New PC - Need Help

[NiX]

I was trying to price out a new PC with Joe last night, which didn't go too well. DAMN YOU SALAD!

Anyway, I was having a hard time figuring out what to put in it. I want to put mainly good stuff in. I really don't know namebrands or anything. Its been about 4 years since I got my last PC.
I'd search for the old posts about building a computer.. but I'm a canuck which changes the price/availability of some things. I don't have the setup I got with Joe last night with me (work), but I'll edit it in when I get home. I was mainly looking at www.TigerDirect.ca and www.CanadaComputers.com

I think the most I know is:
Nice case (I liked this case )
AMD (Was looking at 64 bit - Worth it?)
ASUS mobo (Joe said so)
Sapphire Radeon 9600 256MB DDR (Is the 256 worth the extra 33 bucks?)
RAM (I really don't know about RAM. I've always tossed whatever I can get my grubby hands on in my box.)
HD (Whatever is best in the sense that it won't break after a month.)
Burner (Just a burner. I don't play DvD's on my comp.)

I'm just going to reuse my 17" LCD and old keyboard and mouse. No need for them. Other than that, I don't think I missed anything. Anyway, any suggestions are good. Also, is there any places other than the two I was looking at to get cheap prices?[/img]

[daveNYC]

Does that case transform into a robot or something?

[Alluvian]

Burner is okay for now, but you will probably want a DVD on it eventually.  Games are becoming REAL ASS BIG.  The day of the DVD only video game is fast approaching.

It is a cheap thing that can be bought in the future though with some title that requires it.

ASUS makes good boards.  I just have a 2500 barton but LOVE my A7N8X deluxe mobo from Asus.

My loading speeds on my new system DRAMATICALLY changed.  I don't know what to attribute it to.  The faster bus speeds or my faster HD.  I was told to look for the 8mb cache on the hd though.  Not sure if it was valid advice, but the one I was looking at for my price/size needs had it.  I am still using western digital.  They have been good to me.  Not a single HD failure in 10 years of owning there products.  And much of that time was while running 2-3 systems.  My one hd failure was some dell or gateway (I forget, it was years ago) drive that didn't have any brand name on it.

Not sure if the 64 bit is worth the price or not.  Should look up some gaming benchmarks.

[UD_Delt]

Lost of info here:

DIY Guide to Building, Upgrading, and Modding a PC, Part 1
http://www.avault.com/articles/getarticle.asp?name=diyp11

DIY Guide to Building, Upgrading, and Modding a PC, Part 2
http://www.avault.com/articles/getarticle.asp?name=diyp21

DIY Guide to Building, Upgrading, and Modding a PC, Part 3
http://www.avault.com/articles/getarticle.asp?name=diyp31


I just helped a friend build a PC for $400. He was mainly just looking for something to get on the internet and be able to play online poker with. Do you have a price range?

[HaemishM]

Go for the 8MB cache on a 7200 RPM Hard Drive if you can. It will make worlds of difference. Go with the 9600 Pro with 256MB if you can afford it; the extra RAM will make a difference in hard drive swapping of textures.

[NiX]

Price range is around $1K give a bit if needed. (almost put $1)
I guess I can look into RW/DVD combo drives. I've found 3-4 for 70 which isn't bad considering the RW I had in mind was 40-50. I guess it's worth the extra 20 bucks. Unless someone suggests I get burner/dvd seperate.

[Glamdring]

You can go to places like www.anandtech.com and www.hardocp.com and get great prices on stuff.  Just go to the for sale/trade forum.

BTW, be sure you know exactly what you're getting when buying a vid card.  Don't buy the 9600 just because it has 256 megs.  Make sure it isn't an SE.  In all honesty though, you'd probably be fine just buying a 128meg XT as they're still the best bang for the buck card on the market.

Also, if you go AMD then consider one of the nforce boards.  The on board sound is awesome enough that you won't even need to pay for a sound card.

Get at least DDR3200 ram and buy the ram NOW.  Ram prices (and vid card prices a little) are about to skyrocket due to a predicted shortage of chips.

[NiX]

Thank you for that last bit of info. I was wondering when they were going to go up. What about CPU's?

I was planning on buying things in installments. I'm a lowly porn clerk (honestly) so I'm not rolling in gobs of cash, but I do plan on making this computer last.

As for the case comment: I had the idea to make it play the transformer transformation sound when it starts up. Joe had the idea to make it play the theme song to transformers.

[UD_Delt]

$1000

Combo kit from MEGPCOnline comes preassambled w:
Case - http://www.mgepconline.com/print_page.asp?info=1&PRID=2884">RaidMax w/ 420w PS
Mobo - Asus K8V-Deluxe
Proc - AMD Athlon 64 Proc

$464.72

From NewEgg.Com

1GB(512x2) Corsair PC-3200 Ram - $198
Sapphire Radeon 9600 Pro w/ 256MB - $136

From Circuit City
Wester Digital 120GB 7200 RPM HD - $59.99 after rebate (weekly special, check your area)

From Office Max
52x24x52 CD-RW - $9.99 after rebate (weekly special, check your area)

Total of $868.70

Leaving you $130 to spend on mouse, keyboard, speakers, and or upgrade from onboard sound.

Check http://www.salescircular.com to look up parts under rebate. It's usually cheaper to buy memory, harddrive, CD/DVD roms, and peripherals from a major store (Best Buy, Circuit City, etc...) when it has a good rebate than it is to buy from a http://www.pricewatch.com">reseller. http://www.resellerratings.com">Resellers are usually cheaper when it comes to Motherboards, Processors, Video Cards and Cases. I've used http://www.resellerratings.com/seller4982.html">MGE twice now and have no complaints, good prices and everything as advertised.

[Glamdring]

Honestly if you're going to just piece it together then I would buy the parts used one by one.  You can save so much money doing this by visiting the for sale/trade forums at places like
www.anandtech.com and www.hardocp.com.

Just peruse for a little bit and get comfortable with the way things work.  Heatware is a very reliable tool for determining who you should/should not deal with.  Any deal that sounds too good to be true probably is a scam, and to be honest you don't really run into too many bad traders at either of those places.

[Kenrick]

Make sure it isn't an SE.

I've heard this too.  Is this also the case with Geforces?  Depending on prices in June, I was planning on getting a 5900SE in my new pc.

[NiX]

Few questions:
MSI or ASUS for mobo.
Does it matter what company I buy from for RAM?

[Kenrick]

Few questions:
MSI or ASUS for mobo.
Does it matter what company I buy from for RAM?

ASUS.

RAM:  Corsair is good.  Kingston's good.  But unless you're either really picky or really rich, pretty much all the name brands are good.

[Glamdring]

Ram does matter but it generally matters a lot less if you plan to just run the ram at stock levels and do no overclocking.  I wouldn't just randomly stumble into a local electronics store and pick up PNY or something comparable though.

I'd probably get Asus or Abit for a motherboard.  It really just depends on which is the better value at the time of purchase.

And no, the SE doesn't necessarily mean the same thing when related to GeForce cards.  I mean, it might, but I'm a lot less familiar with the GF markings than I am the Radeon ones.

[NiX]

I checked toms about the ASUS 64 bit board and the MSI one. MSI seems to have a foothold over ASUS. Any reason you guys suggest ASUS over MSI? I know ASUS is made better. That's the extent of my knowledge.

[UD_Delt]

I'd probably get Asus or Abit for a motherboard.

I've used ECS for my last two motherboards and both have been acceptable. First the K7-AMA and now the L7S7A2. They are a budget line of mobo's that are massed produced but sell a lot. They make the http://www.ocworkbench.com/2004/ecs/755a2/755a2-1.htm">755-A2 for the Athlon 64.

The ECS board scored surprisingly well in the Q3 benchmark:
http://www.ocworkbench.com/2004/ecs/755a2/755a2-5.htm

It depends on where you are on performance vs. price. I usually go more for the price as performance of most mobo's is obsolete after 3 years.

[NiX]

Yeah, I'm trying to cram a whole system in under a grand. It's not easy when you're trying to get a GOOD system in under a grand.
The MSI shows good performance over ASUS and it's cheaper. Not by much, but every bit counts.

[esad]

For RAM I would also check out:

http://www.mushkin.com/epages/mushkin.storefront

They are sometimes cheaper than the name brands and I've never had a problem with any of the modules. As a matter of fact their module worked without problems on my ASUS board while other manufacturers modules had problems.

They also have lots of useful info about what modules work with which boards. They test everything themselves to insure that they work.

[Kenrick]

I've managed to configure my next system for right at $1300 (not including monitor on iBuyPower.

-Raidmax 268 ATX Mid-Tower Case w/350W Power Supply
-Intel® Pentium-4 Processor 3.2 Ghz CPU [512K Cache, 800MHz FSB, Hyper Threading Ready]
-Asus P4C800-E Deluxe i875 Chip 800FSB w/LAN, 5.1 Sound, IEEE-1394, USB 2.0 8x AGP Motherboard
-1024 MB Dual Channel [512MB X2] DDR-400 PC3200 Memory Module
-ATI Radeon 9600XT 256MB (or GeForceFX 5900SE 128MB, not sure yet)
-Western Digital 120 GB 7200 RPM Ultra ATA-100 8MB Cache Hard Drive
-Pioneer DVR-A07 Dual Format 8X DVD±R/±RW + CD-R/RW Drive

Now I just gotta wait a few more paychecks... :)

[SurfD]

Honestly if you're going to just piece it together then I would buy the parts used one by one.  You can save so much money doing this by visiting the for sale/trade forums at places like www.anandtech.com and www.hardocp.com.

Just peruse for a little bit and get comfortable with the way things work.  Heatware is a very reliable tool for determining who you should/should not deal with.  Any deal that sounds too good to be true probably is a scam, and to be honest you don't really run into too many bad traders at either of those places.

If you happen to live in toronto, www.bbf.ca is pretty much THE price shoppers website for canadians looking to go retail (it covers all of canada, but has the best coverage in the toronto area)

[Alluvian]

Also, if you go AMD then consider one of the nforce boards. The on board sound is awesome enough that you won't even need to pay for a sound card.

I like the soundcard there for sound, but it has some issues.  In Prince of Persia and FarCry both the sound starts to get abit static-y after about 30 minutes.  From the start of hearing just a HINT of static it goes to belching out nothing but huge noisy globs of static in about 10 minutes.

I was running some march 2003 drivers and just upgraded, but I have not had a chance to see if that was the problem or not yet.  I know when I bought prince of persia those drivers were the current ones on the nvidia site.

Another problem is that when the system is severely loaded the sound just cuts out and goes to shit.  If I am playing an mp3 while loading up SWG or EQ for example.  The sound will become belches of static for a few seconds and then cut out during startup and then will come back.  It reminds me of a winmodem where performance is based on cpu/motherboard load.

In most cases I am happy with the sound except for those two games and if I have sound on while loading up a game.  I suspect the problem with farcry and PoP is not specific to those games but will probably happen on any modern game that taxes my system.  Once it acts up in halflife 2 it gets replaced with whatever I can afford that has 5.1, sounds decent, and costs about $50.

[Kenrick]

Answering my own question:

From firinsquad.com's review of the 5900SE:
It’s also interesting to note that while NVIDIA borrows ATI’s naming conventions for the GeForce FX 5900 XT core and the GeForce FX 5900 SE cards that are based on it, this is not a crippled graphics card like ATI’s “SE” series, which are often stripped down models with narrower memory interfaces or half their pixel pipelines disabled. The GeForce FX 5900 XT boasts all the features of the other 5900 GPUs, including such goodies as UltraShadow. This is what we like to call “a good thing”.

[Morfiend]

Joke right. Ha ha. funny stuff.

"Robots in disguise"

I looked at that case just the other day in Frys, and man is it cheesy. All plastic and cheap feeling. I would advise against that case, just on pure cheese factor.

[Glamdring]

You can't go wrong with a Chieftec 'Dragon' series case.

[Shavnir]

I saw one of those cases at a computer show.  For gods sake don't get one.  I feel like I had a small animal crawl in my ear and fuck my brain after watching it go through its "Make the light on the front go from side to side" routine.

[NiX]

I want a nice looking case. I've been stuck with shitty tin crap ones (crap = bad cooling and design.)

Any suggestions on some better cases?

Edit: This http://www.thermaltake.com/xaserCase/WinGo/v7000d.htm case looks nice.

[Morfiend]

I want a nice looking case. I've been stuck with shitty tin crap ones (crap = bad cooling and design.)

Any suggestions on some better cases?

Edit: This http://www.thermaltake.com/xaserCase/WinGo/v7000d.htm case looks nice.

If you live on the west coast of america, go to Frys and take a look at all the cases. They have a few really nice ones.

That one is ok, still feels really cheesy, that middle piece feels like it could fall off at the fist bumb.

[NiX]

I live in Ontario (near Toronto - Thank you SO much SurfD.) Don't know of many computer based stores that are big. There's FUtureshop. But my dick has a better chance of getting me a good case than Futureshop does.

[schild]

Futureshop is owned by bestbuy now. They should have some pretty awesome cases.

[NiX]

Case:
Motherboard: MSI K7N2-DELTA-ILSR - $153
CPU: Athlon XP 3000+ 2.16GHz Barton - $220.00
RAM: Apacer 512MB - $107
Video: Sapphire Radeon 9600XT 128MB - $217
Burner: Sony 52X CD-RW/16X DVD-ROM - $69
HD: Western Digital 40GB w/ 8MB - $83
---------------------------------------------------------
Grand Total: $976.35

The case is left empty because I can use the case I have now. Well, until I get the cash for a nice worthwhile case. Keep in mind these prices are CDN. If someone knows of a cheaper place for any of these parts (in or around toronto) post away.