Building my own computer
Discussion
I'm a bit of a novice when it comes to this, but after years of buying Dells, Gateways and the like I fancy putting something together myself. The thing is, I have no real clue about which components to go for. I want a big flat panel monitor, reasonable spec so I don't need to buy anything for another 5 years. Looking on Dell's site, the spec I want comes to £1500 or so.
Browsing around Scan's site, I picked out these components, to which I need to add a nice case/PSU. I already have a reasonable CDRW.
Can anyone in the know comment on the worthiness of each part, and if necessary suggest a better alternative?
18" Iiyama TFT AS4612UTBK Black Monitor £432.40
3.0GHz (PG-800FSB) Intel Pentium® 4 CPU £153.10
Asus P4P800 Deluxe- i865PE Springdale 800fs DDDR Gbit Lan+RAID+2xSATA USB2x8 6Ch Audio+1394 £86.94
Asus 128Mb ATI Radeon A9600XT-TVD £128.02
200Gb Western Digital WD2000JD Serial ATA £105.75
Corsair 512Mb ECC RIMM PC800 £225.60
Creative Labs Audigy LS 5.1 £51.11
Total £1182.92
Thanks!
P.S. If anyone is in the supply business and can knock up a similar spec for not much more (or the same!
) please email me.
>>> Edited by julianhj on Sunday 18th April 19:25
Browsing around Scan's site, I picked out these components, to which I need to add a nice case/PSU. I already have a reasonable CDRW.
Can anyone in the know comment on the worthiness of each part, and if necessary suggest a better alternative?
18" Iiyama TFT AS4612UTBK Black Monitor £432.40
3.0GHz (PG-800FSB) Intel Pentium® 4 CPU £153.10
Asus P4P800 Deluxe- i865PE Springdale 800fs DDDR Gbit Lan+RAID+2xSATA USB2x8 6Ch Audio+1394 £86.94
Asus 128Mb ATI Radeon A9600XT-TVD £128.02
200Gb Western Digital WD2000JD Serial ATA £105.75
Corsair 512Mb ECC RIMM PC800 £225.60
Creative Labs Audigy LS 5.1 £51.11
Total £1182.92
Thanks!
P.S. If anyone is in the supply business and can knock up a similar spec for not much more (or the same!
) please email me. >>> Edited by julianhj on Sunday 18th April 19:25
Not sure I'd bother with the ECC ram if it's just for home use?
Check out www.aria.co.uk too, some stuff might be a smidgen cheaper.
Check out www.aria.co.uk too, some stuff might be a smidgen cheaper.
Do you also need a modem, floppy drive, keyboard, mouse, speakers?
What are your network requirements?
Do you want a standard beige box or something more interesting, say with a clear side panel or a fancy colour. (I have a metallic blue one myself).
What about Windows? Do you want XP Pro or XP Home?
You will also need the SATA data and power leads.
What are your network requirements?
Do you want a standard beige box or something more interesting, say with a clear side panel or a fancy colour. (I have a metallic blue one myself).
What about Windows? Do you want XP Pro or XP Home?
You will also need the SATA data and power leads.
brumster said:
Not sure I'd bother with the ECC ram if it's just for home use?
Check out www.aria.co.uk too, some stuff might be a smidgen cheaper.
This whole memory thing is a complete mystery! I want to know what is mid range here. 800FSB I understand, but the rest - ECC, Rambus, Dimm, etc - what's reasonable???
arcturus said:
Do you also need a modem, floppy drive, keyboard, mouse, speakers?
What are your network requirements?
Do you want a standard beige box or something more interesting, say with a clear side panel or a fancy colour. (I have a metallic blue one myself).
What about Windows? Do you want XP Pro or XP Home?
You will also need the SATA data and power leads.
No modem required (MB has LAN and I'm on NTL), floppy/keyboard/mouse I will use old stuff, computer is wired into the hi-fi.
Whoops, where did that go! Edited to put it in! adam1330 said:
Have you considered an Athlon 64 instead of the P4, £150 would buy you a Athlon 64 3000+. Also, if you go for standard 3200 DDR RAM, you can get 1Gb(2x 512Mb sticks) for £164 from crucial, a lot cheaper than the RAM you have quoted.
Is Athlon a better option in terms of cost & performance? I'm not fussed about the brand - just want something that'll last until 2010!
julianhj said:
Is Athlon a better option in terms of cost & performance? I'm not fussed about the brand - just want something that'll last until 2010!
IMHO, Athlons are the better choice, when you want bang for buck (computing performance per pound) and you build your own system (so you can determine every single component).
Don't buy an AMD64 yet, unless you'd need or want a Linux operating system and dedicated applications in order to make use of the 64bit advantages. Windows for AMD64 is expected end this year. Wait with buying this technology until 64bit is common.
Don't buy the top-of-the-range components, since second or third best have 90% of the performance, but cost only 60% (except RAM); use the saved amount to buy a new PC 30% earlier (ie. 2008 instead of 2010) and have a better average of up-to-date'ness.
(my 2¢) >> Edited by Bodo on Sunday 18th April 20:56
If you don't want to update for a while you may wantto consider that teh motherboard specs are due to change soon from ATX to BTX...
I would if it were my money do this.
Athlon 64. 3000+
ATI 9800pro, either 128 or 256MB flavours
1GB ram. Crucial Corsair Twinmoss etc.
Sony monitor, not tft,lcd or similar, they are not good enough to keep up with the best CRT's yet, not by a long chalk, especially if you game....
Iiyama, had nothing but bother with them......long story, but everyone returned was a second hand one when i'd bought new in the 1st place, bad service IMHO
WD Raptor HD's good 10k ata drives 5 year warrant, the best non scsi alternative
Mobo, too many good ones to list, make sure it's someone like ABIT ASUS GIGABYTE etc, a brand named flavour
Philips or Turtle beach sound card, using a PCI solution will keep the headroom available for CPU cycles, onboard sound demands a lot of CPU time, for example my NF2 Abit onboard demands upto 38%CPU time, alot of cylces if you are gaming etc.
NEC or Sony DVD writer, prefereably an OEM solution, DVD-/+R available for less than £70 now.
Good aluminium mid sized tower, keeps cool and weighs next to nothing.
Good 500W Antec or Enermax PSU,
that's about it,
Kevin.
I would if it were my money do this.
Athlon 64. 3000+
ATI 9800pro, either 128 or 256MB flavours
1GB ram. Crucial Corsair Twinmoss etc.
Sony monitor, not tft,lcd or similar, they are not good enough to keep up with the best CRT's yet, not by a long chalk, especially if you game....
Iiyama, had nothing but bother with them......long story, but everyone returned was a second hand one when i'd bought new in the 1st place, bad service IMHO
WD Raptor HD's good 10k ata drives 5 year warrant, the best non scsi alternative
Mobo, too many good ones to list, make sure it's someone like ABIT ASUS GIGABYTE etc, a brand named flavour
Philips or Turtle beach sound card, using a PCI solution will keep the headroom available for CPU cycles, onboard sound demands a lot of CPU time, for example my NF2 Abit onboard demands upto 38%CPU time, alot of cylces if you are gaming etc.
NEC or Sony DVD writer, prefereably an OEM solution, DVD-/+R available for less than £70 now.
Good aluminium mid sized tower, keeps cool and weighs next to nothing.
Good 500W Antec or Enermax PSU,
that's about it,
Kevin.
julianhj said:I guess it'll be just XP, or a subversion.
Cheers Bodo. Any more info/links about the next Windows?
The next big Windows release is called Longhorn, but MS seems to have trouble with their release calendar, so it will probably take some years.
If you want to have a look at a later Linux distribution, go here
For what its worth I've been there and doubt if I saved much money, if any. Go for whatever parts bin special Dell are punting at the moment and you'll get a real bargain which probably just needs a bit more RAM to make it fly, and for silly money.
I built a server and had hassle getting components to play nicely. OK, so it was a dual CPU with on board SCSI controllers, but it was mainly reputable components (Gigabyte, Seagate etc). I ended up (after much hassle with drivers etc) swapping the motherboard for an Asus. The server still works, and is fine, no worries there. But, at the exact same time I also bought a Dell server - that months special offer. I bunged in a second CPU and maxed the RAM, but otherwise had no cause to open the case. The bitsa spent quite some time with the case permanently off while bits were swapped about.
Great fun if you like tinkering, but if you have any niggling problems it may end up being difficult to trace the root cause and, like the IBM advert says, "and who is responsible for all this? That'll be you!".
If you're after a bling bling games machine with watercooled video card, neons, windows, and see through perspex fans, you won't find what you're after in Dell's adverts though, so go right ahead!
I built a server and had hassle getting components to play nicely. OK, so it was a dual CPU with on board SCSI controllers, but it was mainly reputable components (Gigabyte, Seagate etc). I ended up (after much hassle with drivers etc) swapping the motherboard for an Asus. The server still works, and is fine, no worries there. But, at the exact same time I also bought a Dell server - that months special offer. I bunged in a second CPU and maxed the RAM, but otherwise had no cause to open the case. The bitsa spent quite some time with the case permanently off while bits were swapped about.
Great fun if you like tinkering, but if you have any niggling problems it may end up being difficult to trace the root cause and, like the IBM advert says, "and who is responsible for all this? That'll be you!".
If you're after a bling bling games machine with watercooled video card, neons, windows, and see through perspex fans, you won't find what you're after in Dell's adverts though, so go right ahead!
Mainly to re-iterate a few points and describe my experience.
If you are completely new to putting a pc together it may well be a much better option to buy a mid point pc from a firm such as Mesh (only becuse they do appear to get good reviews for the price of machines and continue to get listed - I have never used them and can't give an opinion on customer service etc, but they seem good spec for the price) and then upgrade the lower spec bits (may be memory, graphics card, perhaps processor) although tbh it would probably do everything you want.
You can save a fair bit by building your own if you know what you want, that it is all compatible and you can put it together, otherwise the gain can really be reduced by a huge amount of time spent trouble shooting.
Good luck
Cheers
Paul
If you are completely new to putting a pc together it may well be a much better option to buy a mid point pc from a firm such as Mesh (only becuse they do appear to get good reviews for the price of machines and continue to get listed - I have never used them and can't give an opinion on customer service etc, but they seem good spec for the price) and then upgrade the lower spec bits (may be memory, graphics card, perhaps processor) although tbh it would probably do everything you want.
You can save a fair bit by building your own if you know what you want, that it is all compatible and you can put it together, otherwise the gain can really be reduced by a huge amount of time spent trouble shooting.
Good luck
Cheers
Paul
Bodo said:Although there may not be applications that can utilise the Athlon 64, I would still consider it just for the fact that it is more future proof than the 32 bit chips. Once the Athlon 64 get more popular, I would have thought that they would start fazing out the 32 bit chips.
Don't buy an AMD64 yet, unless you'd need or want a Linux operating system and dedicated applications in order to make use of the 64bit advantages.
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