buying a new PC. a little help please???

seantree

Looking to build a new PC and need some input. I've been out of the loop so long I feel as though my PC might be right up cheapy's alley j/k :P Anyway, I'd like to go with an amd dual core CPU and prob and ASUS board as I've never had probs with them. Anyone out there running anything of the sort that can offer advice? Do you still save by building your own? Any input is appreciated. Please take it easy on me as I havent upgraded since the GF4 ti4600 came out

PfhorRunner

hehe... I built my comp for around $800. Fry's and Newegg though. Kind of hard to give advice if we don't have a price range.

AMD64 3200+
160gig hdd 7200rpm SATA
1 gig of dualchannel ram
gigabyte nforce3 mobo
geforce 6800GT
and a cheapass coolermaster case.

http://www.newegg.com

Will save you a ton of money, but you have to find the good deals.
I personally think it saved me money, but then again I transfered a lot of my old parts from my past computer (dvd drive and such) so that saved me a bunch of money too.

For some reason I just feel a sense of pride and even security in building my own computer. I can look at it and be like "I made that", and not feel like some machine put it together.
but newegg is good for deals and such.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103562
AMD64 X2...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131530
Mobo to go with it...

sonic

make sure you get the nforce 4 chipset, it kicks ass

If you want to have an indepth discussion about it, you can aim me at leeharris100 or email me or somethin. I work at a custom computer shop in New Braunfels, and I've got lots to say

seantree

cool. thanks for the input guys. I'll be sure to hit you up if I need more info sonic. appreciate it.

pogonip

This site has good deals to and good reviews

http://www.cyberpowersystem.com/

JonMurphy

Tech Report's System guide, from yesterday. Goes through a number of set-ups for various budgets, with alternatives.

Toomas

What do you need it for?

seantree

I'll be using it for 3d work, vid editing and compositing and some gaming(mainly WOW).

Slayerjerman

Unless you got alot of money laying around, the best cpu/mobo combo that's affordable is the AMD64 3700+ (1mb cache) on an Asus A8V PCI-E board

dual cores are too spendy ;/, but the majority of the cost will be your video card around $300~$400 for something decent

Absoulutely get a 2gb dual channel ram kit (2x1gb sticks)

KDR_11k

AMD64 3700+??? That's quite expensive, there's lots of cheaper CPUs that still provide almost as much power.

Slayerjerman

I got my AMD64 3700+ (san diego arch w/ 1mb cache) cpu retail box kit (w/fan) for a cool $230. And the asus board was about $120~

Thats VERY cheap compared to the lowest priced dual-core cpu for about $350~

#1 thing to watch out for is socket 754 vs 939. Dont buy 754 boards or cpus! You might find a very good deal on 754's but thats because they are the lower-grade 64's. Its like the difference between buying a Celeron and a true Pentium.

Avoid 754s

BRUTICUS(CW)

Hey PfhorRunner is your mobo PCI-E or could you or anyone else recommend one? Im building a new system and I want to get a PCI-E mobo and ONE geforce6800PCI-E so that in the future I can upgrade with a second one.

sonic

[ QUOTE ]
#1 thing to watch out for is socket 754 vs 939. Dont buy 754 boards or cpus! You might find a very good deal on 754's but thats because they are the lower-grade 64's. Its like the difference between buying a Celeron and a true Pentium.

Avoid 754s

[/ QUOTE ]

Actually the only difference between 754 and 939 is the 800fsb compared to the 1000fsb, and it only supports single channel memory. The Celeron equivilent on the AMD line is the Sempron, and honestly, the new Sempron64s kick some ass for only being <b>74 dollars!</b>

By far the best bang for the buck is the AMD64 3000+. It's about 150 dollars and even if you're dissatisfied with the performance (which you wouldn't be ), they OC like crazy. I have mine running at 2.63ghz(1.8 stock) on the stock HSF. Graphics card wise, if you won't be doing anything more than running Doom3 on Ultra, I'd recommend a vanilla 6600. For about 110 bucks you can get a 256mb 6600 that will easily pump out Doom3 on Ultra settings. Or you could even spend a bit more and get the 6600gt, which also kicks major ass. Normally I wouldn't recommend 2gb (I have yet to see the difference on my machine when I upgraded to 2GB), but since you'd be doing video editing I'd say go for it, it's not that much more expensive.

Mobo wise, I'd recommend Asus, Epox, or MSI. Just don't get the MSI Neo3-F Sock 939 board, we've had about 5 of those fail miserably at the shop after about a week! I personally use the Epox 9PNAJ+. It's socket 939, NForce4 chipset, 4x Sata Ports, PCI-e, supports up to 16gb of RAM, onboard dianostic LEDs, onboard POST code display, and tons of OCing features (got me a 50% OC on my 3000+), and it's only 88 bucks.

PfhorRunner

Bruticus:
no, my mobo doesn't have a PCI-E slot on it... If that was what you were questioning.
My rule of thumb with mobos right now is stick with Asus, A-bit, or Gigabyte... Havn't had experience with Epox. and I just really don't like MSI all that much.

Toomas

[ QUOTE ]
I'll be using it for 3d work, vid editing and compositing and some gaming(mainly WOW).

[/ QUOTE ]

If you are gonna do video editing i would guess 4gb of ram is a must.

EarthQuake

a vanila 6600 to run d3 on ultra? you're joking right? A 6600 GT will only get you like 20 fps in ultra

KDR_11k

Doom 3 isn't meant to be run in Ultra mode, that merely disables texture compression completely and the official word is that it requires 512MB video RAM. Use high instead.

sonic

[ QUOTE ]
a vanila 6600 to run d3 on ultra? you're joking right? A 6600 GT will only get you like 20 fps in ultra

[/ QUOTE ]

Nope, my Albatron 6600 128mb runs d3 on ultra at 1290x1024 completely smooth.