First Time Builder

[Trezza]

I am planning to build a computer soon. My goal is to have a reasonablly fast computer for as little money as possible. Reasonable for gaming, videoplaying and online surfing. Everyday stuff but i don't want to upgrade it soon either. What i am thinking about is around 2.4 MHZ either Amd or Pentium with enough guts in it to make it run fine. What do i look for in mother boards and other aspects to ensure i don't have incompatible or crappy parts? Plus any suggestions for system combos are cool too.

 

[Mardeth]

Its hard to tell how your supposed to see if the mb is good or not without testing it. You should read many articles and test of mb and read what people say about their mb. Personally I love Epox. Very good quality and not too price, what more could you ask for?

 

[CurtCold]

Make sure you buy a Mobo from a reputable company. IF you do, you shouldn't have a problem. I bought an Atrend one time, which was ok, just don't count on any customer support. I would def go with XP, and about 512MB of Ram. Video, I personally would get the Radeon 8500, or wait for a few weeks on the 9500. (GeForce 4 4200 is also a good deal) 128MB of Ram on that if you don't wanna have to upgrade soon. AMD fan here, so I would get something in the range of a 2000+, your not going to notice an extreme performance boost from a 2400+. Also would get an Asus, Abit, Gigabyte board personally. I've used Asus for last couple of years, and have been extremely happy. A7v333 much?


Also put a 60+GB hardrive in there if you plan on much games and files. Have fun with your new puter!

 

[thorin]

Well ECS K7S5A is a good MB at low cost. It'll take up to a 2200+ (maybe more if there's a new BIOS).

Thorin

Edit: It appears that the K7S5A now supports up to the 2600+

 

[Davegod]

hmm, i gather the nForce2 seems to be the mobo of choice for AMD setups now, especially for new builds & complete upgrades, as can get the less "important" (read: most important but least interesting 😛) stuff onboard, combined with excellent performance. Also seems most likely board that will be reasonably upgradeable. With reagrd to inidvidual brand, well all same chipset so not THAT much difference, but usually less risky to get some sort of decent brand, asus, epox, abit, gigabyte... TBH it's worth researching you mobo, more than any other peice of hardware. Even just looking for what chipset features you want, seeing what manuf'ers make it as you want then try to research the inidvidual boards, usually will be down to like 4 max at this point, where can make one of those "which mobo" threads 😛 or even just ask someone in a thread where someone happens to say they use a board your looking at.

A lot of ppl will rant either amd sux0r or intel sux0r blah, blah, mostly it comes down to amd = more bang for less buck, intel = most bang for mega buck 😉 More important difference imho (as a gamer) is the chipsets, which of course are only available to either one of amd or intel. Once you've decided on chipset/mobo, the rest is easy.

HDD: probs 60gb+, though always easy to adda second disk later if you need more space; either
Western Digital Special Edition (8mb buffer) for max performance
Seagate barracuda IV (for still great performance but silent)
- anyone seen review of those new Maxtors? 8mb buffer like the WD but fluid dynamic bearing things like the 'cuda... looks interesting but not seen review though 🙁

cpu: fast as you can get with the cash left over

ram: 512mb, Crucial for cost effective, Corsair for max performance/overclockability. Maybe few other suggestions.

soundcard: onboard probs fine, esp with an nForce2

PSU: 380w or 430w Antec Truepower for max quality, a 350-400w Enermax or other Antec be fine though to save costs.

gfx: lots of choice, radeon 9500pro, r9700, gf4ti4200, gf4600... depends on budget and if in ati, nvidia or dont care camp.

 

[Arhra]

Basically, I would just look for an nForce (AMD system), Asus (AMD and Intel) or a SiS Motherboard. Your biggest question is the motherboard and processor. At that point, you really want to look at your graphics card. If you want the best performance right now then I would go with the Radeon 9700 Pro. The best value right now is the Geforce ti4200. Your third option is getting a mid range (Maybe a low GF 3, maybe even GF2) and waiting for the GeForce FX, nVidia's next generation card.

One other big question is whether or not you plan on overclocking the computer. If you do, you probably want to go with Corsair RAM, and the Granite Bay is a very good (especially for over-clocking) Motherboard.

Building your computer is definately the right option.

 

[Frankie]

I have an Asus Mobo myself and I love it. Haven't had any problems with mine. As far as the CPU if you want the cheapest then it's AMD, although I don't think you can get a 2ghz AMD... not sure about that one. Mine is an AMD XP1800, 1.5ghz. I have had no problem running games or anything like that. My only bottleneck is my 64 MB GForce II, that will change by Christmas time though. 😀 As far as video cards, definitly a GForce IV... a GForce IVTI4200 would do you fine for a while.