Building first computer

[wolfx7777]

im no tsure if they ship, but take a look around the site and they might...

www.atic.ca

www.anitech.com

i bought my whole pc from atic,, they built everything, was the cheapest place...

 

[L00PY]

Read through Anand's Weekly guides for suggestions. Go through NewEgg's wish lists (sorted by reviews or ratings) and check out systems with totals in your price range. Read the comments too.

For the money you're willing to spend, especially considering that you need a monitor and all, I suspect you'll find you need to abandon any idea of an A64.

 

[Cycophant]

Hmm, you may be correct about the A64. I simply went with it because it looked like a solid CPU that would last me into the future, rather than me having to update the machine in 10 months or something. If I were to go with something a little more "economical" than the A64, what would everyone suggest? Probably an Athlon XP, but what appears to be the best speed for value?

 

[AwesomeJay]

check out www.pricenetwork.ca you can search all of the stores listed on it by province or all of canada.. just type in what you are looking for in the COMPARE PRICES FOR box , say athlon 64 3000+ for example and click go and boom heres an example of some of the prices...

Computer Link Systems
- Ontario
AMD ATHLON64 3000+ L2-512K 512K $291.00

ChipLogic Computers Inc.
- Ontario
Athlon 64 3000+ 2.0GHz(Retail) $299.00

Sunny Computers
- Ontario
Athlon 64 3000+ (512K L2 Cache) Retail Box $303.00

ICCT
- Ontario
ATHLON64 3000+ RETAIL 64BIT $303.00

Canada Computers & Electronics
- Ontario
Athlon 64 3000+ RETAIL BOX $305.00

 

[Mik3y]

well, by statistics, $900 is considered a budget or a midrange computer. you cant expect to build a pc that will play the highest end games smoothly wtih a budget like that, especially without overclocking. the radeon 9800 pro shows lag in farcry at full settings, and just wait until half-life 2 and doom 3 come out. in a month or 2, the radeon 9800 pro will technically be downgraded to just mid-range performance. also, i understand about your budget, so 1 gb of ram is not realistic right now (who says you cant add more later?! ). also, if you are willing to downgrade from 64 bit to 32 bit, the strongest performing athlon xp is hte 3200+. its costs $187. the athlon 64 2800+ also costs exactly the same for a bit increased performance, so stick to 64 bit anyways. not to be pessimistic, but even if you can get the 3000+ and the radeon 9800 pro now, it will be outdated by next year. expect athlon 64 4800+ and a radeon x--- xt to be out by then, and games will only become superior to doom 3 and half-life 2 then also. in my opinion, you should wait til mid-late summer to build the comp. if you desparetly want it now, then i totally recommend you overclock. as for putting in a mobile cpu into a desktop, its perfectly fine, especially with overclocking. low voltage, low temps, and low fsb benefit overclocking, so wtih a good psu and motherboard, you can expect to catch around 2.5ghz on air. in benchmarks, 2.5ghz is near athlon fx-53 speeds, expecally in games. i'm not saying you still cant go for an athlon 64. you can still stick with:

amd 64 3000+ $223
mobo $99
mushin 512 pc-3200 $90
antec sonata case w/ 380W psu $99
radeon 9800 pro $210
seagate 120gb sata hard drive $97

total: $818 w/o tax @ newegg.com

total should end up being $900 or so, but until then, this is the best you can get for your money retail wise.

 

[Davegod]

Difference between SATA & Ultra ATA (aka PATA, ATA, ATA100, ATA133, ATAn, IDE, EIDE etc)... not very much right now, they're prettymuch the same hard drives with a different connector on the end - for most of them, you can take this literally. Also ATA133 drives arent really any faster than ATA100.

In practical terms, the differences are that ATA has a big ribbon cable, SATA has a nice thin cable; you need to ensure your motherboard has SATA connectors (and PSU, else get connector adapters) whereas PATA will definately be on there; and you need to install drivers for the SATA from a floppy disk before you can install windows XP. Oh and possibly in like 5 years time motherboards might only have SATA connectors, and no PATA. As far as I'm aware, the only SATA drives that are any faster than PATA ones are the 10,000RPM raptors or big seagate drives, both of which seem way out of budget here.

RAID = redundant array of inexpensive disks. it's just a simple method to combine multiple hard drives for either better performance (mostly for servers) or for a continuous backup. Either SATA or PATA hard drives can be used in a RAID array. Considering the negligible to nil performance improvement for games combined with tight budget and increased risk, RAID 0 etc seems like a bad suggestion here. The tight budget makes RAID 1 seem like a bad suggestion here. Other RAID types fall to the same reasons. I wouldnt pay any attention as to wether your motherboard supports RAID or not.

Maybe an idea would be to roughly price out everything you need, and then see whats left for motherboard & cpu. Not sure why people are reccomending XP-mobile chips, since theyre more expensive than the desktop versions, most have a slower FSB at stock speeds, and OP doesnt seem like either an overclocking or silentpc nut.

 

[wseyller]

The radeon 9800 pro does not lag on farcry, at least not mine. I have everything turned up as high as possible including sound which i have an audigy 2 zs. The game looks and play flawlessly. I am though very impressed with the new cards.

I see no point to detour away from the amd64. You could buy a low end 64 bit processor like the 2800+ or the 3200+ for similiar prices to the high XP athlons with better performance.

I look up a couple prices, not cheapest retailer but good enough for the scope of this thread.

for example:

AMD Athlon XP's
XP3000+ - $150
XP3200+ - $200


AMD Athlon 64's
XP2800 - $190
XP3000 - $220

Motherboards for these aren't that expensive.
If you buy an athlon xp your done. No more processor upgrades you will have to start all over with a new mobo and processor later on. If you buy the low end 64bit you get better performance and you will have more room for upgrading. There are more processors coming out.

As far as the harddrive, most all the 64bit compatible mobo's i've seen have ATA133 and SATA and with raid as well. I would go with a SATA drive. They not much difference in price only buy a few dollars. ATA133 is old technology compared to SATA. Also a plus is that the cable is very small which will help with cooling. As I say out with the old and in with the new. I just have to say about an above post about installing a driver for a SATA drive. Thats wierd I didn't have to with mine. It installed just like a normal harddrive just like the manual said it would.

 

[Cycophant]

Mik3y: Yes, unfortunately I'm all too aware of how quickly the components I'm buying will be low-end. But if I wanted to stay on-top of things, I'd need to pay an arm and a leg now. Or even better, wait for the upcoming technology (Socket 939, for example) and pay even more, or wait even longer for it to come down in price. I really need a computer within the next few weeks anyway, so waiting is pretty much out. If my machine can play the newer games coming out now without problems, I'm more than content, even if that means games coming up in 6 months won't work as great. Thanks for the system you listed out; it looks pretty much like what I've got down now, so I'm glad to hear you also think it's probably the best value right now.

Davegod: Thanks again for your continued help and advice. You're dead on about the lack of desire to overclock or a silent system. I'm just not ready to try overclocking right now, and although silence is beauty, I'm not going to sacrifice a lot of money for it. I'm basically drawn between two options now:

Hard Drive: 80gig Seagate SATA or 80gig Seagate Ultra-ATA, since the difference is only about $20.
CPU: Do I go with a high-end Athlon XP (like a 3200+) or an Athlon64 2800+. Motherboards for the two seem fairly similiar, so would it make more sense to go with a 64-bit CPU, or just stick with a regular one?

wseyller: Thanks for the corroborating info. Makes me feel a little better about the 9800 Pro, if nothing else. The 64-bit and SATA stuff is nice to hear, as well.

 

[wseyller]

Good luck to you, which ever you decide it will do a good job for what you need.

 

[SkaarjMaster]

Just for the record, with 1 GB of RAM (vs. 512MB) a few stock maps and other custom maps for UT2003 and UT2004 play a lot better with no hiccups. Also, why Seagate and not Western Digital?

 

[Cycophant]

Only reason I went with Seagate was they appear to be slightly cheaper up here in Canada right now, for some reason. I have however, heard mixed results about the reliability of Western Digital hard drives from a few places. Likely it's the usual few bad apples you'll come across with everything, so I didn't pay much attention.

Yet another quick question for everyone: I've planned on using only an onboard sound card, since I have no plans on purchasing anything even remotely expensive in terms of speakers, and probably 75% of the time I'll be using headphones. So, will only using an onboard sound card pose performance problems with games? I have a fear it might degrade performance, which I'd prefer to avoid.

 

[Mik3y]

onboard sound is perfectly fine when it comes to using headphones. i would upgrade the sound card last since we can all live with onboard for just a bit. IMO, i've always used onboard, and i find it very descent. the onboard sound with speakers is just like listening to a cd player: its not bad . also when you were asking about the 64 2800+ and the xp 3200+, you should stick with the amd64 since its a tad bit faster then the xp 3200+ and has, by far, much more potential in hte near future since 64 bit apps and os's will come out. as for the hard drive, IDE drives are not bad at all. Though SATA is the future of the drives, it poses no performance benefit over the IDE's.

 

[Cycophant]

Thanks for the advice, everyone. I'll probably just avoid the SATA Seagate Hard Drive. It's only $30 more, but I can put that money to better use if I really won't notice a difference ever.

I'm drawn between three CPU's at this point. Here's the two options:

Athlon 64 2800+ Retail: $265.00
Athlon 64 3000+ Retail: $291.00
Athlon 64 3200+ Retail: $360.00

Now, I'm thinking the 3000+ is a better deal compared to the 2800+, for the price difference. But is the extra $70 worth the bump from the 3000+ to the 3200+ and the extra 512k in the cache?

 

[Markfw]

Get the 3000. The benchmarks show VERY little difference between the two. And whats wrong with the Seagate drive ? I will go back and see if I can find in the thread what the problem is. I love Seagate for dependability and quietness. They are just a tad slower usually.

 

[Cycophant]

My mistake - when I said I would avoid the SATA Seagate hard drive, I meant just the SATA variant. I'm still going with an 80gig Seagate, it'll just be Ultra ATA, not SATA. I've heard of Seagate's reliability and quietness too, which is why I'm going with it.

 

[wseyller]

You should have no problem using onboard sound. Only quality difference you'll notice with be with the sound. Just use low quality sound settings in the configuraton of the games you play.

 

[Mik3y]

seagates are faster then typical western digital drives. they are quieter and have a faster response time, though they cost a tad bit more.

 

[Cycophant]

Son of a....

Well, I finally compiled my finalized parts list, as follows:

Antec SLK3700BQE Case/PSU
AMD Athlon 64 3000+
ASRock K8S8X Motherboard
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB
Samsung DynaFlat 955DF 19" Monitor
Panasonic Floppy Drive
Lite-On 52-32-52 CD-RW
Seagate 80GB Ultra ATA w/ 2MB cache, 7200 RPM

Problem is, that adds up to almost $1500, and that's without any sticks of RAM yet, either. Things were looking so good too. If it weren't for the fact that 90% of online computer stores refuse to ship to Canada, I'd probably be all right.

So, does anyone have any suggestions? I've made a few sacrifices already, but clearly I might need more.

 

[ponyo]

Either increase your budget or drop Athlon 64 3000+ and the motherboard. 3000+ is not budget processor.

 

[Cycophant]

I've done some more number crunching, and dropping down to even a AMD XP 2800 doesn't make much of a dent (only about $150), and the motherboard isn't going to get any cheaper.

By the looks of it, I just can't build a machine I'm content with on the budget I'm looking for. The only way to stay under $1200 is to ditch the A64, the Radeon 9800 Pro, and find the cheapest monitor I can find - something I don't think I can really settle for.

Looks like I'll have to increase my budget. With taxes, shipping and a few extras I haven't included yet, the pricetag is over $1700 now...

 

[SkaarjMaster]

Get anything yet?