Building a PC

[remal]

Right I think I amy try this but just wanted to make sure with you guys what I need. I have replaced graphics cards, HHD, wireless things ect and it does not look as hard as I first thought. I hope

here goes
case
Power supply
CPU
Motherboard (going to use the onboard sound card)
Graphics card,
Ram
Heatsink and a few extra fans to keep it all cool
HHD
DVD-RW + DVD player

Do I need anything else

[mr-white]

sound card ?
floppy drive ?
cables ?

whats a HHD ?

MW

[Bodo]

mr-white said:

floppy drive ?

The 5¼" ones are the best While you're at it, fit a punch card reader as well

[Bodo]

remal said:

Do I need anything else

You mentioned everything that keeps it running
Don't forget keyboard, mouse and monitor, if you don't already have them.

[remal]

I got a monitor, keyboard and mouse.
Sorry I mean a HD (hard drive)
Cable I got and who uses a floppy now any how?

I got on my home PC but have never used it

[meeja]

Bodo said:

While you're at it, fit a punch card reader as well

[NAPiston]

Thats pretty much got it covered. Speakers to go with the sound card?

Modem if you are going to be doing dialup, if broadband the motherboard should have a network jack on it.

The floppy drive thing was(?) a joke.

I would argue that you should get a battery backup (ups) to protect your system from low voltage brownouts as well as power spikes and protect your data if you are working on something and the power goes out. At the very least get a good surge suppressor.

Unless you want to overclock and need more advanced cooling, buy a cpu that comes with a heatsink from the factory; they come with a better warranty anyway. Be very careful when installing the cpu, its the most fragile component in the system by a long shot. If you are buying an oem cpu without a fan, you will need thermal paste - might come with the heatsink, you can check.

[remal]

NAPiston said:

Thats pretty much got it covered. Speakers to go with the sound card? Modem if you are going to be doing dialup, if broadband the motherboard should have a network jack on it.

Great Ok their then
[/quote]
The floppy drive thing was(?) a joke.

[/quote]

I know

[/quote]



Unless you want to overclock and need more advanced cooling, buy a cpu that comes with a heatsink from the factory; they come with a better warranty anyway. Be very careful when installing the cpu, its the most fragile component in the system by a long shot. If you are buying an oem cpu without a fan, you will need thermal paste - might come with the heatsink, you can check.

[/quote]

I was looking at getting a aftermarket heatsink. I was looking at the 6800Untra or 7800 nvidia graphics cards and thinking they may need a better heatsink?

any idea's on a good heatsink?

as what would a good games PC reguire spec wise?

[NAPiston]

remal said:

I was looking at getting a aftermarket heatsink. I was looking at the 6800Untra or 7800 nvidia graphics cards and thinking they may need a better heatsink? any idea's on a good heatsink? as what would a good games PC reguire spec wise?

Your choice of video cards should not make a difference to how hot your cpu gets. A stock cpu fan would be fine unless you are going to be overclocking.

Same for the video card - there are two reasons to get a different fan - you want a quieter fan than the one that came from the factory, or you are going to be overclocking and you need better cooling than the stock fan. Otherwise the factory fans will be fine, and you would probably be voiding your warranty if you replace them anyway.

Good games pc spec? Its just like cars; speed costs money, how fast do you want to go? I would say that a 2+ Ghz AMD processor, 1 gig of ram and a 6800gt or better will rock just about any game out there at most settings - but there is always someone who wants to play at even higher resolution, with even more detail. I mean, Nvidia doesn't sell 7800gtx SLI dual card setups becuase no one wants them - there is always a market for something more. 7800 is on the screaming edge of performance and you pay a high premium for it.

If you are going with a highend video card make sure you get a quality powersupply that can feed it - check the manufacturer recommendations for whatever video card you get.

Have fun with whatever you choose!

[remal]

[/quote]


Good games pc spec? Its just like cars; speed costs money, how fast do you want to go? I would say that a 2+ Ghz AMD processor, 1 gig of ram and a 6800gt or better will rock just about any game out there at most settings - but there is always someone who wants to play at even higher resolution, with even more detail. 7800 is on the screaming edge of performance and you pay a high premium for it.


Have fun with whatever you choose![/quote]
I got a 2.4athlon with 256Mb 5700Nvidia GC and 1mb ram but it does not like battlefield 2 or Far cry. keeps all the setting on low and it runs like sh1t

So I want to upgrade to a extreme PC as i love PC games and they are much better than gonsoles which I have a few.

Many thanks for the tips and advice

regards

[[k]ar|]

If you want extreme, you'll need a PC like I'm building at the moment.

Asus A8N-SLI Premium mobo
AMD Athlon64 FX57 chip
2x1Gb Crucial Ballistix PC4000 memory
2xBFG GeForce 7800GTX graphics cards running in SLI
2xWestern Digital Raptor Enterprise SATA hard drives running in RAID-0 (main drives)
1xWestern Digital WD2500SE IDE hard drive (backup drive)
Soundblaster Audigy2 ZS THX
Asus DVD reader
Asus DVD dual-layer recorder
Enermax 600w power supply
running Windows XP Pro 64-bit edition

CPU cooled by Vapochill phase-change unit to approx -50degC

GPUs cooled by Swiftech waterblocks, Eheim 1250 pump, Black Ice Extreme 3 active radiator, and WACC passive radiator/reservoir. On-board memory cooled by aftermarket copper heatsinks.

Case modified with HDD coolers, HDD removable caddy, illuminated fans, LCD status display, stealthed DVD & DVD-RW drives, fully cheathed cabling, side window panel and blue neon internal illumination.

I'm only about 70% done at the moment - everything's installed, but I haven't had the "big first switch-on" yet. The cabling isn't finalised or tidied away yet either, as the mobo will have to come out again to fit the Vapochill head, once I've determined that everything's working as it should. Furthermore, I'm still waiting for my Swiftech graphics card waterblocks to be delivered - they're on backorder - so the water cooling circuit remains unfinished for now, with the pump, passive radiator/reservoir, blocks and tubing as yet not installed.

I'm going to be testing all the kit first on stock cooling to make sure everything works and nothing needs to be RMA'd, before switching to the exotic kit once I'm sure everything is working properly and burned in.

Hopefully, I should get some mad performance figures when everything's finally up and running fully. Should be relatively quiet too!



[k]

>> Edited by [k]ar| on Monday 11th July 23:10

[remal]

WOW .Hope you don't mind me asking but how much does it cost for a system like that?

[KITT]

Matt, if you need a hand putting it all together just give me a bell

[remal]

I have looked every where and cannot find a PC that meets what I want. So I may give you a bell next week as I think I will need a hand

cheers Matt

[rsvmilly]

remal said:

WOW .Hope you don't mind me asking but how much does it cost for a system like that?

A couple of grand, I'd say. The vapourchill cases are a good few hundred.

[viper_larry]

Bodo said:

mr-white said: floppy drive ? The 5¼" ones are the best While you're at it, fit a punch card reader as well

You may jest, but if you want to install 3rd party RAID drivers on XP install, it will ask you for a floppy disk - I did this a couple of weeks ago and needed to make the floppy on my old PC.

I bought a combined floppy/memory card reader - glad I did now

[[k]ar|]

To be honest, I've not really been keeping tabs on the cost. I've bought the bits over quite a lengthy period of time, so the cost has been spread over about 6 months, so it's not that bad. I was for a long while, waiting for some specific bits to be released, namely the A8N Premium mobo, the G70 graphics cards and the FX version of the revision E "San Diego" Athlon64s.

I only upgrade once every few years, so I always go for top-of-the-line when I do. For instance, my current PC is a (watercooled) AthlonXP 2100 with 1Gb ram and a GeForce4 Ti4600. At the time, top notch, but now, pretty outmoded!

[k]

[remal]

pretty much what I am going to do.
I have a AMD 2400CPU, Gforce 5700 1meg ram and it struggles on new games. And with only 40gig HD I have to uninstall games when I want to add a few new ones

[davidd]

remal said:

pretty much what I am going to do. I have a AMD 2400CPU, Gforce 5700 1meg ram and it struggles on new games. And with only 40gig HD I have to uninstall games when I want to add a few new ones

But have you identified what the bottleneck is? You might find that by adding more ram, reloving a load of crap from the OS, getting a sata HDD you sort it without haveing to build a new one.

If you do decide to build a new one I'll give you£50 for the old one

D

[remal]

sorry that was went right over my head. In dumbass mode for me please