unforum

[urthstripe]

Help Me Build a Computer!

[colin]

LOL www.alienware.com ROFL KTHX NEWB

I'm not really up to date enough, but could you break down one of their systems and by it piece by piece yourself?

Also as far as 3-4 years...things are moving to fast, particularly in graphics
look at a crossfire/SLI setup, but only by one card now (so make it a decent one) by the second card later, once the price has dropped further.

[Rogi Ocnorb]

You gotta get the basic questions answered, first.
What operating system(s)?
Lots of reasons to know this such as, If it's windows, which does poorly with memory management and always uses a pagefile memory to some extent, spending a little more on 10k rpm SATA drives might be desirable.

How important is your data? Is it just normal user stuff that is easily retrieved from backups, If so, raid probably isn't necessary. If your running critical websites on it, spending more for raid is a good idea.

I haven't kept up lately with processor and graphics advances, but they do differ and always will. And there's never a silver bullet. AMD outdoes Intel in certain areas and Intel outdoes AMD in others.

Review your favorite applications, check on their requirements and suggested/preferred hardware and get what you need to support those findings. Remember to check for requirements for beta releases of those as well, as you'll likely be seeing those needs when you go to the new version. Ask their tech people what they recommend if nothing else. Will you be running Vista, etc.?

Do you want cable in? Digital Video Out?

If you're an audiophile, you already have preferences in that area, so I won't go there. If not, use the motherboard's sound subsystem.

When you've made your choices, scan the web for incompatabilities like Creative and VIA not playing together well. Even the newest hardware usually has a few write-ups out there about how well it installed/tested. (MaximumPC, etc.). FAQs on their sites can be very educational as well.

This goes for brands in general for lots of items, also. RAM and drives particularly. Five years ago you couldn't give me a Seagate drive and WD was always rock solid. Now, it seems the reverse is true especially on WD EIDE drives over 120gb. I've had two develop the click of death in less than a year (The freezer trick does work, by the way. One came back and still runs 24/7, though I only use it for scratch).

Once you,ve got the required hardware/support peripherals down and got the killer case with lots of fanage and a total overkill power supply, put what's left over into maxing out the RAM(Or more drive space if you're into video production).

[misuba]

O'Reilly has a great book called Building The Perfect PC. It answered pretty much all my questions, and has an in-depth section on gaming PCs.

[Varin]

Just don't cut yourself on the case and bleed all over the motherboard. Things don't work quite right after that.


By the way, much like wallpapering, you know your marriage is solid if you can get through building a PC together.

[joebrent]

Urth, just in case I miss updates to this thread, can you PM me when you're done? I just recently looked into building my own computer, but bit the bullet and bought a Dell because...well, because I wussed out. I'd love to see how yours turns out, and the problems you ran into along the way.

You're way cooler than I am for actually doing it instead of talking about it.

[joebrent]

[urthstripe]

I talked to RungeKutta over IRC about this stuff, and he definitely said a lot of stuff I had no idea what it meant, but he still helped me out.

I think I've decided on a AMD 64 X2 with a NVidia MB and Video Card. Any reccommendations on good sticks of RAM or if you are an NVidia fan, what's a good card for a good price?

That's where I'm stuck right now.

Edit: Ok, I've done some looking around and decided on Pentium D instead. It's faster, cheaper, and I"m not interested in overclocking. So yeah, erase everything.

[urthstripe]

Alrighty, looks like everything is set up for my brand new compy. I'll post the components and links tomorrow. Looks like it'll be pretty dang good.

[urthstripe]

I made a post to my LJ listing the parts I have ordered. If you have any comments, feel free to post them here or there, but keep in mind the parts are ordered, and it's pretty much set. I'll let you guys know how the building goes, when the stuff gets here.

[joebrent]

Good luck with step 2, you're an inspiration to us all --