Topic: Anyone Build Their own Systems Here? (Read 16748 times)

Scott Allen Abfalter · « **Reply #40 on:** January 22, 2004, 04:06:36 pm »

I looked into putting together an mixed components system and instead just bought a PC from HP. You can get a hell of a PC for very little money, and it just wasn't worth the savings to try and do it from mixed components and a lot of shopping, shipping and web-surfing.

Javora · « **Reply #41 on:** January 22, 2004, 04:33:12 pm »

Quote:

Motherboard from ASUS
NIC (or modem) from 3Com (US Robotics)
Video card from ATI or NVidia
Sound card from Creative Labs
Hard Drive from Quantum or IBM

Season to taste.

I have an Asus P4C800-E Deluxe motherboard, and I'm sorry to say that I cannot recommend this board. If you choose a motherboard right now I would go with the MSI equivalent. If you do not have a whole lot of cash on hand or have had a bad experience with Creative Labs, I would suggest M-Audio (can be found at Newegg). M-makes a good sound card that has fewer problems with most systems. M-Audio uses more CPU resources but the sound quality is comparable. Also I have had good luck with Maxtor hard drives as well. One thing I have noticed is that if you decide to go with AMD CPU/motherboard and S-ATA hard drive. You will need an extra set of drivers for that hard drive when you load the operating system. AMD is built on the Via controller and does not have native support like Intel does. Hope this helps.

Kmelew · « **Reply #42 on:** January 22, 2004, 05:58:06 pm »

Try Directron . They have a good selection of cases, case mods and other accessories.

hobbesmaster · « **Reply #43 on:** January 22, 2004, 06:05:04 pm »

Newegg.com is the best online store IMHO.

Lono · « **Reply #44 on:** January 22, 2004, 08:41:02 pm »

I agree, newegg.com is the shiznit!

I have been extremely pleased with everything I have got there (I just replaced my chip / mobo and RAM).

Definately take your time researching what you want tho, and realise that the latest chips and vid cards run extremely hot!

(especially AMD chips)

An excellent cooling system is an absolute must.

It's really not that hard to do anymore, and I think you'll be well pleased for taking the effort to build it yourself.

p.s. - If your a serious Gamer - do not cheap out on the Vid Card or the RAM

p.p.s. - If you have any questions at all feel free to email me at ishagroup@yahoo.com

Sirgod · « **Reply #46 on:** January 22, 2004, 09:19:21 pm »

Hey Rondo,

I love this company. It's Pc Club. And yes, They sell a few really cheap parts, But they also have some great OEM prices on other things.

Besides that, they are one of the better Part's places here in OKC.

Stephen

Yabrodan · « **Reply #47 on:** January 22, 2004, 09:53:07 pm »

Muhahahah just finished my new system, well pretty much new. The Atholon 64 is sweet is hell can run morrowind with full shadows and everything else maxed and it's smooth as butter. Only thing weird is when booting the system seems to switch off and then restart after stating it can't find a fasttrack raid gizmo or somehint I'll have to look for a way to disable this. That and whats the deal with the stock fan not nearly as loud as my old volcano 7+ I have to keep checking to make sure it is actually on

. For building a system I also recomended new egg and the new Atholon Chips they even made the heatsink installation alot easier on them. As far as the self building is concerned it is pretty easy mostly stuff only fits in one slot one way so you can't screw up to much. If you done upgrades yourself before you probably know what to expect and the software side of things tends to be easier as you don't have watered down ultra comby drives that manufactors like to give you.

SL-Punisher · « **Reply #52 on:** January 23, 2004, 08:47:21 am »

I'd go with an AMD based system with an ASUS motherboard (A7V8X series is an exellent choice)

Go with DDR333 memory at least, which gives you a good choice between price and performance. Get a HD with at 7200 RPM ATA100 and a 8MB buffer. You don't need to waste time or money with the ATA133...there really isn't much difference to be honest. Also make sure your hard drive and CD-ROM aren't on the same cable....it will slow down your hard drive.

Pick up some artic silver thermal compound (It's the best), and get a good CPU fan (Those AMD's run a little warm) A good fan runs about 30-40 bucks. Don't use the cheap 9 dollar fans.

TB613 · « **Reply #54 on:** January 23, 2004, 04:07:47 pm »

While I have never really seen any net savings when building a system myself I also think that it is the way to go if you are comfortable inside of a PC. Any savings by DIY will usually be eaten up by using better quality / higher end parts. The worst part of building you own PC that I have run into is connecting the small (HD indicator, power switch, etc) case connections since those must be done when the motherboard is in the case and they are on the tiny side.

The suggestions for an AMD based machine look good so I will direct my comments to the Intel side of the equation since I just built a new machine myself.

For an intel based system go with a P4 with the 800 Mhz Fron Side Bus and a motherboard with the 875 chipset that supports dual channel DDR RAM, if you are not interested in overclocking the Intel 875PBZ is an excellent although comparatively expensive choice. The 875PBZ has Serial ATA with RAID 0 and although there is almost no difference in performance between SATA and parallel ATA the easier configuration with no master / slave jumpers is nice in itself. If you do go with SATA HDs make sure that the power supply has the serial power connectors or that you get the adapters if you use Seagate SATA drives which are native SATA and use the new style power plug. As far as graphic cards go the best bang for the buck is with the mid to upper mid range cards however, avoid the price leader mid range cards such as the ATI 9600 SE (I am unsure what the Nvidia equivalent is) which are rather crippled and not worth the money in my opinion.

TOCXOBearslayer · « **Reply #55 on:** January 23, 2004, 05:54:13 pm »

A few things.... if you can.... take your time...

I am finally getting the last parts for my 3.06 GHz 1 Gig of DDR 450 MHz RAM, MoBo, Case, powersupply, 240 Gigs worth of HD (on two HD's) SB sound card (this was a gift) for under $700 by getting everything on sale.

Just looking at vid cards now and since I save so much on the system, I may splurg on the vid card.

BTW, my favorite price checking place is Price Watch

They monitor LOTS of places for LOTS of parts.

Good Luck.

E_Look · « **Reply #56 on:** January 23, 2004, 10:53:58 pm »

Some of the SATAs, like my WD 120 Gb SATA HD, has both power connectors, the new SATA power connector and the older four fat pin one. I used the old style connection just because the setup diagram for my video card says to connect it to the hard drive's power cable.

By the way, I intend to keep my fairly high end system a looooong time before any next one, so I wouldn't be properly considered a "regular" scratch-builder of computers. (Now, my brother in law is another kind of guy! He had built at least five, if not six or seven systems over the last two years at the longest... I wonder if he will have doorstops for all doors in his house... )

But I might slap together two more, for the kids, as the ones they're using are unmentionably old.

By the way, does anyone have any advice for overriding an onboard graphics chip with an add-on graphics card? In case it's helpful, it's an old HP (P2) Celeron system. I even tried using their step by step instructions from their website... still no go; the system simply refuses to recognize the "new" (GeForce 2 MX 400) card. Everytime it is inserted into the AGP slot, the computer just won't boot. I don't want to build another one to replace this oldie just yet. This new Athlon 64 unit set me back a k-buck.

Dash Jones · « **Reply #57 on:** January 24, 2004, 12:47:55 am »

Hmm, couple of things for you to check, and something I have experience with.

First off, make sure that the old drivers are wiped, and the OS is rebooting, or resorting to the default drivers...which are very generic drivers. This it should be doing if it doesn't have the drivers for the old integrated chip. Also make sure that the new drivers are installed properly.

Now if you've followed ALL the instructions, I've found that many tech people seem ignorant of the fact that many integrated chips MUST be disabled in the Bios.

See if it is indeed disabled in the BIOS (be careful though, you could screw yourself by clicking the wrong things in the BIOS), thus enabling the card (actually only needed to do this when I installed the AIW cards from Ati, as that was a function of that particular brand of machine I upgraded).

EmeraldEdge · « **Reply #58 on:** January 24, 2004, 04:11:38 am »

Yeah, the bios would have been my guess, although I wasn't sure if that was in the instructions so I was hesitant to mention it. I haven't really had that much trouble disabling onboard graphics, but then again I haven't done it that much either. I think the above advice is sound. I know with some of the older onboard ati stuff they need you to wipe out the ati drivers and switch it off in the bios before you can do anything with the new card.

hobbesmaster · « **Reply #59 on:** January 24, 2004, 08:25:24 am »

For everyone thinking of building a new computer, if you can wait for a few months (2nd Quarter), AMD is going to release socket 939 which will replace socket 754 and 940, allowing both FXs and Ath64s on the same mobo, and both to be used without registered RAM.

News:

Topic: Anyone Build Their own Systems Here? (Read 16748 times) var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true};

Scott Allen Abfalter

Javora

Kmelew

hobbesmaster

Lono

Javora

Sirgod

Yabrodan

Toasty0

WillWeasel

E_Look

Scott Allen Abfalter

SL-Punisher

TheBigCheese

TB613

TOCXOBearslayer

E_Look

Dash Jones

EmeraldEdge

hobbesmaster

Topic: Anyone Build Their own Systems Here? (Read 16748 times)