Building a comp Created 18 years ago2005-07-06 01:07:18 UTC by RacerX

I'm sick of this p.o.s. buggy-ass lemon of a comp that's never been right the whole 2 or 3 years I've owned it, and I know that some of the nerdiest computer geeks in the world reside in these forums , so I was wondering: Can you point me to a site (updated in the last year) that will educate me on what I need to know in order to build me a new machine?

I want to build my own because I'm poor/cheap. I'm not so knowledgable about these things, but will learn if I can get a better comp for the money. All the sites I found that gave step by step instructions were pretty much outdated so I was wondering if anyone knew of something more recent,

Thanks.

It's just knowing about what type of hardware is out there and how it performs I guess. I'm doing the exact same thing you're gonna do. I've selected the parts, which I'm going to put into my existing case.

I've never done it before, but here's my points on what you need:

1. Something to put it all in - A case, in other words.
2. A good PSU - Look for the amount of Watts. The higher the better
3. The actual computer itself - This includes the motherboard, CPU, RAM, GFX card, sound card (most motherboards have on-board sound cards, so if you're not picky, you can just use that).
4. Hunt around. Get the cheapest Internet prices (from stores that are in your country of course), copy the prices and the sites down and take them to computer stores. You'd be surprised at how cheap you could get it.

For my future PC, I'm getting an AMD Athlon 64 3200+, ABIT AN8-V motherboard (which has PCI-E), a gig of GeIL DDR400 PC3200 RAM and a GeForce 6600 GT 128mb PCI-E graphics card. This is setting me back by around $850AUD.

If you're looking for something that will sustain you for a while, this is a fairly solid rig. jaardsi is getting something quite similar to it as well.

Don't skimp on anything! It really doesn't work. The most boring components are presently pretty dirt-cheap (disk drives).

The rated power output of a power supply is fairly important, but it's vital that it's made by a good company too.

Incidentally, I intend to upgrade to something a bit above what Anthony's going for around Christmas.

PS: I also recommend, personally, that you go for a 64-bit CPU, which means, in the present day, an Athlon64.

The system I'm getting this summer is quite similiar:

Mobo: MSI K8N SLI Platinum
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3200+, Venice, Socket 939
RAM: 2x 512MB DDR 400MHz
GPU: GeForce 6600GT 128MB PCI-E
HDD: 250GB SATA

That would be some ~1000 euros.

Oh yeah, forgot the Socket 939 thing. Don't bother with 754.

A good PSU - Look for the amount of Watts. The higher the better

Not quite as simple as that. As 7th said, it needs to be made by a good company. To me, this is Very important, I don't want to buy a low budget PSU that fries my mobo
But I would say that you need at least 500W

Oh, and DDR Ram is cheap atm, so buy now, when DDR3 arrives the prices will go up.

Yes. Excuse my negligence on that part.

Ah, I forgot the case, it's Antec Sonata Piano Black 380W.

PSU wattage isn't everything. You could have a PSU with 100000 amps on the 5v rail, but 1 amp on the 12v rail. I know, that just wouldn't work at all since the motherboard will draw over 1 amp on the 12v rail but it's an example. It also needs to be high quality too. I've owned some pretty cheap power supplies in my time, mostly bad, a couple of them are good mind you (only Fortron PSU's though). My list of decent PSU manafacturers:

Zippy/Emacs (They used to make PSU's for PC Power & Cooling until PCP&C could afford to build their own. Very very very good, but noisy.)
PC Power & Cooling (Mixed opinions on this one, some people say they are shit, but I've been using them for years with no problems. They can handle my insane overclocking very well. They make a PSU which peaks at 1kw Nuff said. Incredibly noisy though!)
OCZ (They don't make their own PSU's, but they get them made up for them. Good stuff though.)
Antec (Ok, they outsource their PSU's too, but I've used them and have no complaints.)
Fortron Source Project (aka FSP Group. Very cheap, yet very very good. I have tons of these lying around.)

If you want more advice, I would hover over to XtremeSystems and make a thread in the general hardware section, rather than posting here. Many of the people there have been building systems for years. I am there too, so there will be at least one familiar face there to help. [/pimp]

Tagan are excellent, too. I have an incredibly quiet PSU from them; it really is almost silent. Utterly inaudible.

Also consider that good PSUs will be capable of stretching up to much higher wattages than their constant rated output. Mine is, I think, rated at 480W, but it can push up to about 630 for sixty seconds (allowing all the power to spin up drives, etc., when the PC is started up).

If you really need some serious power, you could always use two PSUs (or more), but you'd need to have a peek at the ATX/BTX spec. to figure out how to turn on the one not connected to the motherboard.

Seventh-Monkey, yes, that is it's "peak" power. The PSU on my dual-6800 system is an 850w PCP&C which can peak at 1kw. It's a bit overkill, but yes.

I believe 430W is plenty for most builders. I have an Antec 430W myself, and it serves me well (including the Radeon 9800 Pro).

If you want more building advice, you can also head over to www.techspot.com

Good luck.

A kilowatt? Lunatic :P.

You could run an electric chair on that...

You could run an electric chair on that...

Force Feedback.

Thanks for the info

stop. plz.

kthxbai

That's it. I am now contacting the moderators regarding you. Any more spam can, and probably will result in you being banned from this site.

I think Anthony is right you are spamming! I found exactly nothing in this site about mapping you are just avretising it! Anyway this site stinks.

hey chill its just for a game i need to get people to click for the game please don't tell

Then spam it on AIM where it's actually relevant and not a forum in which it supposedly links to a mod or tutorial.

I haxed all your posts anyways so they have no more links.

Here's what I got:

Case $48
PSU $77.25
Mobo $124.99
CPU $324.95
Video Card $320.00
RAM $83.82
HD $105.00
Optical $52.79
OS $94.90 (What's 2002 version?)
Total $1,234.70 US including tax & shipping

look good?

Oops, thats not my HD.

2002 = XP. Same thing.

WAIT, WHAT!? You put XP Home on that beast!? Get Pro from somewhere!

Great PC, though. I hope to upgrade to something slightly under that in a few months' time.

Well, I didn't actually put it together yet, I'm waiting for the last pieces to arrive (hopefully Monday). I hope I don't mess it all up

What will pro do for me?? I'll be doing very little less than gaming and mapping on it.

It's pretty easy to put stuff together. In the future, I recommend Zalman cooling stuff for air cooling. Wonderful stuff.

Home is just, like, Pro with bits torn out at random. It's really restrictive for anyone who... well, does anything technical. Your choice, but I would never use Home myself.