Building a Computer from Nothing

[danp123]

Hi,
I want to build a pc i have a budget of £600 roughly $960 to build a computer (already got the monitor). I was thinking an AMD chip 1.5ghz, 32mb/64mb Graphics (Ge force or nvida), 256mb ram (dont know what type), cd rw, DVD, floppy drive, sound card (can not think of any decent makes), mobo, lots of usb ports, it would be good if it could have a 7200rpm Hdd over 40gig and a case / tower for it

I have no interest in buying a ready made pc my son wants to make it with his friend but i need compatible parts etc.

sorry i sort of tailed off towards the end getting more and more general if you guys can think ofaanything else i would be grateful
Main idea is that it will be a work / gaming machine BUT not broadband and not networked so i wont need a 10/100mbs port
I could do with pleanty of PCI ports as my son who will be the main user is contantly wanting more and more bits put in but the last time we upgfraded was 98 so we have a slow computer in todays language

i have software os etc (all lisenced not illegal)

Current pc has
10gig hdd
2 X 64mb ram chips
8mb graphics card
some cheap sound card useless
pentium II 350mhz
win 98se - new pc will have xp

thanks for any help you can give me

 

[GSFDigital]

Hit the internet and search for "Barebones" computers. $960.00 will buy you alot of horesepower, but save some of it for adding additional memory and a decent video card with at least 64mb.

GSFDigital

 

[ceh4702]

If you are looking for deals the Asus A7N8X-VM for XP and the Asus P4P800-VM for P4 are both pretty good deals. They both are MATX and have itegrated video, integrated Audio, integrated Ethernet, and an AGP port. The Antec SX630II is a pretty nice case for $69.00. Comes with a Antec 300 Watt Power supply and has good cooling. People claim it is roomy enough inside to work on. I kind of like this design. I think cases that are too large are a bit of a pain if you ever have to move them.

AMD is great up to the Barton Core at 333 Mhz. Any faster and the price jumps to $400 for a 400Mhz Bus Processor. The Intel 2.4C Gig 800Mhz processor is a great buy. Playing games it benchmarks out to about a XP2800+.

For AMD try the Speeze Falconrock cooler for $9.00; with a 8 cm fan it cools great. dont be sucked in by loud overpriced volcano coolers.

Lite-On makes pretty good CDR's. I have tried a MSI DVD and it worked pretty good too. Asus has a 52XCDR out, but I have never tried it. Asus makes excellent 52X CDROM drives, I might try them.

In our area I noticed some stores sell hard drives retail for less than you can order them. Might check that out.

for memory if you use Crucial DDR 333 from their website you will save some money on the price of DDR400. That is up to you. Use their memory slector at their UK website.

Video card is a toss up. Just spend what you have left over. I used a Sapphire Radeon 9000 and it was pretty good. No freezeups from the video card so far.

If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.

 

[CitrixEngineer]

As an alternative, try

http://www.scan.co.uk

- all their parts are compatible (and I would also take paparazi's word if he recommends a dealer and components!).

Under £600;

All prices include VAT, but exclude delivery (about £15 next day)

(LN numbers are Scan part numbers)

Case: (LN4662) Scan 6057B Midi Tower case Black with Window 300W PFC + 2 Fans: £31.73

Mobo: (LN4764) MSI K7N2G-L - nForce 2 on board GF4 VGA x8 AGP+Lan+Sound+USB2 : £82.25

CPU: (LN4978) AMD *Retail* Athlon XP 2500+ *333 FSB* Barton (1.83GHz) + AMD Heat Sink Fan 3Yr : £76.67

RAM: (LN5530) Corsair TwinX 512 MB 3200 CAS 2 ( 2 x 256MB PC3200 184 pin MATCHED PAIRCAS 2) : £124.55

Disk: (LN4859) 123.5Gb IBM/Hitachi Deskstar 180GXP ATA-100 (7200rpm, 8MB Cache, 8.5ms) 3yr : £84.60

DVD/CDRW Combo: (LN4036) Plextor PX-320 Combo CDRW/DVD Re-Writer 20x10x40x12 : £93.94

Total = £493.74


Add copy of Windows XP Pro (LN3260) : £108.39

+ Delivery (£15)

Grand total = £617.13.

You can save at least the £17.13 by purchasing a Lite-On DVD/CDRW combo, which is perfectly adequate (it's just that Plextor are the best!), and another £50 or so by getting generic RAM (Corsair are unparalleled), and another £20-30 by getting a smaller hard disk (make sure you get an 8Mb cache, and atleast a 3-year warranty).


Note that sound, LAN and graphics are all on-board with this motherboard - and the quality of all is truly superb and competes very well with add-ons. You can, of course, upgrade any of these components at any time - giving my recommended setup a long lifetime.


Enjoy!

CE

 

[CitrixEngineer]

Additional note 1: Scan also sell a really good set of speakers + sub, if you can live with 2:1, for about £25inc.

Additional note 2: Buying all from 1 place will save you a fortune on delivery!

Additional note 3: Scan have a very useable "basket", which you can use to recalculate your order immediately.


Additional note 4: I do not work for Scan or know anyone that does.

 

[danp123]

citrix engineer,
can u still put another graphics card on the mobo if i wanted to and how powerful is the onboard graphics

 

[paparazi]

A good list from Citrix Engineer "much respect"
I have dealt with Scan, they are a V.Good company.
Yes! I would also say buy from one source if you can, that way you only have to deal with one company if you have any problems, there are no excuses if all components have come from one source.(the retailer cannot blame a fault onto a component that he hasn't supplied)
Nforce2 motherboards with O/Board graphics are supposed to performance equivelant to a GF4 MX440, in reality I would say the performance is 20-25% lower than with a seperate card.
Yes they have an 8x AGP slot as well for possible upgrades, it really it depends on what level of graphics performance you want out of the box, I would always go seperates but then thats me.
Gainward did have an issue with one particular card but that doesn't make them rubbish, I believe that warranty for faulty cards was dealt with on a straight swop (for a modified, fixed replacement) I guess most manufactures get caught out once in a while with faulty components from there suppliers, it's how they deal with the faults that distinguish a good company from a bad one.
Lets face it, the first batch of Asus A7N8X Deluxe motherboards we had all had to be returned (25 of them) but they are fine now!!
Martin


Replying helps further our knowledge, without comment leaves us wondering.

 

[CitrixEngineer]

The board has an AGP 8x pro slot, so you can upgrade the on-board any time you like - but you would need to spend quite a bit to improve upon it!

The on-board is powered by the nForce2 IGP, which is a very able chipset. I have been advised that it does not work with PC3200 (DDR400) RAM, so get some PC2700 (DDR333) instead if you choose this board. Remember that on-board graphics usually use system RAM (although I read somewhere that this particular setup has dedicated VRAM, but can't find evidence to back this rumour up, so I'm probably mistaken!) Performance is, practically speaking, no different between DDR333 and DDR400 - and you save a couple of £££.

Couple of reviews FYI (most authoritative first!) - note that some of these are for the ISLR version of this board, which simply adds RAID and Serial ATA - all else is identical;

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NDMz

(Go to the last page, where there is a comparison between the on-board Gfx and the Radeon 9800 Pro - pretty impressive unless you're a hardcore gamer!)

http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=1342&page=1

http://www.thejemreport.com/reviews/k7n2g.htm

 

[Tarwn]

I game quite a bit, so I would like to throw in some stuff real quick.

A) Graphics:
GeForce4 MX - Don't bother. When it comes to gaming you have to have a solid system, from what I have seen of the GF4 MX series, they generally rate down with the good GF2's. I ran a Gainward GF4 Ti4200 for a year without a single problem, and it is still a solid card if I had a system to put it in. I also had it overclocked the majority of that time. As for edemieres comment on Gainward cards, I haven't heard that one, I have seen a lot of good reviews for Gainward cards in general and recently when my father was purchasin a latest and greatest machine that wouldn't need heavy graphics, I pointed him to the Gainward Ti4600 as a card that will perform well and last a while.
ATI - I have seen some very mixed reviews on the ATI 9600 series, everything from "greatest performance for price" to "why bother, the 9500 performs as well or better". I currently have a system running a 7000 (non-gaming) and a system running a 9700 pro (gaming). The 9700 pro actually out benchmarks my overclocked Ti4600 by just a little, but head to head the 9700 is much better than the Ti4200.
Newest and Greatest games - starting in September (or possibly a little later, possibly postponed) directx9 games are going to start hitting the market with the release of Half-Life2. While it is entirely possible to do the directx9 rendering by software, or just not have it at all, die hard gamers are going to want cards that have directx9 capabilities built in. This means a GeForce FX series card or ATI (9500?)/9600/9700/9800 preferably pro or all in wonder versions.

CPU: My gaming system is actually running on as P4 right now, but I don't have a real preference based on games. Based on over-clocking I like the P4 C's (800 fsb) because of the higher front side bus.

Motherboards: It's not necessary to have a motherboard that was released this week. A motherboard that was built to support the processor your putting on it is adviseable, because I've found they run more stable in the long run than a board that can accept a certain processor after a certain number of BIOS revisions. For example, I just built an AMD XP1800 system based on the Asus a7v133 motherboard because I wanted a cheap system for my sister. It only supports the XP processor after BIOOS revision 7 so it was a little tricky to get it to boot the second time. Much trickier than 95% of the population would have the patience for.


The el cheapo system I just built: < $250
Case: Something moderately cheap from NewEgg, 2 intakes, 3 exhausts, 350W PSU
Motherboard: Asus A7V133, BIOS v1010b
CPU: AMD 1800 xp
Graphics: ATI 7000
RAM: 2x128Mb PC133, Kingston Value
Fans: 2 80mm Fans, 2 92mm fans
The rest was moved from an older system, including CDROM, CDR, Sound, Modem, Wireless NIC, floppy, 10Gb HDD

Compared to what will be the next version of my gaming rig, approx upgrade price $900:
Case: Enermax server case
Motherboard: ASUS P4P800
CPU: P4 2.6C (800fsb)
Graphics: ATI 9700 Pro
RAM: 2*256Mb DDR400 Corsair LL (low latency - CAS<2)
Everything else already on hand.


-------

Motherboard companies I like:
Giga-Byte, ASUS, and Abit

Graphics Cards I like:
ATI 9500 pro, 9700 pro, 9800 pro made by ATI or Saphire
Nvidia Ti4200, 4600 made by gainward
I'm not up to date on the FX series, i lost some interest after the issues with the first couple FX flops

RAM Manufacturers I like:
Corsair, GeIL, Crucial - I generally prefer CAS 2 or corsairs new LL (Low Latency)

Cooling Solutions:
Cooling can be the difference between playing a game until the wee hours of the morning or having it crash after 20 minutes of play time. Generally stock coolers will perform ok if you don't plan on overclocking the system, occasionally in a gaming system it is necessary to buy an aftermarket cooling solution because the stock cooler wasn't made to handle long hours of high CPU and Video utilization.

A case should have a minimum of 1 front intake and 1 rear exhaust if your going to game with it.
Hifher end Pentium retail Heat Sinks that come with the processors are actually decent (copper core), AMD's may need to be replaced.In either case I have had good results with Thermaltake HSF's.
Case fans: generic fans will work, albeit not as well and more loudly, just make sure you have good airflow, ie neaten the cables inside with zip-ties/electric tape/cable sleaving and don't block the vents. I prefer aftermarket fans for my cases, generally of the pretty light up variety
Video Card cooling: The GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) for the graphics card can get pretty toasty, but every card comes with some sort of cooling solution. Generally these are adequate, I found the Gainward Ti4200 Video cooler to actually perform almost as well as an aftermarket one I purchased but the ATI 9700 cooler barely kept the video card from over heating and crashing a game. In either case,as long as no one is planning on overclocking you should be good with the stock cooler.


Anyways, justa couple thoughts while I browsed the thread

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http://www.tiernok.com/

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