Building a computer sooner or later...

pawamuku15

n00b
Joined
Jun 28, 2004
Messages
11
Haven't been here in months... but heres the deal. I am building a comp soon (around June) and I need some parts advice. It's primarily for gaming with schoolwork on the side.

Mother Board: MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum SLI
Processor: AMD Athlon 4000+ Retail
Graphics Card: BFG 6800 GT PCI-E (chumbo.com)
Hard Drive: Hitachi 160GB
Case: CoolerMaster Centurion 5 (Black/Silver, No PSU/window)
OS: Win XP Pro
Memory: Corsair XMS Model TWINX1024R-3200C2PT
Power Suply: Antec 550W Power Supply TRUE550
Disc Drive: NEC DVD±RW Drive Model ND-3520A BK (adding annother cd-rw drive)
Keyboard: Logitech Elite Keyboard
Mouse: Razer Diamondback

Everything is comming from the egg except for the vid card.

The monitor is covered already. The main parts I was curious about were the Hitachi HDD, the PSU, the RAM, and the disc drives (the second cd-rw drive is just a cd burner, not a combo drive, and any suggestions for a plain black one would be great).

Would anyone recomend annother brand of hard drive, or annother setup? The hitachi has the best rating for the size, but i have some friends who swear by seagate and western digital.

Same thing with the PSU, best ratings for size, some friends swear by fortron.

The RAM is something thats really bothering me. It's a tad on the expensive side, and my friend claims I should only get good ram If I plan on overclocking (which, for the most part, I dont as I dont want to kill my system). So a suggestion for that would be nice.

Also, I was wondering what the deal was with dual core processors. About when are the AMDs coming out? Will they work in my mobo? Should I buy a less powerfull processor for now so I can grab a dual core when they come out? You know, the details. And in general, would it be better to get a 3800+ or stick with the 4000+ considering newegg just dropped the price about $50 for each.

As you can see, money isnt that big of a problem, but I wouldnt mind keeping it on the cheaper side. If I left out any details on the parts (like important model number info) just tell me. Any other recomendations are welcome and thanks to anyone who actually read the whole post. :)
 
id wait for new amd's and next gen of graphics card come out.. .. im guessing since you are posting here.. you must have a computer already.... so just hold out i say
 
I'd look into Mushkin memory; I really like their stuff that I have.
 
although i do have a computer, im runing a 32mb vid card and a 1.6 ghz pentium 4 m. So you see the situation i'm in.

Anyone else?
 
pawamuku15 said:
although i do have a computer, im runing a 32mb vid card and a 1.6 ghz pentium 4 m. So you see the situation i'm in.

Anyone else?

hmm looks plenty good until amd and ati/nvidia comes out with some better stuff :D
 
i feell ur pain i also have the p4 1.6m and 32 mb video .... :confused: If urs also has the name dell attached to it im suprised u can wait till june. Im looking to build mine asap... however at the rate im going it will be june also looks like my due or die date.
 
There's no harm getting an nForce 4 board and Socket 939 A64, and some DDR400/PC3200 now. You can always upgrade to one of AMD's new Dual core CPUs later this year without a motherboard upgrade and PCI-Express will let you upgrade video cards easily. nVidia has made it clear they won't be releasing any upgrades this year and ATi has nowhere to go really, as all modern games run great on nVidia and ATi's best hardware. If you want to be future-proof get a board with SLI support, a 6800GT and add a second later.
 
I would also look at getting a 72 gig Raptor as your OS-Games disk and keep the 160 Gig one for things that don't need fast load speeds.

Techreport.com/reviews has a very good review on the new dual cored Opterons.

Luck........ :D
 
Raptors do almost nothing for game loading speeds. For the cost of one 74GB Raptor he could purchase almost 400 GB of Seagate 7200 RPM storage at almost the same speed, without the horribly loud whine and head chatter from the raptor, and less power consumption. And still have a bit of money left over.
 
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