[Help] I Need to Build a New System (will buy parts)

S

Sandbox Magician

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 4, 2005
Messages
142
My current system:
1.1GHz Athlon
256 MB PC133 SDRAM
Gigabyte AMD 760 Motherboard
30GB Maxtor HDD
Elsa Gladiac 920 GeForce 3 Video Card
Plextor 16x DVD-RW+/- Burner

I bought this computer from this local hole-in-the-wall quite a few years back when I didn't know the slightest about computers (I bought it with a CD-RW and just recently upgraded with the DVD drive). Shortly after I bought this system and paid for a 1 year warranty they went belly-up, but anyway I got ripped off. I gave them somewhere around $1200 and this is what they gave me. I had nothing but problems from the start, and somehow managed to use this system for the past few years messing around with it. As soon as I build my next system I'm gonna take this POS computer in my backyard and do it Office Space style and smash it to smitherines.


Well to make a long story short, after dealing with this system for so long I taught myself a little bit about computers, and I think I'm capable of building my own. However, I only have a small budget of around $800-$1,000... and I don't want to keep any parts from my current system with the exception of my DVD burner, not even the case. I want a good case with nice cooling because my current computer has the case cover off with a house fan blowing into it. I've had bad problems with overheating.


I need help from all of you pros to tell me what specs to put into my new system. Right now I only use my computer for DVD authoring and different types of input to output encoding, but I want to get back into gaming.


Right now it takes me about 18 hours to encode a DVD, so I hope to cut that down quite a bit with my new system. I also want the best system possible in order to run Half Life 2 with my current budget. So, what do you guys think?


I definitely want to go down the AMD path, but do you think I should go with socket 754 or 939? With my budget should I even go with socket 939 w/ dual channel memory?


I have no idea what way to go with the RAM. I guess that depends on what kind of motherboard you guys suggest... Should I get 1GB of value-type DDR or get 512MB of really good DDR? What brand/etc.?


I want a SATA HD, preferably two drives on RAID0, but I don't think I'll have the cash for that. I'll probably just end up getting one 7200RPM SATA drive and put my 30GB Maxtor as backup on the IDE.


I'm not too sure what way to go with the motherboard either. I kinda want an Asus, but should I go with nForce or a different chipset? I'm gonna need a mobo that has onboard audio and LAN, and hopefully SATA and PCI Express.


I have less than a grand to spend so whatever cash I have left after the stuff mentioned will go into the video card and case/cooling. Should I go with AGP8x or PCI Express? GeForce or ATI for Half Life 2? It really blows though because I'll probably have hardly any money left over for a good card and a nice case with good cooling.




So who thinks they could come up with the best solution for me?
I would really appreciate it if someone could take the time and come up with a system for me that meets my needs. I'll be willing to buy any parts for sale that fit into a suggested system.

Remember, I have about $800-$1,000 and I do a lot of DVD authoring and hopefully can get a system that will run Half Life 2 with decent FPS.
 
Well, here's a quick price-out just to serve as a starting point from what I believe are good performing components for what you're looking for. Includes everything except the case, which I believe is really just a matter of personal preference, and also includes no shipping charges. But still, I left some room on the price for the case, at least. Prices are taken from www.newegg.com .

Power Supply = $90
OCZ Modstream 450W

Motherboard = $147
DFI Lanparty UT NF4 Ultra-D

Memory = $185
OCZ 1GB (2x512) DDR400, 2-3-2-6 1T

CPU = $155
A64 3000+ winchester, retail

Vid card = $289
Sapphire ATI Radeon x800

Hard drive = $63
WD 80GB 7200 RPM SATA HD, 8mb cache

Total = $929.50 (without shipping, or a case)

This will do everything you described above, and has room for OCing. There's probably cheaper options for a few components such as the PSU and Motherboard, I just picked out what I thought were good performing and safe components. Would've liked to go with an MSI motherboard, but the K8N Neo4 Plat wasn't in stock. Also not sure on how much HD space you're looking for, so threw in the 80GB.


EDIT:
Just priced something similar over at www.monarchcomputer.com (MSI K8N Neo4 Plat instead, and a different x800 since they didn't have the exact same one), and came out to $933, and though I'm not sure if the newegg products include these somehow (I did this rather quickly, not paying attention to extras), the monarch CPU/MB/Memory combo includes free Far Cry, free 4 months of Napster, and free HL2 Coupon (not sure how that one works, guessing it's a download coupon?).
 
Regarding your questions:

Sandbox Magician said:
I have no idea what way to go with the RAM. I guess that depends on what kind of motherboard you guys suggest... Should I get 1GB of value-type DDR or get 512MB of really good DDR? What brand/etc.?
Click to expand...
1GB for sure, mid+ performing stuff, I'd say.

Sandbox Magician said:
I have less than a grand to spend so whatever cash I have left after the stuff mentioned will go into the video card and case/cooling. Should I go with AGP8x or PCI Express? GeForce or ATI for Half Life 2? It really blows though because I'll probably have hardly any money left over for a good card and a nice case with good cooling.
Click to expand...
There is basically no performance difference between AGP 8x and PCI-E, so either will do. I chose PCI-E on the system above because there is basically no price difference either on the motherboards or vid cards, so why not?

As far as NV or ATI, I didn't take the time to refresh my memory with some benchmarks, but IIRC, ATI is the top performer when it comes to HL2, not to mention the x800 series can generally be found cheaper than the 6800's.
 
Well i'll put down what i'd buy on the cheap. All prices from newegg

Motherboard - CHAINTECH NVIDIA nForce4 VNF4/Ultra - 99
CPU - Athlon 64 3000+ socket 939 retail - 155
ram - Mushkin 184 Pin 512MB DDR PC-3200 - Retail - 59.71x2
video card - Nvidia 6600gt pci-e x16 128m - 190
case/power supply - antecslk3700 bqe with 350w powersupply - 79.99
hard drive - seagate 120gig sata - 94

total comes to 737.41 plus shipping and tax.

this will do what you ask it to do, unless you want to overclock... in that case a better mainboard and ram should be added.
 
ViTo said:
Well i'll put down what i'd buy on the cheap. All prices from newegg

Motherboard - CHAINTECH NVIDIA nForce4 VNF4/Ultra - 99
CPU - Athlon 64 3000+ socket 939 retail - 155
ram - Mushkin 184 Pin 512MB DDR PC-3200 - Retail - 59.71x2
video card - Nvidia 6600gt pci-e x16 128m - 190
case/power supply - antecslk3700 bqe with 350w powersupply - 79.99
hard drive - seagate 120gig sata - 94

total comes to 737.41 plus shipping and tax.

this will do what you ask it to do, unless you want to overclock... in that case a better mainboard and ram should be added.
Click to expand...

This looks pretty solid to me. I would go with a slightly more powerful PSU in an Antec case. Last time I checked there's one with a 380 Watt for $99. Also, I would go with the NVIDIA Nforce4 chipset motherboard like ViTo suggested, but get a different brand like MSI, Abit, DFI, or Asus.
 
If it takes you 18 hours now to encode a DVD, that time will be significangly cut with an Athlon 64. I do some transcoding work with my rig and it's quite fast, I don't think anything has taken me more than 2 hours absolute max.

I'd go Socket 939. It's more future-proof and doesn't cost much more. I'd also go dual-channel on the RAM. If you're not overclocking, you don't need high-zoot RAM; Corsair ValueSelect or Kingston ValueRAM would work great for you, and if you really want to stay on a budget, go with an Athlon 64 3000+, they're plenty fast.

I'd look at a DFI or MSI Nforce4 non-SLI mainboard, they've both got good track records for being fast, full-featured, and reliable. Are you a gamer? If so, a Geforce 6600GT PCI-e will be a good value graphics card. If you don't game at all, you can go cheaper with an ATI X600XT or something in that price range.

DO buy a quality power supply. You may spend $80-100, but it's worth it and very important. Post in the PSU forum for recommendations; personally I like Enermax, or possibly the Fortron Blue Storm.

SATA hard disks aren't all that expensive. If you go Seagate, you'll get a 5-year warranty. Western Digital is also good, though a little less quiet, and with a 3-year warranty.

Good to see another Grand Rapidian on the forums. If you need any help, just PM me.
 
i would normally go with a big name brand nf4 board as well... but the cost difference is 50 dollars, and it was on the cheap... the DFI or MSI nf4 ultra board will fit right into your budget.

I have the same case/power supply in my very similar (nforce3 with 6800nu) running with zero problems. Though if I decide to overclock it even a little... new PS is first on my list.
 
Thanks a lot to all of you who replied, you guys are all taking the headache out of this for me, I appreciate it.

I have a few newb questions though...

I'm confused with the different Athlon 64 sockets. I noticed while browsing Newegg that the Athlon 64 3000+ with the 939 socket has the core named "Winchester," and only has a speed of 1.8GHz with a 90nm "process".
But for some reason the socket 754, which you guys are all telling me not to go with, is called "Newcastle" with a speed of 2.0GHz with a 0.13 "process."
What is the difference between the two? The socket 939 is 200MHz slower, but costs about 7 bucks more.

And what's the deal with dual channel memory? Do I have to do anything special to get it to run in dual channel, or do i just stick in the ddr like normal and let it do the work for me? Right now I'm just interested in getting everything up and running, so nothing is going to be overclocked. It might be something I'll try in the future.

And yes, I do plan on getting back into gaming. I'm not gonna be playing everything out there, but I know that I for surely want a system that will run Half Life 2 with no problems. So what should I go with for HL2... GeForce or ATI?


Thanks a ton for everyone tryin to help out this newb.

*edit* What's the diff with the motherboard being SLI or not?
 
If youre dvd authoring a lot, look into P4s, i know Athlon 64s kick ass for gaming, but as far as encoding goes, you cant beat intel. A 2.8 ish P4E with a half decent graphics card (6600GT) will do you grandly in Halflife.
 
Sandbox Magician said:
I'm confused with the different Athlon 64 sockets. I noticed while browsing Newegg that the Athlon 64 3000+ with the 939 socket has the core named "Winchester," and only has a speed of 1.8GHz with a 90nm "process".
But for some reason the socket 754, which you guys are all telling me not to go with, is called "Newcastle" with a speed of 2.0GHz with a 0.13 "process."
What is the difference between the two? The socket 939 is 200MHz slower, but costs about 7 bucks more.
Click to expand...
Main advantages of the 939 vs 754:
-Dual channel capability
-Cooler operating temperatures and less power consumption thanks to the 90nm process
-Upgradeability

A few bucks is a small price to pay for these things, so there's really no reason not to do it. But if you don't care about these reasons, then there's no real reason to not go with 754 AFAIK. Up to you.

Sandbox Magician said:
And what's the deal with dual channel memory? Do I have to do anything special to get it to run in dual channel, or do i just stick in the ddr like normal and let it do the work for me?
Click to expand...
You need the same amount of memory in each RAM channel to make this work, but that's about it. It provides more memory bandwidth which improves overall performance.

Sandbox Magician said:
So what should I go with for HL2... GeForce or ATI?
Click to expand...
On the high-end cards (6800 and family vs x800 and family), ATi consistently beats Nvidia on the benchmarks I've seen when it comes to HL2. There's plenty of benchmarks out there, even on Hardocp, so just do some research to find out what you think is worth buying.

Sandbox Magician said:
What's the diff with the motherboard being SLI or not?
Click to expand...
Well, SLi gives you the ability to run 2 PCI-E video cards on a motherboard, basically sharing the workload, which results in a significant performance increase (on some games, anyway). Currently only the x6600gt and up are able to run in SLi. Again, plenty of benchmarks are out there regarding SLi, so you can look it up if you want to.
 
Anarchon,
I think I'm gonna go your way by getting that combo at Monarch. I get Far Cry and HL2 for free, so that's gonna save me a lot right there.

It looks like I'm gonna go with the Neo4 Platinum with the 3000+.
Now should I get the retail box CPU, or get the OEM and choose one of their heatsink fans? The fans are priced at $8, $25, and $50. Should I go with the $25 Thermaltake?
They also recommend paying $14 extra for them to put some thermal grease on the fan, but they put it on themselves they don't give me a syringe of it. Should I do it?
The only other thing I'm confused about is which RAM to select. I want the 2 pcs of 512 selection, but there are soooo many to choose from. There is a selection for a gig of OCZ for $187 and a gig of Corsair for $188... Should I choose one of those two or go with something totally different? Which will be best for my board?

The link with the options is here
 
Sandbox Magician said:
Now should I get the retail box CPU, or get the OEM and choose one of their heatsink fans? The fans are priced at $8, $25, and $50. Should I go with the $25 Thermaltake?
Click to expand...
Hm, well, the benefit from buying the retail version with stock heatsink would be the 3 year warranty with AMD. The benefit from getting an OEM with the $25 heatsink would be quieter and probably somewhat better cooling, and it'd be just $1 above the retail version. Both options are adequate, just a coin-flip situation I'd say. You still get $90 warranty with Monarch with the OEM, and sudden CPU deaths are extremely rare. Just as additional information, here's the Newegg link on the $25 heatsink. Good reviews, copper, and silent.

Sandbox Magician said:
They also recommend paying $14 extra for them to put some thermal grease on the fan, but they put it on themselves they don't give me a syringe of it. Should I do it?
Click to expand...
I think this is a waste of cash. If you haven't installed a heatsink before, it's cheaper and a good learning experience to do it yourself if you wish to. Not hard at all either. Get a small syringe of thermal compound if you want, and just do it yourself. If it comes pre-assembled (CPU + HSF attached to motherboard) even if you don't pay the $14, then they have to put some stuff in there anyway, and the difference between quality thermal grease and generics is minimal (2 deg C max?).


Sandbox Magician said:
The only other thing I'm confused about is which RAM to select. I want the 2 pcs of 512 selection, but there are soooo many to choose from. There is a selection for a gig of OCZ for $187 and a gig of Corsair for $188... Should I choose one of those two or go with something totally different? Which will be best for my board?
Click to expand...
Either of those would be good. If you don't plan on OCing, however, you can get away with something cheaper, and the performance hit shouldn't be that noticeable.



By the way, ATi may have an edge when it comes to HL2, but that doesn't mean other cards won't be able to handle HL2 at high-quality settings with very respectable framerate. Check some benchmarks on the main page or Anandtech. That may be another part you can shave some cash off of as well.
 
Okay, this is what I've decided to go with...

Athlon 64 combo from Monarch:
MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum Ultra $143
Athlon 64 3000+ Winchester $129
Thermaltake A1838 HSF $25
2x 512MB OCZ ELDC-K $187
Far Cry and HL2 Free

Also from Monarch Computers:
Sapphire Radeon X800 XL 256MB $300

From Newegg:
Raidmax Case w/ 6 fans and 420W PS $80
Seagate 80GB 7200RPM SATA HD $70
(just one for now, later I'll buy one more and put them in RAID0 array)

From my old system:
Plextor 16x DVD-RW
Sony 48x CDROM
Maxtor 30GB 5400RPM HD
Floppy Drive

Total = $934 + Shipping

Is there anything that any of you think I should change in this setup? I think this should be a fairly good system for my first build and I think it'll hold up while playing HL2.

I do however have one last question... What kind of cables/accessories am I going to need to order extra? All of the IDE cables in my old system are pretty much done with, so with what I have listed above what am I going to have to order on the side? The mobo I'm getting comes with these cables when you buy it retail, but I'm not so sure that Monarch is going to ship me everything that came in the box because I'm ordering a combo.
 
Sandbox Magician said:
but I'm not so sure that Monarch is going to ship me everything that came in the box because I'm ordering a combo.
Click to expand...
They will. I got mine this saturday and all they do is mount the proc/heatsink on it and put back in the retail box with all the accesories. So you'll have all those. So you'll need 1 more IDE cable, I believe, since you'll have both optical drives with the included cable, leaving the HD with none (the 2nd cable you see in the picture is a floppy cable).

I really wish more people would reply to this thread >_<.

The only thing I'm concerned about is the power supply, since it comes bundled with the case. Generally that's a no-no, but many, many people have cheap PSU's that work well for them, but there's also plenty of horror stories...

Anyway, good luck, man. And just a heads up, in case you didn't read the fine print on the free HL2, it's a steam coupon, so it's the downloaded version. FarCry, however, is a CD.
 
Sandbox Magician said:
As soon as I build my next system I'm gonna take this POS computer in my backyard and do it Office Space style and smash it to smitherines.
Click to expand...

We want pics! Nothing like crushed and flaming POS hardware! :)

Looks like you have the right stuff for a good system. Anarchonixx has lead you in the right direction. If he hadn't there would be a bunch of others flaming him... :rolleyes:

You might want to let your wife/girlfriend and boss know about your new machine and entry (re-entry?) into the gaming, becasue they might not see you as much as they have been!

You didn't mention a display, so I am assuming you will be using your old one? What is it? It would a a big shame to get the new machine up and then be stuck with a 15" display that could only to 800x600 :(
 
I was just looking up some info about power supplies and stuff, and it seems like I'm gonna have to come up with a little more money and get a higher quality one. I still like that case though, it has 6 fans in it :) so I'll just swap out the PSU... Will basically any PSU I decide to go with fit in there?

Bodsnatcher, until about a week ago I had this pieceotrash 15" monitor that came with a HP Pavilion I bought like 6 years ago tehee. I helped my grandpa pick out a new rig and he gave me a hand-me-down semi-decent 17" flat screen CRT... It's not that great but it sure beats the hell out of my old monitor. With that thing's brightness/contrast at 100% you could hardly see half of a map in any giving game.

I'm scared about breaking the news to my girlfriend that I'm building a new gaming PC. I used to sit on my computer 75% of the day playing QuakeIIIArena/Urban Terror and Tribes 1 and 2. I had to quit gaming because of my computer going in the shitter. I met her way after I gave up gaming, and now that I'm going to be getting what seems like a supercomputer compared to my old one I'll be glued to my computer seat once again and she's gonna think I died or something.

Anyway, any good suggestions on a PSU ranging from $75-100 that will be good for what specs I have?
 
For power supplies I use products from the following:

Enermax, Antec, or PC Power & Cooling

Enermax and Antec TruPower are my "standard." The PCP&C power supplies go in my personal OC rigs.

You can get by on cheaper ones ...until you cook off an expensive component. :eek:

Happy to hear you have a monitor. 17" is the BARE minimum. But you can solve that problem in the near future with a bigger one,19" is standard now. You should have plenty of money just as soon as your girl gets mad about you taking so much time to "play those stupid games" and leaves you. With dinner and a movie costing upwards of $60-$100 these days you will have that new monitor in no time at all!
 
I personally own an OCZ Modstream 450 and it's been fine so far, not to mention I think it looks hot. There's plenty of info on good brands (and even a sticky post with good PSU's at different price ranges) on the Power Supplies forum. You can still shave some cash if you want to stay on budget by getting a 6600gt, you know.~ It'll be great for HL2 as well, and about $130 cheaper.
 
Sweet deal on that Enermax PSU. I love the one I've got.

By the way (just my opinion) if you're running a 17" for awhile, go with the Geforce 6600GT for your graphics card. It's not that the X800XL isn't a great graphics card (it is), but at 1024x768, the Geforce will be plenty fast, and save you $100 for that killer power supply. Performance only really starts to change at higher resolutions, and even then, on my 6800NU AGP, I play Half-Life 2 at 1280x1024 with all the eye candy turned on without a problem. I'd only buy the X800XL if you know that in the next 6-10 months you have the cash to go with a 19" display.
 
Okay, this is what I've decided to do...

I'm not planning on buying a new monitor any time soon, so I'm gonna go with the 6600gt like you guys said. But I'm also gonna upgrade from the Neo4 Ultra to the SLI board. This is because if I want a little extra power here in the future, or sometime actually do get a new display, instead of tossing the 6600gt and totally losing that investment and buying the coolest and newest ATI card I can just pop another 6600gt on there. And by that time the 6600s will be so cheap it will be awesome and I'll have the kind of GPU power I'm looking for.

This all works out because at Monarch I'm not buying the mobo/cpu/memory combo... I'm going with the whole "we'll build you a barebone" option. It costs like $18 for them to assemble everything but it takes the hassle out for me and I still get farcry and hl2 for free.

The only thing is that I can't get that case from newegg anymore, I have to choose one from monarch for them to put everything in. I'm going with the Thermaltake Xaser III series because it comes with 7 fans in it, and that Enermax PSU you guys listed above for $91 is one of the selections of power supplies I can choose for my barebone at Monarch and they're giving it to me for $89. Also at Monarch I found an eVGA 6600GT for $179 w/ free shipping. Is this good, or should I go with a different brand?

Everything else is staying the same as I listed above. The total for the barebone came to $743 plus $45.50 for shipping. So the total, along with the $70 Seagate NCQ HD at Newegg and the vid card, comes to $1,037.50 which is about the same as if I went with the setup above after getting a new power supply. But I like this better because I think 2 6600s outperform one x800xl.

So much for building my first PC... All I have to do is pop in the vid card, my 2 hdds and dvd/cdrom. But unless you guys have any objections I think I'm gonna go ahead and order everything. I'll post pics/benchmarks when all is done.
 
Sandbox Magician said:
But I like this better because I think 2 6600s outperform one x800xl. .
Click to expand...

The only issue with SLI that you need to be aware of is that SLI cards mirror texture data in both memory caches. For example, you may think that you have 256mb of total texture memory to play with because of 2x128mb cards, but as the data is mirrored, your SLI solution still only has 128mb of effective memory. So basically, once the AA/AF/Res gets jacked up, that X800XL will become faster.

In effect, once your 128mb 6600GTs run out of frame buffer room (video memory), their performance will get shot in the foot. For that reason, i think it's wise to invest in 256mb cards. I'm not saying that dually 6600GTs are a bad idea (always thought SLI was sweet :D), but i just think that it's something you should be aware of. :)
 
I would recommend getting the X800XL over the 6600GT.
The XL is a great value; it's 100 dollars less than the X800PRO and 6800GT, yet offers the same (if not better) performance. I think you'll soon find that the video card is by far the most important component for gaming.
Good luck with your new rig!
 
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