Thinking About Building A Computer

[audiofanaticz]

Im not going to sit here and read all the replys, but I read a few.

My opinion is build your own!

Its not hard, its very easy, its no harder then wiring up a car with some bumps..

You buy a case, motherboard, ram, video card, hard drive, cd roms, and a power supply.

The power supply screws into the case with 4-8 screws.

The mother board screws into the case with 9-12 screws.

The cd rom screws into the case with 4 screws.

The hard drive screws into the case with 4 screws.

The video card slides into a slot on the mother board (either pci express or agp), and is also held into the case with 1 screw.

The ram/memory slides into a slot on the mother board (no screws).

Does that sound hard so far?

Most of all your power connections are the same. Ill try to break it down a lil bit.

Your power supply will have one huge clip, either 20 or 24 pin depending on what motherboard you get. There is only 1 place this big plug plugs into.

Also depending on your motherboard there maybe an extra square 4 pin connecter that gets plugged in. 2 yellow wires and 2 black.

Your hard drive and cd roms use a rectangular plug that has 4 wires ( 2 blacks, 1 yellow, 1 red).

If you use a floppy drive it is a smaller rectangular plug, with 4 wires, the same color as above.

Depending on your video card you buy you may need external power to it (the external power will come straight from your powersupply instead of the motherboard). The video card will need a 6 pin power connection, but it will come with an adapter to go from the 4 pin power wire to the 6 pin.

You also have the cd rom and hard drive ribbons that simply get plugged in.

All your power connections, and ribbons can only go in one way, dont got to worry about putting anything backwords.

Same with when you put your video card and ram in, it only fits one way, cant mess nothing up.

Somethings Id look for if buying/building your own pc depending on budget are:

Pci express 16x video card (make sure you buy a pci 16 x motherboard also, or it wont work!

ddr2 memory, it is alot faster then the standard ddr memory. But again make sure you order a ddr2 motherboard.

*** when buying ram/memory you need NON REGISTERED ram. You can buy registered/ecc ram but it is made for servers, It will work in a desktop but you wont gain any performance and lose extra funds paying extra for no reason***

A mother board that supports ddr2, and pci 16x (express) video.

Companys that make good parts for pc's are:

Motherboards: Asus, and DFI. These are the only mobos Ill ever buy or even put in a computer for a friend. Why? because they are made for performance, reliabilty, and advanced options for overclocking if you ever get into tweaking.

Video Cards: EVGA all the way (nvidia chipset) Why? because EVGA is the only company that will give you a lifetime warrenty on your video card.

Examples: If you over clock your video card to much and fry it, EVGA will warrenty it (even tho you where in the wrong), If you buy the card used and are even the 10th owner of it and have no proof of purchase and the card fries, they will still warrenty it. If you buy a new card, and lets say a month down the road a better card comes out, EVGA will buy your card back/give you a discount towards the newer card that you want.

Stay away from pny cards, they are cheaply made all around. BFG, and XFX are semi decent, but EVGA still blows them away because EVGA always has higher memory and core clock speeds.

IMO I think Seagate Harddrives are good, I went thru crap loads of westeren digital harddrives and either they all just stopped working or started making loud noises which is never good. Maxtor also makes decent drives.

Everybody thinks building computers are hard, but its not. Take your time and do it and you will be happy.

I will say this right now, you can go out and buy the best DELL XPS desktop computer for $2000.00 which is to be their best "gaming" rig.

But most likely you can spend only $1500 if not less and buy/build your own desktop with all the same speed parts or faster for less money.

And also remember you are a SMD user, so if you have any problems, just make a post and you will get helped fast

Brian

[unknownuser200985]

if it hasnt been already stated , picking out the parts for the computer is the hardest part, the actual building is a cake walk these days pretty much every part is color coded and only fits in one way, unless your doing liquid cooling which isnt that hard itself its pretty much idiot proof compared to the old days (before petium days)

Edited December 29, 2007 by unknownuser200985

[01xtreme]

Looks like I am building one then. I have to wait for my student loans to come in to build it, but what should I look for in my parts? I am trying to work on a budget. I would like to spend 8-900. Do you think that is enough money to build a decent computer? Thanks guys, you kick ass.

Edited December 29, 2007 by 01xtreme

[audiofanaticz]

Here is just something I threw together. All parts are from newegg.com to make it easyier. You maybe able to find some items cheaper at other sites. Ive used newegg a lot and trust them so they are who I used.

Motherboard: ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe $169.99 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16813131011

Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 6400+ Windsor 3.2GHz $179.99 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16819103191

Video: EVGA GeForce 8600GTS Superclocked 512MB $214.99 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16814130291

Ram: CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) $100.00 ($60 after $40 mail in rebate) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16820145177

Harddrive: Seagate Barracuda 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s $84.99 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16822148140

Powersupply: FSP Group Blue Storm II ATX 2.2 500W $89.99 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16817104034

cd rom: LG Black CD/DVD Burner with LightScribe $29.99

Case: LIAN LI PC-65B $129.99 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16811112040

Total $1000.00 minus $40 mail in rebate for the ram = 960.00 Its a bit over your $900 budget but computer parts and prices change daily, next month you may be able to find the same if not better for less money.

This would be 1 kick ass computer that I wouldnt mind having myself.

Just some simple specs:

Amd 3.2GHz processor

2 gigs ddr2 800 memory

Evga Geforce 8600gts 512mb video card (factory overclocked!!!)

320 gig Seagate Sata harddrive

500 watt 24pin powersupply

cd/dvd rom/burner

[Slinky]

yeah good choice on building it. that other guy is a crackpot for telling you to buy a prebuilt unless he didnt know you wanted to game on it. the parts in the above post are very nice and will be able to play games fairly well. plus, with that mobo, you can always sli a second 8600 and have double the graphics power.

[audiofanaticz]

plus, with that mobo, you can always sli a second 8600 and have double the graphics power.

Thats why I went with that mobo and the beefy dual 12rail 18amp power supply

[Slinky]

nice job thinking ahead! as long as the power supply has enough muscle for two of those cards, which it should because i know a guy that had two of those cards and 5 hard drives in raid and it gave plenty of power

[moh.vze.com]

Shiet. I spent 2,300$ building my gaming rig over the summer (Probably got back 300$ in rebates too, but only after argueing for months with a lot of companies).

Let me tell you something, if I were to have built that same computer right now, I would save so much money.

For example, I bought my Q6600 Intel Chip for $315. Now you can get it OEM for like 220$?

I bought a $300 case (TJ-09 Silverstone) whereas if I had gone with the 60$ Antec 900 case, I would save LOTS.

I bought my Logitech Z-5500 for $230 and a few weeks ago it was only 180$. Plus, I could have gotten the Z-5400 for like less than 100$.

Hmm, I bought my Maxtor HD for $100, and 6 weeks later after I've purchased it, people were able to get that same HD for 80$.

So basically, I've listed a couple of items that I could have saved money on if I waited. Sure, I still saved a crap load of money with those rebates, but I loss my patience and just bought all that stuff.

The bottom line is, I think you should build your own computer IF you're into the hardcore gaming thing, or you just want to learn (This 2300$ computer was my first build that I've done alone).

If you do build your own computer and decide to have custom coolers such as Heatsinks for your processor, I suggest you buy your chips OEM. I bought mine with the package and I have the stock heatsink in the box that I'm not using.

Hmm. Here is a good site link if you do build your own computer:

http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.ph...highlight=build

You should keep an eye out for a "slick" dell deal if you don't want to build your own =P

Well. This was a redundant message response. My bad.

[EricM9104]

8600=BLAH!

X1950Pro of X1950GT (ATI) would be better than an 8600 and it's cheaper.

[audiofanaticz]

8600=BLAH!

X1950Pro of X1950GT (ATI) would be better than an 8600 and it's cheaper.

to each his own..

I had no good luck with past ati cards.

Yea you can get a x1950gt ati chipset but if its made by a cheap company you will get cheap performance (his, visiontek, diamond). All crap brand companies that use the ati chipset.

Same thing with nvidia if you get the 8800 made by pny, its gonna be poor quality.

Only decent ati cards are made by sapphire, powercolor, and asus, and you will notice they are more expensive for the same cards as his, visiontek, and diamond, but with the extra money you spend on the good cards you will see higher stock core and mem clocks.

EVGA is the best company around, and that is because of their warrenties which I stated above. No matter what you do to the card and it fries (even if your not the origional owner, evga will warrenty it). No other companies do that..