My Pc Exploded - Need recommendations for new one

[MinorDamage]

First off, I plan to try to salvage the dead pc - as soon as I find out what is fried. Immediately after a cold boot there was a quiet click (sounded like a piece of paper in a fan) and about a second later there were two loud bangs which sounded similar to a very loud cap gun (capacitors blowing?). Prior to this I've had to replace two hard drives and there was an occational flicker (white out) that would roll up the crt screen. I'm guessing the PS was the culprit, but I've yet to find any scorch marks to verify. I opened the box and tried to smell any residual scents, but it's hard to pinpoint the source. I've ordered a new PS in hopes that the pc will come back to life, but in all likelihood, if the PS died it probably didn't die alone.

I'm not keen on OEMs and except for this minor incident, I'm fairly competent at assembling my own parts. I'm on the fence as to whether it's more cost effective to assemble this next pc myself or go with a good vendor that allows custom builds (any vendor recommendations?). Once I get a parts list assembled I'll be able to see if having someone else assemble it is wise.

For this next pc I'm looking for a good mobo with PCIe, AMD 939, no raid, OC'ing will be kept to a minimium. The sites that I've been using for parts recommendations: Sharky Extreme and Pc Mechanic both recommended DFI's LanParty mobo, but after reading reviews at New Egg, I'm not sure I want the hassle of having to flash the BIOS immediately after installation. The board is major overkill for what I need, so does anyone have any recommendations for an alternate 939 board? I'm not planning on buying multiple video cards so SLI isn't needed.

[The pc will be a home pc, used for demanding games (Farcry, WoW, ect..), web and general multimedia. Cost isn't a huge priority - a good solid build is. A don't mind saving money though ]

 

[emogoch]

Up here in Toronto, I've found that the price difference between buying components at the cheapest price you can find and assembling it yourself vs. going to a vendor is negligable (actually foudn it cheaper to go the vendor route). That said, with a vendor, you won't have to deal with such things as flashing the BIOS right away, etc, as they should do that all for you.

No idea about where you can go though, as I don't even know where you are.

 

[MinorDamage]

Location:USA (Maine). I'm not too keen on the major pc vendors (Dell, Gateway, HP..ect). I was leaning towards Monarch Computers because they offer a great selection of parts, but user reviews at resellerratings aren't too favorable. Mostlikely my purchase will be online: NewEgg for parts and maybe a custom rig from whomever you'all suggest. I'm familar with ibuypower, alienware.. both are a bit expensive.

 

[endyen]

The nforce4 chipset is the way to go. One of the top contenders is this <A HREF="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813127212" target="_new">ultra</A> board from Abit.

 

[czarousa]

Sorry that your old workhorse died a loud death
tell your budget so that it will be easier for us to pinpoint a vendor or suggest to you to go at it alone.
one thing for sure is if you have lots of money $$$$ then going in for something like http://www.voodoopc.com/default.aspx
they meke damn good and fast pc's but they are expensive
go try to put in whatever you want in their configuration section and try to find the prices of components at something like newegg or xpcgear ( as suggested by 'wusy' to me) and calculate what you will get and answer the question to urself " can i make it? "

Bye for now.

Hope to help everybody I can.

 

[MinorDamage]

My budget is flexible, but I'm guessing $1500-2000US to be a good number for a fairly beefy pc. This isn't a pc that's intended for hardcore overclocking. It'll be used for gaming (Farcry & World of Warcraft), but mostly web browsing and email.

I'm waiting for NewEgg to ship out a PSU so I can test my old pc (Antec Neopower 480w). I figure that if I can't ressurrect the old pc, that the PSU would be equally useful in the next build.

My current parts list look like:

Case:
(unknown...want one with a removable mobo tray and quiet.. it would help if it had 120mm fans. A fan on top would save me the effort of pulling out the dremel before assembly).
Mobo:
I'm not sure which to go with; EPoX EP-9NPA+Ultra or DFI LanParty UT nF4 Ultra-D. My dead pc has a MSI mobo.. I thought I'd try something different this time.
CPU:
Athlon 64 +3500 venice (retail)..it's not top of the line, but the +3700 san diego is +$100 more and the +3800 venice +$140. If I decide to OC, I'll buy a decent HS and 120mm fan.
HD:
For the OS drive, a WD Raptor SATA 36.7GB
For storage: Seagate Barracuda 300GB SATA, plus 2x200GB IDE from the dead pc (if they're not dead).
RAM:
2x512MB OCZ EL Platinum Rev.2 unbuffered dual-channel
Video card:
Sapphire Radeon x800xl 256MB or XFX Geforce 6800GT 256MB, if I get the Geforce card I'll probably match it with an SLI mobo.

I'd like to get a good tv-tuner card. The dead pc had an ATI All-in-wonder. I'd buy another AIW, if they've improved the socket design in the last few years. Mine had too many heavy connectors which put too much strain on the socket.

About the DFI board, I've read that the BIOS needs to be flashed upon installation. Is this primarily for users of Athlon 64 X2 CPUs? How bad off is the board before the flash? The EPoX board is about $20 cheaper and I've read that it's easy to set up. It also is supposed to OC well, but not as well as the DFI board. Any comments?

 

[czarousa]

Your budget will indeed get you a decent gaming machine albeit not a kickass gaming one.
See set your priorities right dfi has had some issues which all of us have read and epox has come out to be the one board which gives leas and less of that with each preceeding model, dfi is very overclocker friendly and to a lesser degree so is epox but not to that level so if you want to overclock insanely then go to the forum
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=56 and see for yourself what they do there ( it will open your eyes )
In my view for you a sli machine will better as 6800 gt's are cheaper now a days.
bios flashing is not a nightmare anymore with almost all the companies giving utils which allow flashing bios in windows environment itself.


Hope to help everybody I can.

 

[marneus]

possibility that ur PSU killed everything, if you build, get a named & reliable brand PSU, check thg recent PSU workover for the good 1's

if u wanna build or of the shelf, I think u can get 1 or 2 ideas here... me... i would say
A64 S939 with NF4 ultra or SLI the best hardware around & good for dual core if u wanna...

brandwise, Asus & Epox boards i have personally had & liked... Epox only died cause i broke it during a HSF change & all oc'd well for me

Trust me I know what I'm doing... ooops, grab the cat...