First time rig-builder in need of some help

[kennychuck]

I?m in need of help getting my first build off the ground. This computer will mainly be used for gaming, but I also do some math/physics modeling for class (programs like MathCad and Origin if you?re familiar with those). I've got a few specifics in mind which I talk about below. I consider myself a pretty computer savvy guy, but am finding in my research that I?m ignorant on many hardware issues, so for the moment I?m hoping I can get some answers to the questions I?ve listed below. I?ve been using newegg.com to find components that I think will be good for this, but I?ll wait to post the list until after I get some of these questions answered. Any and all help will be greatly appreciated.

Processor: I'm pretty decided on a socket 939 AMD chip, as the 939 seems to be the new standard, and AMDs are better for gaming purposes. However, is it worth getting a dual core processor or is it just a waste? Also, what?s with the different city names on the cores? Is any one better than another?

RAM: I want at least 1gb, and maybe 2.
Are fewer sticks better (i.e., 2x1gb rather than 4x512mb)?
What do the timing numbers (like 5-5-5-12 and such) mean? Does it really matter what they are for my purposes?
What is 1T/2T timing?

Hard Drive:
I see a lot of people?s rigs have a boot drive and a storage drive. Obviously it isn?t necessary to have 2 drives, so why is this set-up used?
How much difference does a faster drive really make?

Questions without a category (i.e., I don?t know enough about what I?m asking to put em anywhere else ):
What the heck are BIOS?
What is a ?safe? interior temp for a computer?

Lastly, I?ve read a couple of posts on this board as well as numerous consumer reviews on specific products, but if anyone has another site they?d recommend that I check out, feel free. Many thanks.

 

[Waylay00]

Fewer sticks are better for the A64, as it puts less stress on the on-die memory controller. As far as timings, the lower the better, but they really don't effect the performance all that much. I only use one hard drive for everything. I partition into two virtual drives though.

I would get 2GB of Corsair VS 2x1GB. 2GB is fast becoming the standard for gaming machines.

 

[deadlock]

Here we go - get ready to dive deep...

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However, is it worth getting a dual core processor or is it just a waste?

If you can afford it, definitely worth it. There aren't a whole lot of multi-threaded applications around at the moment, but dual core CPUs will very shortly be the standard in the market. 4400+ is the sweet spot at the moment. If it's out of your budget, then any A64 will suffice to be honest.

Also, what?s with the different city names on the cores? Is any one better than another?

They refer to different generations of chips. They are all slightly different in architecture, how much cache they have, power requirements (and hence heat dissipation) etc. I'm not up with the full details on which is which, but yes, buy the most modern family of chips within your price bracket. They are all Socket 939 chips though and they will all work on any 939 motherboard, and they all have full 64-bit support. The differences are in the minor details.

Are fewer sticks better?

Yes. For best performance, buy in pairs. If you want 2GB, get 2x1GB to take advantage of dual-channel processing. 4x512MB will give you the same capacity and also have dual channel processing, but there is usually a processing overhead of an additional ~1-2% over just using two. Not that you'd notice it much, to be honest.

What do the timing numbers (like 5-5-5-12 and such) mean? Does it really matter what they are for my purposes? What is 1T/2T timing?

Too technical to explain sufficiently well here. It's about how burst data is managed in RAM and the number of clock cycles needed to do so. The basic rule is that lower numbers are better. My opinion is that unless you're a techno-junkie with a need to eke out every last hertz, ignore these figures. Just get RAM from any decent manufacturer and you'll be fine.

I see a lot of people?s rigs have a boot drive and a storage drive. Obviously it isn?t necessary to have 2 drives, so why is this set-up used?

Providing you have enough juice to power more than one drive (and any modern PC will be able to with no trouble), having two drives is better than one. The biggest reason deals with data channels. Say you need to copy a file from one folder to another - if the two folders are on separate physical drives (and they are on separate motherboard channels) the process is very much faster. And I'm not talking a tiny bit faster here - I'm talking real-world speed increases of double or triple that of single drives. This is because while one drive is busy reading, the other can get busy writing simultaneously. Performing this on the same drive means it has to copy a bit, write a bit, then copy a bit, write a bit etc ad nauseum (this applies even if you are doing this across different partitions - drive letters - on the same physical drive, by the way). The other reason is data redundancy. If one drive goes bang you still have some data left on the other.

How much difference does a faster drive really make?

These days realistically speaking there are two kinds of drives - Western Digital Raptors and other drives. Other drives are for the most part the same in access speed and sustained transfer rates - the only purchase considerations are price, noise and amounts of heat generated. The Raptors are a different ball game - they come in much smaller capacities and are typically run in a RAID array. They are significantly faster than regular drives. For your needs? Any 'ol Seagate, Maxtor et al will do just fine.

What the heck are BIOS?

Oh God, you really are a newbie aren't you? The BIOS (it's a singular, not a plural - the correct question is 'what is a BIOS?') is the system that controls all the inputs and outputs of your PC. It runs in the background and manages everything. It is hard-coded software that exists on your motherboard, and allows you to specify the hardware aspects of your machine, like how the RAM and CPU are configured. When people say "access the bios", they mean the CMOS menu (the front-end to controlling the BIOS) that you bring up usually by hitting the Delete key when the system boots up.

What is a "safe" interior temp for a computer?

How long is a piece of string? 30 degress or so? It all depends on your requirements and the components in your PC.

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By the sounds of it you have a LONG way to go. Advice: Google is your friend. These days you are also strongly advised to do the build supervised by someone who's successfully built a modern PC. Also, you said you want to build a gaming rig. Do you know about what sort of video card you're going to get? Apart from the CPU and RAM, this is the most crucial factor in any gaming rig and can take up quite a big portion of the cost. Your requirements in this area will also determine what motherboard you buy. nVidia or ATi? SLI or not? AGP or PCI-E?

 

[Waylay00]

Yeah, as Deadlock said, I would spend a littlemore time researching before you buy.

 

[shoRunner]

for gaming there are some issues running games on dual core processors. do a search there a few threads about it.

 

[kennychuck]

I very much appreciate the info so far. And yes, when it comes to building a computer I am extremely new . I know basically what I want in a computer but I've never had to be the one actually choosing the components before and I'm finding I'm in a bit over my head.

With that said, this is definitely preliminary research. It'll be a couple months at least before I start buying parts. That's why I'm asking you guys all this now .

Here's my build I've been thinking about so far.

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Manchester Socket 939 Dual Core Processor - Retail
GIGABYTE GA-K8N Pro-SLI Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail
Western Digital Caviar 160GB 7200 RPM SATA Hard Drive - OEM
CREATIVE Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS PCI Interface Sound Card - Retail
BFG Geforce 6800GT 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail
CORSAIR XMS 2GB (4 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered - Retail
SONY Black IDE DVD Burner Model DWQ28A - OEM
SONY Black IDE DVD-ROM Drive Model DDU1615/B2s - OEM
SONY Black 1.44MB 3.5" Internal Floppy Drive Windows 98SE/ ME/ 2000/ XP - OEM
ASPIRE X-Infinity Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Retail

The case comes with a 420W power supply, and I'm hoping that will be enough. Reading that fewer sticks of RAM is better I'll be changing over to 2x1gb instead of 4x512mb. I want to get a mobo that is SLI capable for upgrade purposes, since it will probably be cheaper to buy another 6800GT than to buy a brand new bigger card.

All this plus a network card and a router off of newegg.com is a little under $1500. How's that look, any comments for good or ill?

 

[nick1985]

Originally posted by: kennychuck
I very much appreciate the info so far. And yes, when it comes to building a computer I am extremely new . I know basically what I want in a computer but I've never had to be the one actually choosing the components before and I'm finding I'm in a bit over my head.

With that said, this is definitely preliminary research. It'll be a couple months at least before I start buying parts. That's why I'm asking you guys all this now .

Here's my build I've been thinking about so far.

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Manchester Socket 939 Dual Core Processor - Retail
GIGABYTE GA-K8N Pro-SLI Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail
Western Digital Caviar 160GB 7200 RPM SATA Hard Drive - OEM
CREATIVE Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS PCI Interface Sound Card - Retail
BFG Geforce 6800GT 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail
CORSAIR XMS 2GB (4 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered - Retail
SONY Black IDE DVD Burner Model DWQ28A - OEM
SONY Black IDE DVD-ROM Drive Model DDU1615/B2s - OEM
SONY Black 1.44MB 3.5" Internal Floppy Drive Windows 98SE/ ME/ 2000/ XP - OEM
ASPIRE X-Infinity Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Retail

The case comes with a 420W power supply, and I'm hoping that will be enough. Reading that fewer sticks of RAM is better I'll be changing over to 2x1gb instead of 4x512mb. I want to get a mobo that is SLI capable for upgrade purposes, since it will probably be cheaper to buy another 6800GT than to buy a brand new bigger card.

All this plus a network card and a router off of newegg.com is a little under $1500. How's that look, any comments for good or ill?

1) Ditch the SLI board and that expensive RAM. Use the saved cash for 2gigs (2*1024) of Value RAM, and a 7800GT/7800GTX. you will get MUCH better performance if you make this switch.

2) wattage is not an inidcator on how good a power supply is. that one that comes with your case is complet sh!t. get something with a good brand (Antec, fortron, seasonic...)

 

[xTYBALTx]

The power supply is a very important component, and power supply failure can be literally fatal to your PC. I'd recommend getting a quality (Seasonic, Fortron, Enermax, Antec) PSU. Additionally, regarding your choice of video card, I'd heartily recommend shelling out an extra $40-60 and getting a 7800GT instead of the 6800GT. There is a hot deal at Zipzoomfly.com wherein the 7800GT is just $369. It is made by XFX, not everyone's favorite company, but it has a double lifetime warranty and it'll be almost twice as fast as the 6800GT.

Get 2 x 1gb sticks of memory, either OCZ Value or Corsair ValueSelect.

Everything else looks perfect.

 

[daftpunkit]

Just advice, take it lightly. Ultimately it is your decision.

-CPU: Drop down to a AMD64 X2 3800+ or bump up to a AMD64 X2 4400+. The 3800+ OC's as far as the 4200+ basically, and the 4400+ OCs real far, up the FX57 speeds.

The different names of cores are reference to the die sizes, cache sizes, etc. Basically generations and revisions. If you are going single core, look for the Venice core (E6 generation clocks extremely well according to other forums) or the San Diego core, which is the core that the FXs use. Smaller die size = better. The Venice and San Diego are on 90nm cores.

Mobo- SLI is not necessary but if you plan to pair up your video cards in the future its possible. You can mod some boards to do SLI but that is trickier and I don't think it's very newbie friendly

Harddrive: WD is an OK brand. I have had 2 of them for 4 years, no problem with them. The only thing is they are not outstanding performance wise versus price. Samsung Spinpoints are dirt cheap, pretty good performance, and quiet. Seagate is in the price range of WD but more silent and perform a bit better. Hitachi Deskstars are cheaper than WD and Seagate and are quiet to. Performance bout the same. Maxtors are pretty ok, nice cache sizes on the Diamond 10s and Maxline IIIs but cache size doesn't make a huge difference.

-Soundcard: CL SB Audigy2ZS is a decent sound card and *I think* is still on sale @ buy.com for dirt cheap prices. http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=40&threadid=1664138&enterthread=y for the link

-Videocard: BFG is a good brand... but it is nearly $50 more than eVGA's 6800GT and that can OverClock to the same specs as BFG using a simple program. eVGA and BFG both have lifetime warranties but eVGA is a step up because it covers OCing and aftermarket GPU coolers, whereas BFG warranty goes void if so.

-RAM: go 2x1GB vs 4x512MB and you can go with Value ram, most use Samsung parts anyways and just label their tag on them.

-DVD drives: Go with NEC 3540 or BenQ DW1640 vs Sony's. Sony is really expensive for so-so performance and reliability.

Ditch the PSU that comes with the case. PSU's are really overlooked for being such an important part. Look at getting a nice Antec, Seasonic, PC & P, Fortron, Enermax, etc PSU. Dual 12V is also a nice future proof.

Just my thoughts. Everyone is entitled to their own.

 

[fibes]

Like everyone said. The PSU is the most important component part of your system. I would purchase a nice case that does not include the PSU (hint: Lian-Li ) and go with a quality PSU, such as Antec,Enermax,OCZ,Seasonic,Fortran,or EPower/Tagan.

 

[Rike]

When you do get all your part together (I would do a parts check in general hardware before you buy), remember to visit mechBgon's guide for first-time newbie PC builders. It comes highly recommended by many on this forum.

And mech is a nice guy. :thumbsup::thumbsup: for mechBgon!

[/shameless hero worship]

 

[joex444]

The X2 4200+ isn't a bad choice. It differs from the 4400+ in that it has 1/2 the L2 cache. This doesn't make much of a difference, since it still has 512K per core.
With 1GB DIMMs its hard not to end up with 3-3-3-8 for DDR timings. OCZ has a Platinum series ($135/1GB...$13 rebate if it matters) that is DDR400 and 2-3-2-5. That's a good timing. If you want 2GB, get 2x1GB not 4x512. PCs don't really like 4 DIMMs anymore, IDK what's up with it. Mine runs @ 400 with 2 DIMMs or @ 166 with 4 DIMMs, so I use the 2 DIMMs.
Either get a Non-SLI board or get 2 video cards. If you want to game and find you have a nice budget, consider a 7800GT. The 6800 Ultra doesn't make much sense now. I'd still rather a 7800GT over dual 6800GTs, because not every game uses SLI (and the ones that do don't get an equal boost as others).
Drop the WD and two Seagate 7200.8s 120s. Run them in RAID0 (obviously, get a board that supports that).
I'd tell you to drop the floppy, but you might need it to give a driver for the RAID chip...
And where's your monitor, already have that or you just don't wanna see whats happenin?
IDK about the dvd burner, if it's not 16x +/- RW Dual Layer then it's not worth it. Get one that is, like the NEC 3500 if the Sony isn't.
You're going to use the stock cooler? Fine if you run stock speeds.

 

[kennychuck]

Loads of thanks once again. I'll be looking for parts per your recommendations today and post my changes later on.

 

[l Xes l]

http://www.omnicast.net/~tmcfadden/guides/build/index.html

 

[Bona Fide]

Originally posted by: krnxpride83
http://www.omnicast.net/~tmcfadden/guides/build/index.html

 

[ReliableData]

My take is:
2x1GB not 4 x 512, plus get corsair valueselect or ocz
Ditch the case/psu, get a Thermaltake Tsunami Black and a better power supply, antec, enermax, seasonic, ps power and cooling
i would go for a nforce4 ultra board, not SLI, get like the Soltek version or the DFI or something, and go for the 7800GT gfx card.

 

[Waylay00]

My Antec Truepower 2.0 550w is around $110 at ZipZoomfFly, and is SLI certified. It's a beast!

 

[Pabster]

You haven't specified your budget yet. Would help to know. Assuming you've got some cash to burn...

Start with the power supply. This is the most critical component of your entire build. Skimping by with a $50 special could very well come back to haunt you later on. Others have given recommendations, some which I agree with, some not. Frankly I can only recommend Seasonic or -- for the very best -- PC Power & Cooling. Preferably the latter, if you can afford it.

On the motherboard, I'd go with ASUS or (budget) EPoX. Either make excellent boards with plenty of options. If you decide on ASUS, don't blow your dough on an SLI board. That extra $30 or $40 can better be spent somewhere else.

For your RAM steer clear of expensive stuff like Corsair XMS or OCZ. And do go with 2 x 1GB rather than 4 x 512MB.

You might want to consult some beginner's guides on assembling PCs before undertaking any of this.

 

[yosuke188]

Since you did not know what BIOS is, I would highly suggest you do a lot more research, and when you do decide to build, take your time. Also, have someone with experience watch you when you are putting the rig together.