Who wants to help me build a new computer?

Hello guys, I am going to building my self a computer and I plan ti buy everything off line.

Most likely

TigerDirect.com

if any of you know any good sites Iam all ears

well anyways I have a hard drive and cd drives, all i need is:

Motherboard
Case
Processor
Ram
Video Card

I know there are many kits and so on, but I really thought I would ask my fellow members, if any of you have anything in mind I am ready


O yes my bugdet is aroound 300-400$

I am very happy with Supermicro. They make some single proc stuff that may be suitable for consumer use as they use P4 in a variety of pin counts. Their twin proc stuff (at least the few I've played with) are Xeon CPU and perform exceedingly well. You may find them a bit expensive but for me they are excellent value as I have never had to return a Supermicro product - ever.

Gigabyte, ASUS, ECS, Tyan, MSI, Shuttle... I've had to return "new" products at a higher rate and on the trick "zoot" stuff that means a re-order most often. Quality control and assurance are premo with Supermicro because of their excellent at factory burn-in and test suite. They make sure it works BEFORE it's shipped - every last one.

I can't recommend Vista (junk beta) or the other 64 bit MS OS's. For most folks the best you can do is WINXP Pro. For those with the skills, the BSD variants are "rock crushers" but config is well suited to someone with patience and a background in masochism and jenga.

BSD once set up - can you say secure? Awesome and like no one or almost no one knows how to go backdoor on it... I still have machines running using the 1986 vintage "big crunch" kernel and some have been "up" for more than a year without issue.

Victor K.

what would say is a good processor, I never understood, 800mhz speed to 2.0 ghz processing


AMD has some fast chips, like 2000mhz

But then Intel has the Celeron D with 3.2ghz

what is better for gamimg and alot of programs like, photoshop, movie editors and so on?

I would reccommend one of Intels new Core 2 Duo processors. There are 5 or 6 different models and which one depends on your budget.

Edit: Just saw your budget. The cheapest Core 2 Duo is $200 - $220 (just came out so there is some price gouging) so they may be a little bit out of your budget.

[edit on 3-8-2006 by codylawyer99]

i will really look into that, but can explain the differences with speed and all that processing stuff

Photoshop "likes" AMD - we have several Opterons at 4xxx something 4800+? - I'd have to check. Stay away from Cele procs as the caches are too small for any real grunt work. Movie editing and compiling and rendering takes real horsepower - P4 3.2 socket 77x is priced attractively as it will soon go non-current, go for an EE spec if you're "bucks up".

Games are the "killer" hardware wise - attach a snowblower to your bank account - I don't do games but consider SLI and phyiscs accelerator cards as an advantage as they work pretty darn well. I haven't fiddled with any Crossfire architecture stuff tho'.

Of the procs you mentioned I'd go with the AMD but wait a week or so as they are due for a price drop as soon as their latest stuff moves out of the "channel" and into the shops. Perhaps visit Tom's Hardware Guide (or other sites) and compare the CPU's on the various performance charts and "roadmaps" that are available.

Don't go by clock numbers as they are misleading read some reviews and I'm sure you'll come to a decision that is best for you. The ultimate measure on big-inch hardware is G-flops of operations - sort of like a dyno "pull" on a car or MC with the load ramping up the more Flops the stronger the motor.

Put it this way - no matter what you build - it is already obsolete or will be shortly in this "up to the hour" world of computing hardware.

Victor K.

[edit on 3-8-2006 by V Kaminski]

I hear what you say, thanks alot K, you get a WATS man....

O yea, so now all i have is to get is the ram

This coming from a hardcore Intel guy, i almost built my new rig an amd amx2 4800. Until my intel rep contacted me with info on the core duo2 intel. Now i am happy to say they are back on top of the heap ragster.

Duo Core 2 knocks out Athlon 64

Photoshop may like amd, but it LOVES Intel.

I would suggest a 150gig Raptor for a C Drive and a good size 400gig + for a D Drive.

Programs like photoshop, autocadd, hi end graffix stuff like to run their cache on a secondary drive that isnt the install drive.

For a chassis i would suggest one of the Thermaltake series. Good cooling, rubber mount hard drive bays, very very nice. 3 of my PC's are runnin in the Tsunami and Tenor cases.

For Vid the Nvidia geforce are good all around video cards. Im partial to ATI but only if u are well versed in screwing with drivers.

For Ram you can get away with some Patriot and no less than 1gig in dual channel mode. 2gig would be better.

Kaminski Opterons are HiEnd Server Processors, not designed for everyday box use. and definitely not budgeted for everyday box use either.

With the release of the Duo Core2 processor, Intel got smart and went with AMD's idea, stop pushing the ghz barrier and start dealing with the bandwidth bottlenecks in todays PC's. And they did it Well. And donot go for the Extreme Edition, way too pricey for the horsepower vs wattage usage IMHO.

Look to Asus for ur motherboard. Zipzoomfly is great for ram. Newegg is great for CPU's and Motherboard combos. If you go intel, go with intel chipset. If you go AMD go with the nforce, stay away from SIS bigtime and Via is ok but Nforce is much better in routing the bandwidth.

It would take a month of sundays to explain the difference in Bandwidth vs Processor Speed vs Northbridge processing vs Watt usage.

Look at toms hardware, anandtech, maximum pc for reviews of all of the above suggestions and make an educated decision for yourself.

As always these are just my opinions, but since i build PC's for a living, i would like to think these are educated opinions. but as always, make ur own decisions.

this is incredible info, thanks alot guys this is great stuff, Iam really going to be looking deeply into this

peace