Computer Specs + Building Process

I've been pricing things out for fun the last few days, and looking at things.

As far as the harddrive goes, if you want just a small one, go for the cheapest you can find. don't worry about the actual size.

The processor, you might want to drop down to the lower end of the X2 line to save some money if that is a concern.

Ram, go for 2 sticks of 512 ram. it isn't too expensive and a gig helps a lot for things.

Quote:

Original post by Talroth I've been pricing things out for fun the last few days, and looking at things. As far as the harddrive goes, if you want just a small one, go for the cheapest you can find. don't worry about the actual size. The processor, you might want to drop down to the lower end of the X2 line to save some money if that is a concern. Ram, go for 2 sticks of 512 ram. it isn't too expensive and a gig helps a lot for things.

Thanks for posting and helping!

Ok, so I'll looks for some harddrives. It's just that I want a harddrive of good quality without the huge size. For example, people talk a lot abotu HDs bigger than 100gigs, which is about 4x as much as I need.

Is there a lower end of the X2 line below the 4200+? As far as the 4200+ one goes, I should be ok with the money; the other ones are way too much. Actually, the processor, gfx card and the ram are the ones that are most fatal to me. The harddrive, pc case, cd drive, etc. aren't so important right now

Thanks for the ram tip. I was thinking of a gig but I wasn't sure.

EDIT: For example, I did a quick search on Amazon and many (if not all) of the harddrives were >= 80GB...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103562
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103546

Athlon 64 X2 3800+ $297
Athlon 64 X2 4400+ $460

However, I'm not sure what the difference between the Toledo (the 4400's core) and the Manchester. however, the 4400 looks like a better processor, but they are the same pin layout is the same so you can upgrade later. Now they look similar, but the 4400 has a much larger cache.

Hummm, looks like I have a lot of research to do now, apparently I know next to nothing about these processors.

Quote:

Original post by Talroth http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103562 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103546 Athlon 64 X2 3800+ $297 Athlon 64 X2 4400+ $460 However, I'm not sure what the difference between the Toledo (the 4400's core) and the Manchester. however, the 4400 looks like a better processor, but they are the same pin layout is the same so you can upgrade later. Now they look similar, but the 4400 has a much larger cache. Hummm, looks like I have a lot of research to do now, apparently I know next to nothing about these processors.

I think I'll go with the 4200+. It's in the middle and it's not that pricy :).

So.. No one else has any recommendations?

Since this is your first build I probably shouldn't suggest this, but the best deal for a dual cpu is a
overclocked Opteron 165 They have twice the cache of the 3800+ (at nearly the same price) and overclock faster than the 4400+. I have mine running at 2.7 GHz with a water cooler (I bet it'd take 2.5 GHz with the stock cooler). But overclocking requires a good motherboard, a good power supply and a good amount of knowledge. For instance on mine at the speeds I'm running at 2 of 4 SATA ports are useless, and I have to be careful about rebooting after setting some settings in bios and before setting others.

Hard drive's have a decent effect on the responsiveness of a computer, so I'd at least get a 7200RPM with 8MB of cache. Since 10 bucks more will can double your capacity I'd try to aim for the sweet spot. 250GB 7200RPM 16MB Cache drives are only $90 now days. Take this western digital for instance.

Ram: 512MB is bare minimum now days (at least for a machine that's used for games), I would recommend getting 1GB (decent cheap ram is ~$85 a gig). Corsair and Crucial have always been safe bets. And I've heard good things about Mushkin. Here's a decent set of inexpensive ones.

Mother Board: This and the power supply are the two most important pieces, problems with them can cause all kinds of stability issues. I would recommend a nforce4 based board from ASUS,MSI or Abit. This might work but I haven't researched that board, so there's likely a better choice.

OS: Since Vista is still beta, probably WinXP. (Although I'm running x64 without any problems, but I'm pretty good at getting things to work)

Graphics Card: At this price range Geforce 6800GS,6600GT,6600,6200 (with out turbo cache).

Fan's: most cases and all retail CPU's come with enough cooling for normal systems.

Cases: I'm a big fan of the COOLER MASTER Centurion, since it has great airflow and built in filters (which help a lot with dust build up), and is well designed. No power supply though, but most power supplies that come with cases aren't that great.

Power Supply: This is not a piece to save money on. For you, the most important number is the total amps on the 12v rail(s) (raw wattage can be very misleading). The closest to what I'm using is Enermax EG425P-VE SFMA and I have 2 10K rpm HD's 2 7k RPM HDs, an overlocked opteron 165, water cooler, Geforce 6800GT (a real power hog), all running off of it without any issues (it'd would fail with on a sli setup of course). As for brands PC Power and Cooling is the best, bar none. but they cost a ton. The OCZ powerstreams are very good. Enermax, Antec and SeaSonic are also good brands.

A good dual layer dvd +- burner is only $40. I happen to like NEC and Lite-On burners, This one looks nice. Most any floppy would work. I like this because it doubles as a flash reader.

I would suggest you pick a set of parts and post them for us to critique. Or figure out you budget and what exactly you want to sue the system for. For instance linux compatibilty can have a influence on the part selection, although the ones I picked would be fine.

You are hopeless, delay it by half year and read some books, and manuals.

Cheap case isn't a case that would be long lasting.
6600 or 7300 GFX card would be in your budget. Don't forget to buy PCI-E wersions.

Look at tomshardware, and arstechnica.