Guidance on PC building

[cspizz]

I'm looking to build my first PC and have lots of questions. I'm looking for other forums or resources good for newbie builders. Any suggestions?

[JasonFriday13]

I have built two systems myself, I can give a little guidance. First read up on all the computer stuff, like motherboard, RAM, cpu, ide connectors (master/slave jumper), sata, power supply watts, PCI, AGP, harddrive, graphics card and whatnot. Your also going to need an operating system to install on it. I have windows XP and ubuntu 7.10 on my machine, and windows 2000 server on my other computer. I learned a lot from building one myself, rather than buying a pre-made system. Good luck with your build.

[weisborg]

My first piece of advice is wait a month or so. Lots of new 45nm Intel chips keep coming out. I jumped on board at the E8400 level and now there are a lot more. Not that I regret getting mine...I love the CPU and needed it at the time (Plus it is a lot faster than my old AMD Athlon 64bit), but I too need to build another soon and will be waiting a little to see what new Quads come. I see 2 so far, one has low cache the other is ok...

[dontasciime]

get in now to buy memory though as prices are set to go up very soon well according to what I read yesterday

[lmao2k]

Work out a budget and go from there!

[LOCOENG]

So what is the budget?

[cspizz]

So what is the budget?

No real budget. I plan to play it by ear [or wallet]. I want to build a hardcore system, but don't want to get soaked. I'm with Borg and want one of the new 45nm Intel Quads, but there's a premium to pay on those. A 65nm Duo can obviously be had for much less. What I can't decide is, if I go with a Duo, will I always wish I had sprung for the Quad? Is a new 45nm Quad worth the extra $$, or would I be better off with a Duo and more memory instead?

 

Either

CPU

will be better than my current [AMD Athlon XP 3000+ 2.16GHz], but I'd like whatever I get to hold up for a while performance wise.

 

I plan to eventually overclock...once I figure out how to do that.

 

I read the thread on your recent build and picked up a fair amount, but I'm not sure if some of the items you chose are right for me or not. I did, however, save the pics of your case interior as a model of organization that I hope to replicate.

get in now to buy memory though as prices are set to go up very soon well according to what I read yesterday

I'm on board with that, but what should I buy and how much? DDR2 or DDR3? 2, 4, or 8 gigs? What else is important to know or consider here?

 

Let me throw some more things out there if anyone is willing to help on these:

 

mobo

I'll need something Intel compatible and want a full-sized board. I've read (here, I think) that the JMicron

SATA

/

IDE

controllers on ASUS boards won't allow booting into linux. I'm hoping to pick and fully convert to a linux distro within a year or two, so that would be a problem.

 

I'm not sure how to choose one over another here, except that it needs to be compatible with all the other stuff I buy.

case

I'm real high on the

Thermaltake Armor, Armor LCS, and [especially] the Armor+LCS

, but the latter isn't available yet and will be very pricey.

 

I'm also looking at the

Antec 900

. It's a mid tower and I really want space to work and expand, so I'm worried I might need a full tower. But I'm not going to be doing any modding, and this thing is sweet and more importantly has USB and audio up top and exposed for easy access. I also like the

Antec Sonata III 500

for a sleeker, quieter rig but doubt I'll go that route

[cornholio7]

i have the armor case, it is the best case i have had so far, my last one was tt as well.

as far as hdd go , i would say you should consider raid. i have 3 raid stripes in my pc

i have watercooling on my cpu and gpu using bigwater, no problems (that werent of my own doing.....*cough*)

i have c2d it does me fine, way faster than my 2.8ghz P4 ht

 

[LOCOENG]

Mobo: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16813136039 $179 free shipping. If I had it to do over I would have got this board I think.

RAM: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16820146731 $77 after $30 rebate.

PSU: http://www.buy.com/prod/corsair-620w-sli-c.../203270718.html $114 after rebate.

Cooling: http://www.ncixus.com/products/23531/ULTRA...E/THERMALRIGHT/ $56, add a Scythe fan for $12 and I don't think you'll need water.

CPU: Quad $230-$340

C2D $190-$270

 

I would personally go for a quad as the prices are comprable right now and hope that more apps in the future will utilize all cores. The case is really up to what you prefer as is the GPU.

[cspizz]

If I had it to do over I would have got this board I think.

Why do you say? What does this board have that your current board doesn't?

 

Any thoughts on this ABIT IP35 Pro LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX for $139.99 after rebate @ newegg?

 

Also, you suggested 4gb of ddr2, but I was planning on using my current OS [winxp 32-bit] so won't some of that go unused?

Edited April 4, 2008 by cspizz

[LOCOENG]

Why do you say? What does this board have that your current board doesn't?

 

Hopefully it works

 

My Gigabyte board is being RMA'd back to NewEgg right now as it's bad. That Abit board looks just fine.

[Cynthia]

GigaByte... Only bad experience with them.

[LOCOENG]

There is another fella at AD who got a bad board (same board) from them too, we built a few weeks apart.

[Cynthia]

Had an ABIT card for some years ago. A very funny card. Only USB connections and not the usual PS/2 connections for mouse and keyboard. Only bad thing with that one. Guess it was not a good solution as they added the PS/2 connection back on later cards.

[LOCOENG]

My mouse and keyboard are USB so I really don't have a need for PS/2.

[cspizz]

you suggested 4gb of ddr2, but I was planning on using my current OS [winxp 32-bit] so won't some of that go unused?

[LOCOENG]

I'm on board with that, but what should I buy and how much? DDR2 or DDR3? 2, 4, or 8 gigs? What else is important to know or consider here?

 

I was just going on what you stated earlier. You will see around 3.5 gigs with a 32 bit OS.

[dontasciime]

still get 4 gig then run in 128 bit - dual channel, forget about losing a little it's not that important.

[weisborg]

Good board, I was looking at that one myself along with the IX38 Quad GT and a couple MSI boards- P35, Diamond, and P7N SLI...I kinda liked this one since it had 2 PATA and I could make use of all my old stuff from the Athlon system. I have yet to see much spectacular results on SATA...maybe at most twice as fast in bursts, but overall it is about the same.

[cspizz]

So here's what I've gone with:

 

Case- Anetc Nine Hundred

Mobo- ABIT IP35 Pro

PSU- Corsair 450VX

HDD- 500GB Seagate Barracuda SATA

RAM- 4GB [2x2GB] Mushkin HP2-6400 DDR2

CPU- Q6600

Cooling- ASUS V-60 [@LOCOENG- The Thermalright ULTRA-120 is sweet, but pricey, esp. after adding a fan. This HSF reminds me of the Thermal right, got strong reviews at newegg, and was a more budget-friendly solution. I'm going to try it for a while and see.]

GPU- None. [i'm going to try my old ATI All-in-Wonder 9000+]

 

I've decided to put off worrying about a 64-bit OS for a while, but that leave an open issue. The new mobo is SATA capable and I got the Seagate to be my boot drive to take advantage of the high speeds, but I'd like to keep my existing set up. That means I either use my old PATA drive as the boot drive or image my current drive and paste the image on the new drive. Does anyone know anything about that off hand? I've never transferred a full image of one drive to another, but I seem to think the drives [or the partitions] must be exactly the same size? Anyone?

[Cynthia]

1 x ATA 133/100/66/3 IDE connector

 

The DVD-ROM device(s) you are going to use, are those PATA or SATA?

[cspizz]

1 x ATA 133/100/66/3 IDE connector

The DVD-ROM device(s) you are going to use, are those PATA or SATA?

 

Crap! Its PATA. I guess I need a new burner now too. Although, maybe I should keep my burner--it's a brand new LiteOn--and ditch my current PATA drives.

[Cynthia]

Or get a nice mother board that have two native IDE connectors.

[cspizz]

But then I'd have to pay to RMA the board. I'd rather just spend $30 on a new SATA burner--not too high a price for my own stupidity...

[Cynthia]

Aha, didn't knew you already ordered it.