new and used parts:
P4 2.6C (hopefully overclocked a bit)
Zalman CNPS-7000AlCu HSF
MSI 865GM2 motherboard
two sticks of Kingston HyperX PC4000
MSI FX5900XT (supposedly 28dB fan)
Toshiba 16X DVD
NEC ND1300A DVDRW
USB 2.0 internal flash card reader
Athenatech black/silver mATX case

 

[AnnoyedGrunt]

I'm am currently using the first computer I built myself from scratch (2.5 years ago). I had done upgrading before then (ram, HDD, CPU, etc) but never build my own.

I found it to be no more difficult than a major upgrade. Most of the work is installing the O/S and software it seems.

It definitely makes you less scared about screwing things up, because as long as you back up your important data then you know that you can always rebuild the thing if something goes awry.

My current system is:
Athlon Xp 1800+ (palomino core)
Soyo Dragon Plus
ATI R9700 Pro (just got this at beginning of year, was GF3 Ti200)
512MB RAM
2X IBM Deskstar 40GB in RAID 0 (80 GB total)
ON BOARD AUDIO

This is probably close to what you can get for $400 (except maybe the vid card). Overall, the system is very nice, but I've noticed that Halo and Far Cry don't play very well (CoD is very smooth, and UT2004 demo is good in fairly enclosed areas @ 1024x768). So you should have very good performance in most games since my GF3 was fine up until CoD.

Oh yeah, I saw some questinos above:
1. FANS - I currently have one 80mm fan (spinning @ 2800 RPM) in the back of my case, plus the one in the PSU. Seems fine (case is Aopen H600A).
2. RAM - I would buy 1X512 since you would have more room for upgrading in the future. Also, less chance of failure since less components.
3. I would avoid on-board video, mainly because the on-board solutions are crap for gaming (except maybe the very recent ATI chipset, but that's only for Intel). Also, you if you want to upgrade the video it is nice to be able to sell (or donate) the old card.
4. On board Audio is definitely fine for me. It seems like Audio technology has been relatively the same since the good ol Sound Blaster PRO (8 bit card if I recall). Obviously we have many more channels now and finer resolution, but unless you are doing some serious recording or hooked into a home theater system you probably will have a hard time hearing the difference between on board audio and an external card. I have my audio hooked into a plain old 100W stereo receiver with a subwoofer and two Boston Acoustic sattelite speakers, and I really like the sound, and I'm not even using the 5.1 capabilities of my on-board audio.

Anyhow, good luck and have fun.

-D'oh!