Making a new computer or buying one?

Okay recently I will have a good upgrade of cash soon. I also have free time on my hands. And I want a computer.

Well I have one of course. A compaq (eh..) Celeron 2.53 GHz 250 Ram. and the OS Windows XP home edition 2002.

I've added a 512 DDR Ram stick into it. and also a Geforce MX4000 64MB DDR (PCI) video card into it.

Well basically that's good enough to play guildwars with the lowest setting of graphics and speed without lagging =P

It does enough work for internet, and ther programs but I can't even play music at the same time with GW on because it starts skipping (the music does) unless I put the gameo n fullscreen.

Moving on..

So I want to buy a computer and I remember in the past people say and even now.. "Build a computer so you get everything YOU want"
Okay that sounds great since buying parts with no warranty is about the same as getting an old POS computer that lost it's warranty a good while ago.

So I ask Alienware? No they over price like no one else and for stuff I don't even need.. I will never trust compaq again. Dell seems okay.. I heard gateway stories that makes me want to stay away from them (bootleg components..=P).

So I think I might build one.. I have no real computer making sense but I've heard it's easy and I taught myself most of the computers needs/components etc. So I think I can do it.. it's hard to find anything to help you build something on a step by step basis because all I get are books you shouldn't pay so much for =P.

Hell I don't even know anything about overclocking or liquid coolents. -sigh-

But I do have a list of things I need.
CPU- Pentium 4. 3.2 GHz should be good.
RAM-
Motherboard-
PCI Bus on Mother
AGP Bus on Mother
Powersupply-
HDD- 80gigs at least.
OS (operating System)- duh pretty much Windows.
BIOs- Kinda having a hard time with this one do I need to download these (BIOS) to make my computer functional.
A Sound card or one intregrated into motherboard.
Graphics Card-should I upgrade it?
SCSI is for Usbs cords and connecting mouse keyboards and other external devices right?
Modem and Ethernet (more or less integrated to mother board would be good as well)

I'm sure I could figure all this out bymyself and I understand a lot of terms from self teaching myself. I just need a little guidance and I know of newegg.com.

I want a fast computer so I can play my games and run multiple programs but I want to spend just under 700 dollars.

go to your newstand and grab the latest edition of PC GAMER and check theit monthly hardware trinity of budget mid and top pcs with parts listed as for best bang for buck (do them yourself some assembly required)

EDIT

bios dont worry about it
scuzzy is a hard drive setup dont worry about it
hard drive get at least 250 MB for 105 bucks
ether comes with all motherboards
name brand power supply at least 350=450 watts minimum

best place is to check newegg.com price are fair and lots of the hardware come with free or 1.99 shipping. Items come really well packaged and lots of reviews from people about different hardware.

CPU - Pentium 4. 3.2 GHz - decent choice
RAM - Decide on a motherboard, then put 1 to 2 GB of RAM in it (I prefer Mushkin on the high end or pqi on the dirt cheap low end). You'll also want to note if your board used dual channel memory access before you make your memory choice.
Motherboard - Stick with a major manufacturer, like ASUS or Gigabyte.
PCI Bus on Mother - pretty much all mobos will come with PCI buses; you need to look for PCI-express (which is for next-gen add-on cards) and PCI-express x16 (which is for graphics cards). PCI-express x16 is expecially important, because most modern graphics cards use this standard.
AGP Bus on Mother - if your board has PCI-express x16, it won't have AGP. Go with a PCI-express x16 board.
Powersupply - Don't buy a cheap power supply. Go with a decently priced name brand to be sure the voltages will remain constant.
HDD - 80gigs at least - and you can get much larger for only a few dollars more.
OS (operating System) - XP Home is fine for most people, but go with XP Pro if you want dual monitor support or built-in encryption.
BIOs - The BIOS is built into the motherboard. Buy a decent motherboard and you'll probably never have to worry about the BIOS.
A Sound card or one intregrated into motherboard - Integrated is fine for most people, but a Soundblaster Live! soundcard only costs around $40 and has excellent sound.
Graphics Card - If you like nVidia, go with at least a 6600GT; if you buy an ATI card, I can't help you there.
SCSI is for Usbs cords and connecting mouse keyboards and other external devices right? SCSI can be used for this, but you likely won't have SCSI on your board. You'll probably have SATA or SATA II for hard drive connectivity, and most boards come with a few USB 2.0 ports. If your keyboard and mouse use USB for connectivity, you'll probably need four or more built-in USB ports for other devices.
Modem and Ethernet (more or less integrated to mother board would be good as well) - Ethernet is integrated into almost all modern day motherboards. You would need to buy a dial-up modem if you use dial-up Internet service; otherwise, the cable or DSL company will probably provide your modem (and you connect it to the Ethernet jack or USB port).

Ah thanks so much for the info.

I'll look it up tonight and comeback with some info on what I find.

stop using intel cpus for gaming pls.. not good. get athlon 64 3500+, asus nforce 4 mobo, 1gig ddr, and geforce 6600gt pcie (or radeon x800gt), and for the sound get audigy2 value, harddisk - WD raptor 76GB for system and any quiet 120gb disk for storage (seagate)..

How much did this cost you BTW?
And what's the real difference between Intel and Athlon never used them. =P Sorry not to look it up but I know I might mess up.

agreed, eveyone i know in my area is using an athlon 64 rather than pentium.

i have noticed, however, that in the USA, pentium is preferd for most things rather than amd...i assume its bacuse you can get your Dell machines faster and esier there?

i have an AMD 64 3200. they ran out of 3000 when i built my machine, so i had get a higher chip.

differences between amd and intel?
AMD chips work *smarter*
intell chugg along reliably and are (imho prefered by microsoft for whatever cash-deal reason lol)
gamers tend to prefer AMDs because the chips (round here, at least) are esier to get hold of and cheaper in the long run, and they can overclock the frell outa them.

when we build PCs at work (at least 3 a week, more like 5 a week near the holidays) we always to customers explain that if they want an intel, thats fine, but the chip and the mainbord will cost more, compared to the same amount of gig cpu speed from an amd.

also, P4 ect are getting to become slow, when you consider that intell is behind with its 64 bit chip..they are in catch-up mode.
microsoft has its windows xp 64-bit OS out (i know a firend wants the bos to buy a copy, and its expensive...think the price of a copy of XP Pro, for the home-64 software. so thats quite expensive ouchies)

also, you want to get the socket 9 something ones, rather than the socket 7 something ones, and yeah, you might wanna consider a PCI-x vid card, but if you cant afford it, just get a decent VGA one..but you should definately hang on to the pci old card..theres still a demand (at least round here) for old pci vid cards, what with the large amounts of older, non vga machines wanting to upgrade...

and, if your worried about messing up, try asking the place that you buy (assuming its a shop and not from the net) if for the standard fee, will they build it up for you?
boss chargers a flat £35 pound fee for build or transfer, and we get loads of people who are unsure of their buillding skills asking us to retrofit.

the worst is the guys that think they know everything, then bring their badly built machines back to me, and ask me to ress them ^^
ah, Rayea...cleric of PCs, one roll per day, per PC on skill: ressurect PC...^^

I second the newegg.com recommendation. I purchased everything through them when I built my computer. I currently have a 3.2 ghz pentium 4, but for gaming I have to agree that the AMD is better. I do like the new dual core pentiums (64 bit extension just like AMD), they are a little pricey still but they are much less than the dual cores offered by AMD...........so far.

If you do go with AMD definitely use a 939 socket (I think venice is one of the newer cores). A 754 socket is older and the motherbord will not support some future upgrades (like dual core compatibility). I also recommend crucial ballistix RAM as there are many tests (TomsHardware.com) showing how well it works in an AMD system (esp if you plan to overclock later on).

For the power supply I would suggest a PC Power and Cooling (510 w) if you have the cash. I didn't and settled for a 480w Thermaltake. I've had it for over a year now and never any problems though.

May I ask what is Overclocking?

Sorry for my silly newbie ways I just don't want to be a computer user and NOT know what it even does.. Thanks to myself to learn it off what everything does mostly and terms but what exactly is Overclocking? and this coolant? I know it's use to keep from having two Vid cards over heating right? But is that it?

Allot of the "guys" here can tell you all about overclocking. Basically it is tweaking your system by turning up the clock speeds on certain components. Like the Processor, the Video Cards, etc. Before you even THINK about doing anything like that...READ...READ...ask Questions....and READ some more.

Just overclocking a little too much will fry your system. I am old school. I do not see the need to overclock systems anymore. To me they are fast enough now. Software hasn't really caught up to the processor and video card speeds yet. However, I am not a Kill-Joy. I do understand why people want to overclock. They want that little bit more. No different then a Car-Jock tweaking out their engines.

So far I've looked up the motherboards and I've found a single AGP slot with no x16 PCI
and vice versa.

How come you can't have both x16 PCI slot and a AGP slot?

Also I saw one with x1 PCI slot is that anydifferent than a regular PCI slot?

-Edit- Here's a Board I thought was decent.
Asus Mother board

The new pci slots with the x16 or x1 are faster than the old pci slots. This is intended for new cards that will require greater bandwidth to the cpu. You cannot have both agp and pci x16 or pci express as most know it because agp is a direct connection to the cpu. If agp were enabled, pci express would not have its direct connection to the cpu. PCI express is new technology were more than one bit of data can be sent on a connection in both directions simultaneously. PCI express requires several direct connections to the cpu. If the cpu has to put both the agp slot anf pci express slot as first priority, then problems will occur. It's like saying to your wife, honey you are number one and going to your best friend who is female and saying you're number one. Sooner or later, they will find out and you will be screwed.

When buying the pci express boards, such as the one you linked, do not buy refurbished. Refurbished products have a shorter life expectancy and are only half as stable. This is due to the uneven flow of the connections on the board. For example, if one of the imprinted dircuits on the board was damaged, a way to fix it is by using the same material and doing a touchup. The problem is that the touch up and the already imprinted are at different stages. One is already dry and won't stick to the other. When the touchup is dry, it will form a new layer over the connection and this will cause an increase in electrical resistance. Also, the motherboards do get hot. When metal containing items get hot, they tend to expand. There is a possibility that the touch up might expand enough to short circuit the board, in other words make the board go haywire and most likely fry it.

yeah, overclocking is telling your computer to run faster than it's rated. This is possible, and it is relatively simple to do at the basic level (but can get very tricky, and is risky if you don't know what you're doing or go too far).

Just to give you an example, though:
I have an AMD athlon 64 3200+, which I bought rated at 2 ghz (approx. equivalent to a 3.2 Ghz pentium 4)
I did a fairly minor and safe overclock to 2.4 ghz (approx. equal to a 4.0 ghz pentium 4).

Basically, it's a way to get more bang out of your product, or to upgrade to a better product, while still paying a cheaper price. You do, however, take the matter into your own hands, as it would seem to void morals (and maybe warranties) if you break something because you were tweaking past it's retail specs.

There's tons of info about it online, though, so you should be able to find opinions and the resources you would need.

depends what you wanna spend if your gonna get a pci express board and like ati get an X800 XL. it is an amazing card. what i am buying. and honestly dont go intel. Amd i have found to be way better. if you get a board that supports athlon 64 definetly get one and if your rich buy a Amd athlon 64 X2 3800+ which is currently the fastest proccesor after overclock on the market. and with only a around $350 price tag it is an insane value.. peace and good luck


btw whats the board that supports both agp and pci express? i'm not sure i wanna get a new card yet. 9600xt is still running great.

building a pc is not hard.
First go to a real tech forums and you should get quick answers to exactly what you need. You can order the parts from newegg which has a good reputation. When it comes to actually building your PC the hardest part may be mounting the mobo and installing the cpu with the thermal paste and all. Then the rest is a snap

my thoughts
CPU- Pentium 4. 3.2 GHz should be good (if you're into Intel then that's fine)
RAM-(More than likely DDR2 and if you're not into overclocking get what matches your FSB, 533 or 667. Stick to name brands like OCZ, Corsair, Kingston, Crucial, Mushkin)
Motherboard- (I'm partial to Abit and DFI but look for something on the 945P chipset)
PCI Bus on Mother
AGP Bus on Mother(will be PCI-E on anything newer)
Powersupply-(Fortron Source for a good PS on the cheap, make sure it's 24 pin, Enermax, Antec, OCZ, Silverstone, all good brands, PC Power and Cooling is the best. Look for 450 watts and above for growth, dual +12 volt rails or high +12 volt rail a must)
HDD- 80gigs at least. (look for SATA II, like the newer segates)
OS (operating System)- duh pretty much Windows.
BIOs- Kinda having a hard time with this one do I need to download these (BIOS) to make my computer functional.(only if you're PC build is unstable from the get go, then update BIOS to see if it helps)
A Sound card or one intregrated into motherboard.(personal preference but the new Creative SB's look nice)
Graphics Card-should I upgrade it?(YES!!!! Look at the ATI x800GT or the Nvidia 6600GT for good budget cards, get PCI-Express versions)
SCSI is for Usbs cords and connecting mouse keyboards and other external devices right? (cables are usually included with the motherboard)
Modem and Ethernet (more or less integrated to mother board would be good as well) (Ethernet should be integrated and sufficient, modem.... does anybody still use these? )

**You forgot to mention a case, I would look for one without a Power Supply, I've used this one recently and was extremely impressed:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811127034

Cheap but well build, add a 120 fan and your good to go.

I'm sure I could figure all this out bymyself and I understand a lot of terms from self teaching myself. I just need a little guidance and I know of newegg.com.

I want a fast computer so I can play my games and run multiple programs but I want to spend just under 700 dollars.

Heya back again and I found another motherboard I thought seemed good with the reviews it had. (I'm going to go for Athlon after all)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131524

buy a computer from www.ecollegepc.com

Lowest prices anywhere, free shipping, great quality products, completely customizable, minimal build fee. You basicly pay for the bear parts and they assemble it for free.

im typing on mine rite now, plays gw great

Looks like a great board, I really like the invidia nforce4 chipset and SLI feature. The only thing it doesn't say is if it supports the new AMD64 dual core chips. You may not be planning on purchasing one now but I would look for that for future upgradibility. You can just call or e-mail ASUS to check.

If you want to read some professional reviews on the board just google "ASUS A8N SLI" and you will pull up a ton. tomshardware.com is a great site also.

The board with bot AP and PCI-Express is out. They are in low quantity though. NewEgg seems to sell them with in hours of getting them back in. How they did it woithout a performance loss I do not know. But I have read 2 reviews from Toms Hardware and anotherone I can't think of right now. I have them bookmarked at home (I'm at work right now).

I'm actually going to buy the mobo soon and wait till X-mas and get an Athlon X2 4400+. I have a 6800gt AGP, so they should go nicely. Here's the link to the mobo:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813157081

As of this post it's back in stock. It wasn't this morning.

make sure the mobo fits in the case you have! all i wanted to do was a simple mobo upgrade and a new vid card and stupid me bought the wrong size! lol

Dual Core Chips? You mean the processor chip?

I was going to get the Athlon AMD 64 3200+. But what do you mean by the dual core?

Oh I just looked at it and the one I'm looking at has a Venice core. So a dual would be better?

Eh, I have to disagree here. I have been building my own [and other peoples] computers and continuiously upgrading them since I was 15 years old (7 years ago). Now, I will admit every time I get ahold of a new chip I test it's overclock-ability. Not once have I ever "fried my system", or anyone else's system that I have built. Truth be told, a processor will overheat and your computer will shut down/freeze well before anything "fries" (or it simply will refuse to boot correctly). Believe me, I've been there - a couple times I didn't notice my CPU fan was wasn't hooked up and another time it was broken completely...of course it froze the system pretty fast (before windows finished booting), but no "frying."

More than likely if something is to fry, it is going to be your RAM. Depending on the overclocking method (in my case in the past it was usually altering the front side bus frequency multiplier - now with nForce chipsets they allow you to manually change the FSB speed indepently, so no tweaking multipliers here - no math involved), you are effectively altering the bus speed your RAM sits on as well. Cheap RAM may fry if you go wild. Still doubtful, but possible. I have only burned up one stick of RAM in my lifetime and it was just after I bought it - so I think it was defective in the first place.

The reason overclockers go insane on the cooling isn't to prevent things from frying. It's to allow the chip to run stable at a higher peak frequency (mhz) without reaching their "crash point" - a certain temp that the cpu just can't run at.

I will not argue in the fact that overclocking will decrease the lifespan on your processor. This is probably true, however, I have been running an OC'd Athlon XP 2000+ for about...3 years or so. No problems. Gotta keep the fan and stuff clean, though, or it will start to overheat (BSOD's, reboots, freezing, games crashing to desktop..etc.).

By the way, I run that Athlon XP 2000+ at 284mhz front side bus speed (as opposed to the standard 266mhz), which is ~1765mhz, Geforce 4 Ti 4200 (sometimes overclocked, sometimes not - it's more picky when it comes to certain things), and 512MB PC2100 DDR (effectively 266mhz). If I can keep the system (mainly the cpu fan) clean as a whistle, I can run 290mhz FSB. Guild Wars runs great in 1024x768 with full graphics...pretty good considering the age of my machine. I would run it at a higher rez but my monitor tops out at 1280x1024, and everything looks sort of "tiny" at that rez on my 17" monitor.

However, newer games with badass graphics don't run as well. Mainly games that have a high use of shaders...this can of course be attributed to my vid card, mostly. I will probably be forced to upgrade in about a year or so.

I don't see any need of Dual core cpu unless you are going to run 2 cpu hungry applications at once. For GW two CPU cores only means one is running idle & comsuming power without any benefit.

All newer 939 boards support dualcore CPU. But some might need a Bios update. I do not know if no support in bios means the computer wont start or if only one core will be available.

Once again I must thank everyone on this thread to be so helpful to give good advice abot computers for someone who wants to learn.

I got a mother board and Processor.

But now the graphics card. Well I'm going to go ahead and get the Nvidia Geforce 6600GT (PCI x16)
But there are a lot of companies who sell this graphic card and they all look different =P

I thought Nvidia made the cards themself? What is a reliable company for this card?

Also would I need a card with the hishest Core/memory clock possible?

it all comes down to your budget...

Nvidia doesn't make any cards. They just make the GPU and set certian standards that have to be met. There are made by ATI cards, but even those are not actually made by ATI. They are made by Sapphire and are relabled.

Go to NewEgg and look for the one with the most good reviews.

Ah Well I got mostly everything but the HDD and the Ram plus a case.

Well The Mother board has a ATA 133. But the Harddrive just says it has a Sata It has to be the same right? here's the links..
HDD I'm currently looking at.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822152022

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131524 Mother board

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814121531 Video Card

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817148008 Powersupply.

get a venice core Athlon
or a dual core

the single cores are very well priced (cheap compared to intels)
and they overclock well

I skimmed through the thread, and so far, so good. Did you decide on a processor?

SATA and ATA are different interfaces, but on that ASUS board, you'll be fine.

In my experience, I'd have to suggest an Enermax power supply, but that's just an opinion.

Basically, I have a list of stuff that i'd like to suggest:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813130492 Motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103535 Processor
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820145450 RAM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822144415 Hard Drive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130214 Video
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16827131357 Optical Drive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817103458 Power Supply

On the processor I forgot to add is the same you put up.

What you have suggested has brought up 760.49 without the shipping, and case (Keyboard mouse and speakers I already have)

Also the Operating system is the one I'm scared to buy. Some are more expensive than the computer it self. =P
Is there anyway I can transfer Windows from this computer to the one I will build?

Also what about Internet explorer and other programs that pretty much come with the prebuilt ones?

Mine is a bit older of a mobo, but similar to the 1st one Detis posted. My Athlon proc has a Barton core in it. Overall, our system is VERY stable and we rarely have any issues with it.

I agree that I single venice core chip is fine for right now. You will only see a real performance difference with a dual core if you are running multiple applications. As software programming catches up, new games will be written to optimize dual cores but this may not happen for some time.