Building a New PC

Hello, I used these forums and other's like them 3 years ago to build my own PC. Now that PC is getting a bit sluggish and its time for a new one. As before I dont really know what parts are best (Other than the video card). I'll be needing a completly new system, monitor, case, whole nine yards. Any and all sugestions are welcome.

My budget is about $1,000 but it's flexible (hopefuly in the downward).

THanks in advance for your help.

In Christ,

D. Megel :good:

 

1,000 bucks for all that is gonna be tough. Why dont you post your current system specs so we can see what we're working with.

 

thats the thing, Im going to college and wont be able to scavenge any parts off my old PC. I can probobly swap out the sound card and pick up an inexpensive monitor but other wise I'll need new parts. I built the last one on a grande but, I am flexable, I can go up a little bit.

For what its worth my current PC is a

1.5 ghz AMD XP-1800
512 DDR RAM
80 gig HD
128 meg GeForce 4 Ti4200
Soundblaster 5.1 sound card

 

200gb SATA Maxtor DiamondMax 9
Antec Lanboy or Antec P160 Case
500-600W PSU Antec / Sparkle are good
1GB Dual Channel DDR Ram (PC4000)
ATI 9800Pro 128mb
64bit PC or Dual Processor (u could get another 1800+)
DVD-RW - 8X (best for alround performance are the LG or NEC's in my opinion)
DVD-ROM - 16X (BENQ/LG/Liteon are v.good)
Monitor wise: Samsung are brilliant for qualityrice 19" would be a good size
Sound card: soundblaster or onboard depending on what mobo u get and what u use it for..

 

ProcalX's recommendations are pretty good, if you can get in under your budget. Especially the 19" Samsung -- very good for the money. However, I would recommend avoiding Maxtor for Western Digital or Seagate. Even if you have to get a smaller drive, Maxtor has too high of a failure rate to risk, IMHO.

All the best,
-AT

 

Here's a complete system, minus the OS and speakers.

Motherboard: Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe. --$99
CPU: AMD Athlon XP 2500+ "Barton" 333MHz FSB OEM --$75
CPU heatsink: Thermalright SLK900A ---$42.99
CPU fan: Sunon 92mmx92mmx25mm --- $4.99
Memory: GeiL Ultra Series Value DDR 512MB (2x256 for DDR) kit ---$99
Video Card: Sapphire ATi Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB, Bulk ---$199
Hard Drive: Western Digital 120GB 7200RPM SATA, 8MB cache --$96.50
Optical drive: Samsung Black 52X32X52X16 DVD/CD-RW Combo Drive, SM-352NENB, OEM ---$41
Case: Antec SX1040BII w 400W PSU ---$95
Keyboard/Mouse: Microsoft black keyboard w 5 button optical mouse ---$35
Monitor: NEC/MITSUBISHI FE771SB-BK, Flat 17" CRT ---$151
TOTAL: $938.48 + shipping, all prices from Newegg
Tax added if you're in NJ or CA.

The monitor runs around $30 for the standard shipping, and most, if not all of the rest have free FedEx shipping.

The Asus A7N8X-E includes LAN, Firewire and an excellent built in sound card, courtesy of the MCP-T and is SoundStorm certified by nVidia. This is better than the Live! card anyway.

 

2 things I wanna say about BigB's suggestions:

1) I have read quite a few times, from users at different forums, that the onboard sound is actually equally as good, if not better, than a plain Audigy, let alone a Live card.

2) About the Sapphire 9800 Pro. If you go the 9800 route, make sure the card has a 256-bit memory bus because there are some 128-bit cards out there and as you surely know, the latter is much slower than the former. I think only Sapphire does this, but I'm not 100% sure.
But for $199, it is probably a 256-bit card.

 

Before i confuse things, I totally agree with Anti-Trend on the reliablility of the Maxtor brand.. they have been incredibly unreliable and risky since they have been making hard drives. however their SATA hard drive range have really made up for any problems in the past, i have built my last 5 computers with the DiamondMax 9 Range and have not had any problems at all.. (customers)

Personally if i had to choose between Western Digital and Seagate i would go with Seagate, i have never ever had any problems with their hard drives, where as myself and many of my customers / friends have had problems with WD drives. (mainly the ATA100 IDE range)

and i apologise for suggesting a dual processor solution, i misread thinking that you had £1,000 to spend (around $2200 i believe)!

other than that, i highly recommend what BigB has suggested.

 

1.8 grz, that wont last very long and is only 300 more mhz than what I have. Im willing to spend a bit more to get the better CPU. WHat would be a better CPU?

Thanks for all of your quick replys, this is all great stuff.

 

Your CPU has: a 266MHz FSB, 256kB of L2 cache, and uses the Palimino or Thouroughbred core. The 2500 has a 333Mhz FSB, 512kB of L2 cache and uses the newest Barton core.

The fastest Athlon XP is the 3200+. Barton core, 512kB L2 cache. This runs at 2.2GHz and has a 400MHz FSB. It's $181 for the OEM version, and $187 for the retail version with a stock heatsink----but the SLK900A beats the crap out of it and worth the money.

If that's too much, you can drop about $40 for a 3000+. There are two versions of it: 1 with a 333MHz FSB and one sporting it at 400MHz. The 400MHz is only $2 more, and would be my suggestion. They operate @ 2.1GHz

The 2800+, Barton, 333MHz FSB, 512kB L2 cache, 2.08GHz ---$113 for just the CPU.
The 2600+, Barton, 333MHz FSB, 512kB L2 cache, 1.9GHz ---$90 for the retail CPU. OEM is sold out.

All prices from Newegg.

Part of the reason I put up the 2500+ was because many people have been able to raise the FSB to 400MHz and get a 3200+ outta the CPU...which you see is over double the price of the 2500+. The next sweet spot for price/performance is probably with 2800+.

 

Take a look in the for sale section. Im selling my NF7-S rev 2 and a barton 2800+ thatll do 3200+ speeds at stock voltages both for 185 shipped

 

So your saying that, although the default speed of a a barton cored 2800+ is 1.8 ghz I can clock it up to 2.1 ghz? Do you think 2.1 ghz will be enough? Can the motherboard support faster chips down the road?

 

the default is 2.083GHz and it clocks to 2.2GHz easily on stock volts. From 166x12.5 to 200x11. The AthlonXP line of CPUs stops at the 3200+ so youd have the top of the line mobo and cpu

 

The 3200+ looks to be the fastest Athlon in Socket A form. However, AMD has announced their value CPU, the Sempron processor which will keep Socket A around for awhile longer. If you want to go 64-bit, Socket 754 is the cheap route, but looks like it's going to be a temporary solution. The long-term socket is 939, but that's probably more than you really want to spend. Especially when the cheapest 939 CPU runs close to $500.

You should understand that clock speed isn't nearly as important as it used to be. Yes, a faster processor is nice, but if you went with something like a GeForce FX 5200, you could get the P4 3.4GHz Extreme Edition and still not be able to run Far Cry at any resolution with decent framerates.

Let's try this scenario with an A64 CPU. List changed to reflect this.

Motherboard: Gigabyte K8NS Pro nForce 3 250GB ---$122
CPU: AMD Athlon64 2800+ Retail ------$185
Memory: Mushkin 512MB PC3200 (1 stick) ---$78
Video Card: Sapphire ATi Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB, Bulk ---$199
Hard Drive: Western Digital 120GB 7200RPM SATA, 8MB cache --$96.50
Optical drive: Samsung Black 52X32X52X16 DVD/CD-RW Combo Drive, SM-352NENB, OEM ---$41
Case: Antec SX1040BII w 400W PSU ---$95
Keyboard/Mouse: Microsoft black keyboard w 5 button optical mouse ---$35
Monitor: NEC/MITSUBISHI FE771SB-BK, Flat 17" CRT ---$151
TOTAL: $1,002.50 + shipping, all prices from Newegg

There are cheaper motherboards, the Epox 8KDA3J and Chaintech VNF-250. However, I refuse to recommend Epox to anyone at this point in time. Personally I have found their motherboards to be problematic. Chaintech, I have not used, and will not comment on until I do. They seem to be pretty good, but then again, so did Epox.

 

samsung makes good burners?

2.2 ghz should be fine, I would think. Can I add more RAM with that MB later if I found the $$ ?

 

Yes. Samsung makes good stuff. You can add more RAM to either setup, no problem.

 

I heard somewhere that the next generation of vid cards where about to come out. Any word on this?

 

Actually, they're already out. But on your budget, they're not really an option. They cost $300 at the low end, and $600 at the high end. My advice is to grab a good card now, like a 9800 pro, and wait for the cost of the bleeding-edge stuff to drop some.

 

Yes. While the 9800 Pro is no longer king, it's no slouch either. Anything out there today will run fine on it. While I'm not sure about how well Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 will play out, I believe that you'll have the power to run either one fairly well.