[Stephonovich]

Yet another computer thread... /me cackles maniacally

You do realize you're going to get about 50 different opinions, each one different?

Ah well. Here's my take.

Mobo: MSI K7N2 Delta Platinum - $90

Mobos are very much a personal choice, providing you pick a decent brant and chipset, that is. I myself am very much a MSI fan, having dealt with their products and customer support. This particular board comes loaded to the gills, and won't kill you in price, either. Support up to 3GB of DDR400 dual channel RAM, 1x AGP 8x, 5x PCI, onboard USB 2.0 and Firewire, 2x PATA, 2x SATA, onboard RAID 0/1/0+1, onboard 6-channel audio, onboard Gigabit LAN. Granted, you won't be using the onboard audio, but it's practically impossible to buy a mobo today that doesn't have it. As for onboard LAN, I know people are going to bash me over this, but I really don't have much of a problem with it. MSI's usually pretty good at including a decent chip for their LAN, and since you aren't going to be doing any major file transfers, it'll work fine. Consider Gigabit icing on the cake. As for onboard USB 2.0 and Firewire, I've got the former, and it works very quickly indeed. Haven't dealt with onboard Firewire, but it usually works well enough for most people's purposes. If you plan on doing heavy video editing, buy yourself a card. Another bonus, this mobo comes with round IDE cables as well as SATA.

CPU: Athlon XP-M 2500+ - $88

'Nuff said.

CPU Cooler: Speexe WhisperRock II - $8.99

So long as you aren't overclocking (indeed, it seems you want to underclock...), this will do nicely. Actually has quite good reviews, and is very, very quiet.

Hard Drive: Seagate 80GB SATA 7200RPM - $69

Seagates are quiet and reliable, plus they've got a 5 year warranty. As for capacity, I don't care what you're doing, there's really no good reason for you to go lower than 80GB. You never know what you'll be doing 2 years from now, and besides, dropping down to 60 or 40 isn't going to save you much at all. As for SATA, it's cheap enough on this drive that you might as well. You're not going to get a performance boost, but believe me, working with SATA cables is a whole lot easier than PATA, even rounded ones.

Optical Drive: NEC ND-3500A CDRW/DVDRW - $70.99

With DVD burners being as cheap as they are, there's really no reason not to get one. This NEC was rated by several computing sites as the best burner available, period, and is also one of the cheapest. It's can burn dual layer discs, and is quite zippy at 16x.

Floppy Drive: NEC 1.44MB Floppy - $7

Hey, say what you want, floppies aren't dead

Video Card: ATI Radeon 9550 128MB - $68

Basic previous-gen card, but does have a 128-bit memory interface. If you ever get into gaming, this will at least let you whet your taste for future upgrades. Also, it has DVI-out if you got a monitor supporting that.

Sound Card: You're on your own, man. If this is an audio computer, seriously, it's all up to you. I saw you mention an Emu back awhile... excellent. Just get whatever you want, pop it in.

Case: Antec Quiet Black Midtower 350W - $60

Never, ever, EVER skimp on cases or power supplies. I learned this the hard way. Granted, I've now got an übercool ghetto modded system with more holes and vinyl ducting than steel, but you don't want to do that

Antec cases are great, they're easy to work with, and their power supplies are very stable. It's also got front USB 2.0 ports, something that's always nice. Also, note the fan count... 1x 120mm exhaust. That's right, just one. Do they work? Oh yes. 120mm fans pull an insane amount of air, and are extremely quiet. Now, if you were to put a hotter CPU and graphics card in here, you'd want to add another 120mm in the front for intake. But for what you're doing, this will be awesome, and quiet to boot.

Total price... OK, so the price comes out to around $500 with shipping. You did say 'About $400', right?

Anyway, this is base. Just pick and choose from everyone's posts here, make sure the parts are compatible, and go from there.

Oh yes, for monitor/keyboard/mouse, I'm assuming you already have one. If not, Viewsonic makes really nice monitors if you can swing the price, if not, I've heard BenQ isn't bad. For keyboard/mouse, Logitech.

 

[uzziah]

i appreciate all the advice i can get

i don't have a monitor, but that's something i can probably pick up used locally. i will also want to use my tv as a monitor so i can sit in the sweet spot between my speakers, and just plunkety-plunk on the keyboard and go off into la la land of audio bliss. well, hopefully.

 

[Stephonovich]

Alrighty; sounds good. As I said, just treat everyone's advice equally, pick and choose what you like, and you oughta be set.

Have fun.

 

[uzziah]

i hope this thread isn't getting to far out of hand. however, i think i'll actually be using this pc for gaming as well after all. so.... i'll probably get the cpu suggested by mr radar at first (athlon 64). i hope a seagate hd with a 8mb buffer would work fine (160gb). i assume it will. the main thing i need to figure out then is the video card. i need a reasonably well performing one now, as i'll want to play half-life 2, world of warcraft etc. etc. etc. i think i'll play halo 2 for awhile and sell el xbox. why am i talking about gaming? sorry, this is headfi (please don't exile me). i assume it would be hard to get a fanless hi performance vid card. i'll try to get 1gb of ram to start, but i'll settle for 512mb if that's all i can afford

 

[DrewWinters]

If you want to use this for games like Half Life 2, we're gonna have to rework the suggestions a little. I try not to confuse people by offering up completly different advice than was given previously (unless it was bad advice, in this case it was not) but I'll take a shot at it since you've changed gears a little.

The Athlon64 is ABSOLUTELY the CPU of choice. The only choice left is whether to get Socket 754 or Socket 939. 939 is a little faster, but a little more expensive. Also, as it has been pointed out earlier, socket 754 is being phased out - well, sorta - it's becoming the "value" line aimed at non-64-bit AMD processors. So it's not an awful choice - but you might as well spend a little extra and future-proof the system.

With the RAM, if you are playing games I'm gonna have to suggest you spend the extra for low-latency RAM. It cost more, but with an AMD CPU it makes a huge difference in speed. You can get away with setting the timings lower on SOME cheaper RAM - but not all. Just spend the extra up front and get a good set. (I will put my specific recommendations at the bottom.)

Hard drive - You can't go wrong with Seagate. Since you are on a tight budget, you might want to stick with IDE (rather than SATA). SATA is marginally faster and cabling is easier. Also - it's future-proof. But it will probably be several years at best before IDE is phased out, so you'll still be able to use this drive until drive size has grown to the point of making it obsolete anyway.

Video card - for gaming this is the most important piece of hardware - especially a game like Half-Life 2. Here's the dilemma. If you intend to use the video card or the motherboard over again in a new computer later - then you want PCI-Express. Again, this is because AGP (Advanced Graphics Port - this is the type of slot current video cards plug into. It looks kinda like a PCI slot, but is usually a different color and is further away from the edge of the motherboard. PCI-Ex is new type of slot that is theoretically faster. In practice it is not YET any faster than AGP, but will be for the next generation of cards.) is being phased out. But since PCI-Ex is no faster right NOW, you have a tight budget, and there aren't any motherboards currently available for S939 with PCI-Ex... you might as well just consign your self to AGP and plan on only reusing the CPU and RAM next time you upgrade. Now, Half-Life 2 is pretty demanding - but if you are intending to play it on a TV then you'll be forced to run it at low resolution anyway, if not then you'll need more power. Unfortunatly, the best deal right now (for AGP) is actually a very expensive card (the 6800GT is around $400). Most newer cards are PCI-Ex. The choices you have are the GF6800 and GF6800 GT. While ATi's current offerings are likely to be very comparable in speed in Half Life 2, this usually does not work out in other games like Doom3. Plus nVidia has little more advanced shaders (meaning future games will probably play better). These two cards are, at cheapest, 280 and 415. There is also an Asus 128 mb 6800GT for 344. I know this blows your budget out of the water, but you should get one of these three cards. I would recommend an older card, but I'm afraid you'll unpleased with it's performance. Get the most expensive one you can. Stop groaning.

Ok, for other specifics:

Motherboard: ABIT "AV8" K8T800 Pro - $111 + 2
CPU: AMD S939 Athlon64 3000+ 90nm - $169 +2
RAM: Corsair XMS 512MB DDR PC-3200;2-3-3-6 1T - $106
Video: ASUS nVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT Video Card, 128MB DDR - $339 + 5

The other things shouldn't change much because of gaming, so I'll leave them alone... Good luck!

EDIT: OH yeah! This CPU has a dual-channel memory controller, but I only recommended one stick. This is deliberate - you won't be crippling your system TOO bad with only one stick, and it will make it easier to when you add another 512 later on - i.e. as soon as you can afford it. Memory timings become very difficult - often impossible to keep low when using 3 or more (sometimes only two!) sticks of RAM. The best thing to do would be to buy a matched pair of 512 sticks right now - but that costs alot...about $217.

 

[uzziah]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DrewWinters If you want to use this for games like Half Life 2, we're gonna have to rework the suggestions a little. I try not to confuse people by offering up completly different advice than was given previously (unless it was bad advice, in this case it was not) but I'll take a shot at it since you've changed gears a little. The Athlon64 is ABSOLUTELY the CPU of choice. The only choice left is whether to get Socket 754 or Socket 939. 939 is a little faster, but a little more expensive. Also, as it has been pointed out earlier, socket 754 is being phased out - well, sorta - it's becoming the "value" line aimed at non-64-bit AMD processors. So it's not an awful choice - but you might as well spend a little extra and future-proof the system. With the RAM, if you are playing games I'm gonna have to suggest you spend the extra for low-latency RAM. It cost more, but with an AMD CPU it makes a huge difference in speed. You can get away with setting the timings lower on SOME cheaper RAM - but not all. Just spend the extra up front and get a good set. (I will put my specific recommendations at the bottom.) Hard drive - You can't go wrong with Seagate. Since you are on a tight budget, you might want to stick with IDE (rather than SATA). SATA is marginally faster and cabling is easier. Also - it's future-proof. But it will probably be several years at best before IDE is phased out, so you'll still be able to use this drive until drive size has grown to the point of making it obsolete anyway. Video card - for gaming this is the most important piece of hardware - especially a game like Half-Life 2. Here's the dilemma. If you intend to use the video card or the motherboard over again in a new computer later - then you want PCI-Express. Again, this is because AGP (Advanced Graphics Port - this is the type of slot current video cards plug into. It looks kinda like a PCI slot, but is usually a different color and is further away from the edge of the motherboard. PCI-Ex is new type of slot that is theoretically faster. In practice it is not YET any faster than AGP, but will be for the next generation of cards.) is being phased out. But since PCI-Ex is no faster right NOW, you have a tight budget, and there aren't any motherboards currently available for S939 with PCI-Ex... you might as well just consign your self to AGP and plan on only reusing the CPU and RAM next time you upgrade. Now, Half-Life 2 is pretty demanding - but if you are intending to play it on a TV then you'll be forced to run it at low resolution anyway, if not then you'll need more power. Unfortunatly, the best deal right now (for AGP) is actually a very expensive card (the 6800GT is around $400). Most newer cards are PCI-Ex. The choices you have are the GF6800 and GF6800 GT. While ATi's current offerings are likely to be very comparable in speed in Half Life 2, this usually does not work out in other games like Doom3. Plus nVidia has little more advanced shaders (meaning future games will probably play better). These two cards are, at cheapest, 280 and 415. There is also an Asus 128 mb 6800GT for 344. I know this blows your budget out of the water, but you should get one of these three cards. I would recommend an older card, but I'm afraid you'll unpleased with it's performance. Get the most expensive one you can. Stop groaning. Ok, for other specifics: Motherboard: ABIT "AV8" K8T800 Pro - $111 + 2 CPU: AMD S939 Athlon64 3000+ 90nm - $169 +2 RAM: Corsair XMS 512MB DDR PC-3200;2-3-3-6 1T - $106 Video: ASUS nVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT Video Card, 128MB DDR - $339 + 5 The other things shouldn't change much because of gaming, so I'll leave them alone... Good luck! EDIT: OH yeah! This CPU has a dual-channel memory controller, but I only recommended one stick. This is deliberate - you won't be crippling your system TOO bad with only one stick, and it will make it easier to when you add another 512 later on - i.e. as soon as you can afford it. Memory timings become very difficult - often impossible to keep low when using 3 or more (sometimes only two!) sticks of RAM. The best thing to do would be to buy a matched pair of 512 sticks right now - but that costs alot...about $217.

holy smokes.

good advice, but my wallet is presently hi-tailing it out the door and running down the street wailing. i've got to go run after it. be right back.... ok, well i guess if i'm gonna bite the bullet, might as well make it a nice high-calibar model. quicker; less pain...

i have to reconsider keeping my xbox again. that's more than i want to spend, but certainly i'd be disapointed should i skimp on the pc. humm. thinking.. thinking... "it's ok wallet; that nasty man was just kidding...."

 

[uzziah]

man oh man. i was looking at this site and getting hopeful

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...129TX1K0000532

do they have a few screws loose or something?

 

[uzziah]

oh, and would those video cards be quiet while i'm playing music? if i'm getting farther and farther away from an audiophile-pc by getting closer to a gaming pc, i'm tempted to say screw it. i'll gladly burn all my video games for audio bliss; it's the romantic in me

 

[uzziah]

frustrating, because there are so many ultra sexy games coming out for pc such as half-life 2 and world of warcraft. then again, what time do i have to play games! still in college......

 

[uzziah]

is that zalman fan really worth $50? i mean, wow, if it was a dvd drive or something i'd get the picture, but a fan?

i'm leaning toward the el cheapo route sans gaming system. any other ways i can cut costs? i think i'll just go for 256mb ram. i mean it when i say i only use my pc for internet, and word processing

i've heard of enlight cases. good? bad? any way i can skim a little off here and there will make it a more obvious purchase for me.

 

[Nostromes]

You spend so much money on you CPU and motherboard, how much is it worth to see that it's properly cooled, and doesnt fry? Think of a CPU cooler as an Insurance Investemnt :-d

by the way, audiphile/gaming pcs are not hard to do. Just seriously think about what you need and what you want, and how much it's worth to you/want to spend.

(edit) I think you should stick with 512MBs of ram rather all you do is word process or not.... surfing around on the internet alone, made a big difference with 512mb vs 256 for me. I reconmend getting/keeping 512, especially, since you're just going to uprade it later when you realize it's too slow. lol

 

[DrewWinters]

The Extremetech article is not too far off base. They chose a S754 CPU and Motherboard, which cut some costs - but I don't think they are worth it in the long run.... The biggest difference is the video card. While their choice, the 9800 128mb model, is great for older games, it is only adequate for the most current and near-term future games. Anything beyond Half-Life2 is probably going to be a no-go with the 9800. Even games like Doom3 and Half-Life2 are going to be a little choppy unless you cut down on eye-candy quite a bit.

I also disagree that saving money by buying high-latency RAM is a good idea. The difference in performace between the CAS 3 ram(which is almost certainly also 3-3-6 and worse yet: 2T rather than 1T) they chose and the ram I listed is fairly substantial in games - somewhere between 10-20%! If you are going to cut corners like that just buy a cookie-cutter system and let them cut the corners for you!

In other words, you are going need a budget in the neighborhood of 1000 if you want a competent gaming rig for next-gen games, IMO. Of course there are always corners that can be cut - but you usaully end up paying for it one way or another.

My suggestion: Decide what you want to build and save up until you can get it. That way you won't sit around regretting buying that cheap piece of junk instead of waiting a few weeks and getting the good one. IME, you end up happier with your purchases this way. I apply this to computers, cars, audio gear, mountian bikes....etc... basically everything where quality counts.

 

[Stephonovich]

Geez, man, you've gone between basic and gaming systems so many times I'm even confused now...

If you want a gaming system, I agree, A64 is the way to go. 1GB of RAM is also a very good idea. 512MB is playable, but UT2K4 likes 1GB, believe me. I haven't bought Doom III yet, but the demo chokes on anything above 640x480 on my KT266A/XP 2000+/512MB/Radeon 9800 Pro-flashed to XT.

As for video cards, with your budget, it might not be a bad idea to drop 'er down a notch. nVidia is releasing an AGP version of the 6600GT in about 2 weeks, and it's street price should be about $200. It's not as fast as the 6800GT, granted, but at half the cost, it ain't bad. And it would run D3 and HL2 just fine. In fact, Anandtech did a test with the PCI-E version of the 6600GT and found it playable in D3 all the way up to 1600x1200. At 1280x1024 and 1024x768 is was smooth as glass. Personally, this is the card I'm going for. I've got a Radeon 9800 Pro (as stated above), and for whatever odd reason, it's kept it's resale value. I was in Best Buy the other day and saw it for $250. Sitting right next to it was the X700, going for $198. I checked on eBay, and for a bone stock 9800 Pro, about $150-$175 is the going rate. For a heavily modded one like mine (VGA Silencer, RAM sinks, flash modded to XT, OC'd... everything except volt modding, basically), they start around $200. In other words, I can trade up and possibly gain some money in the deal. I'm happy, anyway.

 

[Cyrix_2k]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stephonovich Geez, man, you've gone between basic and gaming systems so many times I'm even confused now... If you want a gaming system, I agree, A64 is the way to go. 1GB of RAM is also a very good idea. 512MB is playable, but UT2K4 likes 1GB, believe me. I haven't bought Doom III yet, but the demo chokes on anything above 640x480 on my KT266A/XP 2000+/512MB/Radeon 9800 Pro-flashed to XT. As for video cards, with your budget, it might not be a bad idea to drop 'er down a notch. nVidia is releasing an AGP version of the 6600GT in about 2 weeks, and it's street price should be about $200. It's not as fast as the 6800GT, granted, but at half the cost, it ain't bad. And it would run D3 and HL2 just fine. In fact, Anandtech did a test with the PCI-E version of the 6600GT and found it playable in D3 all the way up to 1600x1200. At 1280x1024 and 1024x768 is was smooth as glass. Personally, this is the card I'm going for. I've got a Radeon 9800 Pro (as stated above), and for whatever odd reason, it's kept it's resale value. I was in Best Buy the other day and saw it for $250. Sitting right next to it was the X700, going for $198. I checked on eBay, and for a bone stock 9800 Pro, about $150-$175 is the going rate. For a heavily modded one like mine (VGA Silencer, RAM sinks, flash modded to XT, OC'd... everything except volt modding, basically), they start around $200. In other words, I can trade up and possibly gain some money in the deal. I'm happy, anyway.

Agreed. If you want more advice, goto OCforums.com

BTW, I have Doom3 running on my rig 1024x768 med. quality smooth as glass. I'm running a 2000+ T-Bred B @ 2.5ghz, NF7-s rev2, 512mb BH-5 2-2-2-5 (Corsair XMS PC3200LL), and an AIW 9800 Pro. The processor is watercooled and while I have 3 fans in the system,I never turn them on.

 

[Stephonovich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cyrix_2k Agreed. If you want more advice, goto OCforums.com BTW, I have Doom3 running on my rig 1024x768 med. quality smooth as glass. I'm running a 2000+ T-Bred B @ 2.5ghz, NF7-s rev2, 512mb BH-5 2-2-2-5 (Corsair XMS PC3200LL), and an AIW 9800 Pro. The processor is watercooled and while I have 3 fans in the system,I never turn them on.

I wasn't aware the 2000+ could go up to 2.5...

One of these days, I'm going to buy a 2500+M and drop it in here. Those can hit 2.5 air cooled. Perhaps my mobo has something to do with the slowdown as well, I don't know. The 266A chipset is rather old. As for memory... I always laugh. I've got SimpleTech basic low end, and it runs 2-2-2-5 with no problems. I don't know if I got a lucky stick, but I'm happy, anyway.