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First Time Builder Advice

G

globring

Junior Member
Greetings, I am in the process of building a PC for the first time, and would like some advice. I've tried to do as much research as I can to come into this prepared, but alas, I still have some questions.

I decided to build a AMD64 system, and so far have the following components selected:

- ASUS K8V SE Deluxe Motherboard
- AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Processor

My questions are as follows:

1. What is the recommended wattage power supply I should get with this?
2. What is a good, easy to use case (ATX) that will hold the power supply from #1 and motherboard? I can worry about color etc. later, I am looking for a brand name and model number to start.
3. What other things should I look out for before getting all the components?

I feel pretty confident installing the vid card, hard drive, and memory. I hope to keep this thread alive as I go through this process, and I would like to thank everyone in advance for their input.

 
1. You should be fine with any high quality 400w (even 350w) PSU. Just make sure the amps on the 3v and 12v rails are sufficient for you. Probably the biggest choice here is whether you want a "silent" psu or not.

2. *fanboi alert* If you are looking for a windowed case, I would suggest the Lian Li PC-65 or similar type case from Lian Li. They are extremely work-friendly, roomy, airy and it has a very classic look without being boring. If you aren't a window person, the Antec 3700BQE is an excellent choice. It has 120mm fans so it runs fairly quiet, it's very roomy, and it's easy to work in. Plus it comes with an Antec 350w PSU, which should be fine for the A64. 🙂

3. Look for low latency PC3200 or PC3500 when looking for ram. Athlons perform much better at lower RAM latencies than P4s do.*** You won't get much of an overclock on the A64, so tight timings is the way to go.

**Edit - that doesn't sound right. What I meant is: Athlon performance benefits more from lower latency memory than a P4 does. IOW - With Athlons go for tight timings, with P4s go for raw speed.
 
Thanks for the tips zodder. While doing more research, I noticed that some people have had some bad experiences with the K8V motherboard. Problems with IDEs on the primary, etc.

Would going for a high end AMD XP be a better choice for a first time builder? (or even an Intel based system?) I am currently using a P4 1.7GHz, and the computer I will eventually build will be an upgrade and become my main system.

A lot of gaming, Internet surfing, and am looking to do some video work with the firewire ports. But I want it to fly! 😀
 
As stated a "quality" 350 or better PS will do you fine. Another case to look at is the Enermax CS-10182-BA is a great case. It is also very affordable. It can handle up to 7 fans and is a very spacious box. The only con is that it weighs a TON! I drag mine to a LAN atleast once a month, and it is a beast. But other than that I love it. At only 80 dollars you get a lot of case.

Now I just read an article that said most AMD64 boards can support (though not listed as supported in specs) PC 3500 DDR and runs it at full speed. I would read around on that since it would be a nice little speed boost.
 
1. Make sure you get a good, high-quality power supply (Antec and Enermax are very good choices), and make sure it has at least 350 w.

2. A good case would be the Antec PLUS1080AMG or the PlusView1000AMG (basically the same thing, excepy with a window). I am not sure why I am recommending these, I really don't like Antec designs, but hey, why not? (their ease of use and build quality are good).

3. Make sure you check if your components have any compatibility issues with each other. Also, remember to get high quality memory (Kingston, anybody?).
 
I'd personally go with a minimum of 400 watt power supply (you'd think the same if one blew up in your face T_T). As for case, I'd personally go with the old school case such as the Antec SX series <3! I find the SX1000's too big for my personal taste (annoying for LANs) so I'd get like a sx800 or so.

One thing you should be weary of is installing the heatsink. I broke my first motherboard trying to put on a heatsink as my screw driver slipped and hit some little thingamajigs pretty hard. Anyway, good luck and have fun! lol
 
I really am thankful for all the advice, let me run down what I think I am going with so far:

- ASUS K8V SE Deluxe
- AMD Athlon 64 3000+
- ANTEC Sonata w/ 380W Power Supply
- Kingston 184 Pin 512MB DDR PC-3200 (x2)

Now how about some HD recommendations? I don't need something huge, i.e. nothing over 80GB is needed, and even that is bigger than I would most likely need.

And do you think the built in audio in the Asus will suffice? I plan on using the built in LAN/USB/Firewire/etc.
 
OK, the hard drive choices are getting me all confused.

What is the difference between SATA and RAID?

If I am just looking for a single fast HD to hold everything, what is the best way to go?

And is 7200rpm good enough? I see ones at 10,000 and 10,025 as well!
 
you'll want a bigger harddrive if you get into video editing. Pick one up on sale with rebate at your local circuit city, best buy, office max or staples. A western digital or Maxtor will be fine for your use. RAID is a way of utilizing two harddrives at once, either one acting as a mirror copy of the other for backup reasons, I think this is raid 0??? Basically you have two drives say 120 mb each but you computer only uses 120 mb and you always have one drive that's intact no matter what happens to the other. Or you can speed up your harddrive by splitting the workload of one drive between two (raid 2?? I can't ever remember which is which) in this scenario you could have two 120 gb harddrives and your computer sees only one 240 gb harddrive as I understand, the down side being that if one drive crashes you essentially loose both since information is shared between the two.

SATA is totally different from RAID, although many people use SATA drives for RAID. SATA stands for Serial ATA, just think of it as a faster IDE connection with a different cable.

Hope that's accurate and that it helps.
 
Originally posted by: kornphlake
you'll want a bigger harddrive if you get into video editing. Pick one up on sale with rebate at your local circuit city, best buy, office max or staples. A western digital or Maxtor will be fine for your use. RAID is a way of utilizing two harddrives at once, either one acting as a mirror copy of the other for backup reasons, I think this is raid 0??? Basically you have two drives say 120 mb each but you computer only uses 120 mb and you always have one drive that's intact no matter what happens to the other. Or you can speed up your harddrive by splitting the workload of one drive between two (raid 2?? I can't ever remember which is which) in this scenario you could have two 120 gb harddrives and your computer sees only one 240 gb harddrive as I understand, the down side being that if one drive crashes you essentially loose both since information is shared between the two.

SATA is totally different from RAID, although many people use SATA drives for RAID. SATA stands for Serial ATA, just think of it as a faster IDE connection with a different cable.

Hope that's accurate and that it helps.
Click to expand...

A little inaccurate, but the idea is right 😉

RAID in a nut shell:

RAID 0 = Striping: which is the second scenario described. Your computer views two or more drives as one combining the sizes and writes data to all drives. It may take a little longer to write data to a RAID 0 array because you are writing to more than one drive at the same time, but it is supposed to increase read times since data is drawn from more than one drive. Video editors, gamers and others may choose this option as a chance to increase their drive read speeds.

RAID 1 = Mirroring: Which is the first scenario described in the previous post. You have two drives, but your computer only shows one. It uses the other one as an exact replica as the first, so if you have a drive fail, you have all the information saved on another drive. This option is popular in servers and for those who have critical data they want secured.

More info

edit: Forgot to mention that there are several more RAID types, such as RAID 3,4, 5, RAID 0+1, and others, but they are not as common as the two mentioned above.

If you're just looking for a fast, stable, single drive, then go with a large (120 GB?) SATA drive, or even a WD Raptor.
 
So what is seems like I am reading is that SATA is the way to go (over say IDE?).

I don't have the need for RAID, so won't even look at it for now.

With SATA isn't it harder to install XP?
 
You'll need a floppy drive to install xp onto a SATA drive. Basicly you need to put the SATA drivers on a disk and when windows starts installing it'll say press f6 to install custom drivers and you just followit from there. I like my chaintech board and I didn't have any problems with it. Well except the damn front audio ports pluging into where the jumpers for configuring mutli channel sound goes...
 
Apologies for the bump, but still trying to decide if SATA is worth it over regular IDE as far as performance and price and difficulty of install!
 
Hi, Globring,

Re the power supply, I would recommend you go with a HIGH QUALITY power supply of around 300 watts, certainly no more than 350, for the build you're describing. Despite the well-intentioned replies on this forum, the simple fact is that anything more than 300 watts for your system will likely go unused and you'll just be throwing your money down the drain.

Despite what you'll often read on some computer forums, the gazillion-watt PSUs out there are really only for people who A) are ignorant; B) want to buy a high-wattage-number power supply just so they can say they have one, even though it has a low efficiency rating and poor rail regulation tolerances and thus requires more 'potential' power output [why anyone would want this is beyond me, but some do]; C) are running a full tower computer with multiple hard drives, a fast CPU overclocked to the hilt, a gazillion MB of RAM (pointless), half a dozen fans (pointless again), several optical drives, lighting, and an power-guzzling high-end video card; or D) running their computer in an equatorial rain forest or the Sahara Desert (PSU output decreases at high temperatures). I personally think you'll find the best brands in the 275- to 350-watt range to be PC Power & Cooling (PCPowercooling.com), Seasonic (Seasonicusa.com), Enermax (Enermaxusa.com), and maybe Antec (only their True Power series though and only if noise and a slightly higher electric bill are not concerns). Fortron/Source and Sparkle also make some nice PSUs worth looking at, and there are some newer units on the market from Zalman and OCZ as well that might warrant consideration; I don't happen to know much about them personally. Gosh, there are so many PSUs out there that it's hard to keep up. I think Anandtech.com did a "Power Supply Roundup" awhile back, if memory serves -- you might do a search for that (I should too!).

For anyone wishing to challenge my post here, I challenge you 🙂 to post a wattage calculation for a build like Globring is planning and show how anything more than 275 or 300 watts would be necessary (even allowing for a bit of headroom). Factually speaking, most single-HD systems with a mid-level CPU (even a P4), 512 MB of RAM, a low- or mid-level video card, two optical drives and an exhaust fan calculate out at needing about 200 watts! You can absolutely find a high quality PSU for around $50-$60 (the PC Power & Cooling 310 ATX goes for $49, plus tax & shipping, and SeaSonic's 300-watt Super Silencer is priced about $5 more, I think). If you want dedicated output rails, voltage feedback and gold plated connectors, and don't care about noise or a poor 68% efficiency rating and lack of power factor correction (and therefore your electric bill), go with an Antec True Power 330 for about $115-$120 (incl. tax & shipping). My advice for a non-mission-critical computer? Spend that extra money on a faster CPU, a better HD, or a nicer case. Or buy something nice for someone nice.

Good luck with your build!

Ken

PS: Most PSUs that come bundled with cases are generally considered to be of very poor quality. If your case comes with a PSU, replace it unless you know for a fact that it's not just a "throw-in."
 
So far, I'm not seeing acceptances of my challenge from you guys who said Globring needs "at least a 350 or 400-watt supply" for his setup. Your silence is deafening, guys! As Judge Schmails said in Caddyshack, "Well ... we're waiting!"

All in good fun. 🙂

Ken
 
A quality 300-350 watt power supply would be adequate. Unless you are considering a WD Raptor, I see no real need for a SATA hard drive....standard IDE 7200rpm drive will serve you well. Have fun.

Super6
 
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