[SpoonyBen]

Hey guys, just wanted to start by sayin hi to all who are reading this. It's my first post on this forum, so please correct me if I do anything wrong. Although in forums past, people don't usually have trouble comin down on mistakes. Any way, down to buisness.

I'm tryin to make a new pc from the ground up. The good news is that my budget is nice and high. 2-2.5 grand is the area. But the bad news is I have nothing to go on. So a good amount of that is gonna need to go into non-tower stuff. I'm talkin the works. I need a tower, monitor, mouse, kb, speakers, all that good stuff. This will be a gaming rig seeing as all I do is Microsoft word, Internet explorer, and AIM (that is besides gaming). Also I need to run things like photoshop, and some other adobe programs. Anyway heres what I have so far.


The CPU is tricky. The real question is intel or AMD. If intel, I'll go with the p4. But, if AMD, then theres some problems. I had a recomendation that I should not get a 64 bit cpu because when longhorn (a.k.a. next windows) comes out, amd will be comin out with all these new and better 64 bit cpu's, and mine will become extinct. So if I buy 32 but AMD now, I can save my money for the new 64 bit cpu. Any suggestions here?

-2GB PC3200, basic 2 GB of ram. It's good for overclocking I hear. The board is
upgradable to 4 but I doubt I'll need it.

-eVGA 7800GTX 256MB GDDR3. I got a recomendation for this video card. I checked out some reviews and it looked alright.

-When it comes to Hard Drives I just don't know. What size? What kind? I need some help there.

-Samsung 19" LCD 8MS (woot) mabye a leeser monitor,
rather have better comp then good monitor. But defintly lcd.

-DFI LANPARTY nF4 SLI-DR Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI
ATX AMD Motherboard. Mother looks ok. It SLI so I can
put in another graphics card later If I want to, assuming I have lots of money for some reason : )

The kb and mouse don;t really matter do they? I'm gonna go laser for the mouse, but besides that whats the point?

-PC Power & Cooling 510 SLI-PFC ATX12V 510W Power
Supply. Mabye a higher wattage. Don't wanna burn this one out, and the rig will have lots of stuff goin on.

-Logitech X-530 70 Watts 5.1 Speaker. These speakers
look ok, and I think the price is right. Mabye something better, don't know yet.

-NEC Black IDE DVD Burner. Might do two cd drives, one w/ dvd, and the other to write, or something like that. I still want a floppy and all the standard.

-Thermaltake Soprano VB1000SWS Silver Chassis: 0.8 mm
SECC, Front Door: Plastic ATX Mid Tower Computer Case.
Case seems ok. I asked someone and they said I should
add a couple of aftermarket fans.

-Depending on money left over, liquid cooling system. Now I know there expensive, and not for nubs like me, but I'm trying to learn as much as I can, and thoses just look completely sweet. I'm lookin at the aquarious and someothers.

Again anything to suggest, change, add, take away please I appreciate the help. If I commited some crazy stupid nub forum mistake like posting this in the wrong section or something I'm sorry. Please don;t hesitate to teach me lesson. Besides that thanks for the help!

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The CPU is tricky. The real question is intel or AMD. If intel, I'll go with the p4. But, if AMD, then theres some problems. I had a recomendation that I should not get a 64 bit cpu because when longhorn (a.k.a. next windows) comes out, amd will be comin out with all these new and better 64 bit cpu's, and mine will become extinct. So if I buy 32 but AMD now, I can save my money for the new 64 bit cpu. Any suggestions here?

There is no good time to buy/build a PC, because whatever you go with will eventually be supserseded by the next generation.

Take my current system. The technology it uses processor wise (I have an AMD) has been superseded by at least three generations of processor. Guess how long its been since I built it? Just 18 months.

-2GB PC3200, basic 2 GB of ram. It's good for overclocking I hear. The board is
upgradable to 4 but I doubt I'll need it.

You may be able to go for DDR2 memory, which is far superior to ordinary DDR but you need a board that supports it.

-When it comes to Hard Drives I just don't know. What size? What kind? I need some help there.

Seagates are nice quiet reliable drives. The bigger the better. Maxtors are going through a bit of a unreliability patch at the moment. When IBM drives went through a similiar patch a few years back, it hit them so hard that people today still consider the newer drives to be unreliable.

-Samsung 19" LCD 8MS (woot) mabye a leeser monitor,
rather have better comp then good monitor. But defintly lcd.

The kb and mouse don;t really matter do they? I'm gonna go laser for the mouse, but besides that whats the point?

Up to you.

-PC Power & Cooling 510 SLI-PFC ATX12V 510W Power
Supply. Mabye a higher wattage. Don't wanna burn this one out, and the rig will have lots of stuff goin on.

Watch the power supplies because cheaper ones will underperform and cause no end of grief in the long run.

-NEC Black IDE DVD Burner. Might do two cd drives, one w/ dvd, and the other to write, or something like that. I still want a floppy and all the standard.

Get a Combi drive (CD Writer/DVD Player in one) and a DVD Writer.

Again anything to suggest, change, add, take away please I appreciate the help. If I commited some crazy stupid nub forum mistake like posting this in the wrong section or something I'm sorry. Please don;t hesitate to teach me lesson. Besides that thanks for the help!

Post your list of stuff you want to buy here and somebody will tell you whether they'll work together is the only other thing I have to add. Plus saves you buying incompatible stuff.

[Neil Jones]

The CPU is tricky. The real question is intel or AMD. If intel, I'll go with the p4. But, if AMD, then theres some problems. I had a recomendation that I should not get a 64 bit cpu because when longhorn (a.k.a. next windows) comes out, amd will be comin out with all these new and better 64 bit cpu's, and mine will become extinct. So if I buy 32 but AMD now, I can save my money for the new 64 bit cpu. Any suggestions here?

There is no good time to buy/build a PC, because whatever you go with will eventually be supserseded by the next generation.

Take my current system. The technology it uses processor wise (I have an AMD) has been superseded by at least three generations of processor. Guess how long its been since I built it? Just 18 months.

-2GB PC3200, basic 2 GB of ram. It's good for overclocking I hear. The board is
upgradable to 4 but I doubt I'll need it.

You may be able to go for DDR2 memory, which is far superior to ordinary DDR but you need a board that supports it.

-When it comes to Hard Drives I just don't know. What size? What kind? I need some help there.

Seagates are nice quiet reliable drives. The bigger the better. Maxtors are going through a bit of a unreliability patch at the moment. When IBM drives went through a similiar patch a few years back, it hit them so hard that people today still consider the newer drives to be unreliable.

-Samsung 19" LCD 8MS (woot) mabye a leeser monitor,
rather have better comp then good monitor. But defintly lcd.

The kb and mouse don;t really matter do they? I'm gonna go laser for the mouse, but besides that whats the point?

Up to you.

-PC Power & Cooling 510 SLI-PFC ATX12V 510W Power
Supply. Mabye a higher wattage. Don't wanna burn this one out, and the rig will have lots of stuff goin on.

Watch the power supplies because cheaper ones will underperform and cause no end of grief in the long run.

-NEC Black IDE DVD Burner. Might do two cd drives, one w/ dvd, and the other to write, or something like that. I still want a floppy and all the standard.

Get a Combi drive (CD Writer/DVD Player in one) and a DVD Writer.

Again anything to suggest, change, add, take away please I appreciate the help. If I commited some crazy stupid nub forum mistake like posting this in the wrong section or something I'm sorry. Please don;t hesitate to teach me lesson. Besides that thanks for the help!

Post your list of stuff you want to buy here and somebody will tell you whether they'll work together is the only other thing I have to add. Plus saves you buying incompatible stuff.

[parkin_m]

wow, 2k - 2.5k have a google at my spec computer to see what i have inside it. It only cost me £1200!

your gonna have a sick pc!


If you are spending that amount of money, you are going to have lots of difficult thinigs to set up (esp if u have never build a pc before) for £2500 you are most likely looking at SLI, RAID 1, SATA etc etc.. thats complex to set up if u have never done it...

your going to need to spend a LONG time researching this

[jrm20]

DFI is good motherboards. Evga 7800 gtx and the 7800 gtx ko are great cards. Evga is a great brand and I recommend it aswell as the 7800 gtx.

If your into gaming one word. Raptor harddrives by western digital they are 10,000 rpm but the 74 Gb is the biggest. Its either more rpm or more space now adays. The raptor harddrives are really good. Most people buy 2 74 Gb raptors or you can get 1 raptor for your Operating system and your best games then another regular serial ata 7200 rpm for other files and programs with alot of space. The raptor is serial ata aswell.



If you have any questions about building gaming computers let me know that is where I rise above all other things I know.

Sony burners/ dvd burners are the best I would say.

Edited by jrm20, 06 November 2005 - 07:11 PM.

[SpoonyBen]

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Manchester 1GHz FSB 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket 939 Dual Core Processor - Retail

I've decided on that CPU. Sounds good?

[parkin_m]

Spend a weenie bit more and get the 4400+ it has a 1MB cache on both cores, which is worth the money. Especially if you have £2500 to spend

[jrm20]

If your not on a tight budget and have the money the amd dual core x2 is great. If your spending that much its close to the 4400+, might aswell get it.

Edited by jrm20, 06 November 2005 - 04:22 PM.

[warriorscot]

ild get an x1800 instead of a 7800 though they are significantly faster and the 512meg version is a beast of a gfx card, or if you arent going to be getting it till xmas time the newer cards based on the r580 cores will be out and they are supposed to be even better than the r520s by a fair bit.

Samsung monitor is good (use one myself) but they arent the best viewsonic or sony do the best monitors and they are worth the money, no point in a good pc and not being able to see what it can really do, try and get an lcd with 1600x1200 resolution and a good response time.

Edited by warriorscot, 06 November 2005 - 05:22 PM.