Hi! Considering a self build - advice needed :)

[Sharkychris]

Hello all! I'm currently looking at buying a PC, I looked at Dell initially as they seemed to have some good deals, especially the 9100 series and reviews seemed to be good. However, I am concerned about the potential non-upgradability of such systems and after investigating prices I am beggining to come around to the idea of building my own despite never having meddled with the innards of a 'puter before - eek!. After reading around it seems to be do-able by a novice such as myself so I thought i'd see what people thought, comments etc all welcome

AMD seemed to be the bang 4 buck choice and i want to base the system around future upgrading when i have a bit more cash.


Budget £500 - £550 excluding monitor:

AMD Athlon 64 3200+, skt 939 OEM – £95.29
Glacialtech Igloo 7200Light Cooler for Ath/Semp 64/FX64, 20dBA – £8.81
ECS nForce 4 939 – £46.91
512MB DDR400 Crucial DIMM – £36.66
256MB PCI-Express HIS Excalibur Radeon X700 iCooler – £74.61
80GB (SATA) Hitachi Deskstar 7K80 – £36.26
Philips PBDV1640B DVDRW Bulk Black 16x Double Layer Dual Drive DVD+/-RW & - £32.72
Antec Sonata (inc psu - 380w) – £73.42
BTC 5211 PS/2 Black Keyboard – £5.22
Microsoft Optical Wheel Mouse OEM (USB/PS2) Beige – £6.31
MS Windows XP Home OEM CD Rom & Manual – £59.40

Total - £475.61, what areas should i focus on?
Tempted buy - 128MB PCI-Express NVidia GeForce 6600GT at £100ish
or a better mobo? better CPU cooler?



Most of it is friom pcnextday.co.uk, case from amazon.

The motherboard seems a good deal but i'v read bad things about ECS recently so bit concerned it may not be up tho the job at that price.

I'll be using it for music storage, general use, bit of gaming (not bothered about extreme FPS performance really - mostly RTS and strategy stuff )

Any comments welcome!

 

[Me__2001]

get the retail CPU and change the motherboard for a DFI, MSI, or Asus one, the X700 will be fine for most games and at a playable quality

 

[muckshifter]

Oh please, do yourself a favour ... drop the ECS MB.

And before ECS MB owners stat posting ... they are still crap.


ALWAYS start with the best motherboard you can buy ... everything connects to 'it' ... anything else can always be 'upgraded' later. ME_2001 gave you 3 of the best, start there, stick with nF4 and adjust your ££ if nessary.


Others will be along and will point you in the right direction with who to 'perchase' off ... we'll spend £700 of YOUR money with no problem.

 

[Sharkychris]

Cheers for replies! Am checking out motherboards now, - MSI K8N Neo platinum looks to be a good'un - the ECS did seem a bit cheap i must admit. As to the retail CPU - I assume this will be a more reliable buy and have the heatsink attached already? (one less thing for me to fry...) Does seem a lot more money though - £130 odd, but hey, i'm here to learn stuff

 

[Me__2001]

thats a fine choice of a motherboard , the retail CPU comes with the standard AMD cooler, you'll still need to attach it but its guaranteed to work with the CPU

 

[Sharkychris]

a quick question...

i'm planning to use a single SATA drive and have read that a floppy drive is required to load drivers for it (possibly if you are going to use RAID), is this true? i'd rather not bother with a floppy as i'm not going to use them but are they needed in this case? can't you just boot from the xp cd?

cheers

chris

 

[muckshifter]

i'm planning to use a single SATA drive and have read that a floppy drive is required to load drivers for it (possibly if you are going to use RAID), is this true? i'd rather not bother with a floppy as i'm not going to use them but are they needed in this case? can't you just boot from the xp cd?

cheers
chris

Some win some loose ... and some just don't read the written word. That is not aimed at yourself.

... you do not need a floppy drive to install SATA drivers onto a SATA drive ... a CDRom drive will do.

I'll explain for you ... install XP ... XP will 'see' your drive as an IDE drive ... install SATA drivers off CD, reboot. (works best with XP SP)

Done.

Now for some reason, I know not why, people have a problem with this ...

However, RAID is another subject ... Home users that use RAID are just nuts, manufacturers 'hype' that their MB has this-n-that "absolute must have feature" has suckered those people ... sorry, unless you intend to 'build' a server, forget RAID.

Now watch the RAID users come out of the woodwork.

 

[Sharkychris]

cheers man, just trying to get what i need straight before i start to spend not bothered about this RAID shennanigans and everyone seems to say something different, thanks again

chris

 

[muckshifter]

Your welcome.

 

[Raje]

And just thought I'd mention.... if you do not want to purchase a floppy drive I can understand.. . but if you happen to have one laying around.. i'd recomend putting it in there. I know that they have flash cards... and you can burn a cd... but for a single file transfer... floppies are soo convient, and not to mention expendable.

 

[CITech]

RIAD users unite !!!

Hey Mucks, are you trying to incite a riot from us RAID users?

It does have its uses, like drive spanning as well as redundancy, but I take what your saying on board (ha ha), most home users shouldn't really need that functionality.

All it seems to do is cause confusion when you are trying to install an O/S which always seems to want the drivers on floppy.

 

[muckshifter]

Hey Mucks, are you trying to incite a riot from us RAID users?

Who, me?

... which always seems to want the drivers on floppy.

For 'Software' RAID ? ... nope.

Amazing what you can find in the computer management of XP.

 

[CITech]

For 'Software' RAID ? ... nope.

Amazing what you can find in the computer management of XP.

Sorry Mucks, I was referring to the build process when you are using either a RAID controller card or on-motherboard controllers like the ASUS ones.

I much prefer to "trust" hardware because at least then you stand a chance when your O/S decided to vacate this planet I've never actually tried doing it thru' windows.

 

[muckshifter]

Sorry Mucks, I was referring to the build process when you are using either a RAID controller card or on-motherboard controllers like the ASUS ones.

I much prefer to "trust" hardware because at least then you stand a chance when your O/S decided to vacate this planet I've never actually tried doing it thru' windows.

We are getting a little OT here but fortunately Sharkychris will not be using RAID, so we don't have to go through all the do's and dont's and wherefore thou art.

Great to see someone who knows.

 

[CITech]

We are getting a little OT here but fortunately Sharkychris will not be using RAID, so we don't have to go through all the do's and dont's and wherefore thou art.

Great to see someone who knows.

And here endeth the lesson,

Amen!

 

[Sharkychris]

More newbi questions

hello all, trying to decide between the msi k8n neo4-f and the neo4 platinum as a mobo choice and would i be right in saying the difference between the 2 is the ultra version chipset and firewire support? its £20 difference in price and i'm thinking thats £20 i could put somewhere else. if these are the only differences is the ultra set worth it? can't see myself using firewire but i suppose you never know...

cheers

chris

 

[Me__2001]

TBH either will be fine, get what you can afford but if you want SATA-II get the platinum

 

[muckshifter]

hello all, trying to decide between the msi k8n neo4-f and the neo4 platinum as a mobo choice and would i be right in saying the difference between the 2 is the ultra version chipset and firewire support? its £20 difference in price and i'm thinking thats £20 i could put somewhere else. if these are the only differences is the ultra set worth it? can't see myself using firewire but i suppose you never know...

cheers

chris

Good choices, personally I will take the best I can afford ... if you don't need the 'extra' then your still getting an excellent board.




get the platie

 

[Sharkychris]

cheers, oh yeah, sata 2 was the other thing - twice the speed is'nt it? hmm... choices choices... Here is ma current spec - trying to get most of the stuff from novatech (all 'cept case and speakers) as my old man has a buisness account so vat free fun

CPU AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (retail) - £112.58
Optical Drv LG GSA-4167BRL - Black Retail Kit - £32.00
HDD Seagate Barracuda SATA NCQ 7200.7 80GB - £35.83
RAM OCZ Value 1GB Kit (2X512MB) PC-3200 Duel CH - £62.47
Case Antec Sonata + 380w PSU - £64.83
MOBO MSI K8N Neo4 – F - £54.40
OS XP OEM - £54.40
Video Card Novatech 6600GT - £84.00
Keyboard Labtec Ultra-Flat Keyboard - £5.74
Mouse Novatech PS2 Optical Mouse In Black - £3.90


TOTAL £522.75

Athough n'tech don't seem to have the neo F in stock ath the moment *grumble*

hoping to start buying next week so any comments more than welcome

cheers all!

chris

 

[Me__2001]

SATA-II is twice the speed but hard drives cant really take advantage of it properly yet so its not a must have, what you have is fine, maybe get a different optical drive make like LiteOn, Samsung or Sony