First Build Guidance

[BrokenSegue]

Alright, so I've built some PCs from scrap parts before, but I've never gone out and put together a PC from scratch and I'm a bit lost. I picked out some components that look nice and cheap (my budget is $1000-1500) and will give me the power to run modern games (and and hopefully games of the future) or do some ocassional database analysis (which on my current computer [Dell 2.8GHz, 1GB RAM] takes days).

What I have so far (I picked thses components out a few months ago and they may be out of date):
ASUS A8N-SLI Premium
AMD Athlon 64 3200+
(2x1GB) DDR SDRAM Dual Channel
Geforce 7800GT
Creative SOUND BLASTER X-Fi Platinum Sound Card
Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD2500KS 250GB
Creative SOUND BLASTER X-Fi Platinum Sound Card

When I picked the parts out, the price was $1,133 (which is lower now), which means I have some money left to spend. How should I proceed. Are my components even compatible (I think so...)? Also, how should I decide what PSU/fan (the only things I didn't list) to get ? Can anyone offer some advice for this newcomer.

 

[DDay629]

Ok, first of all, if you aren't going to go SLi immediatly, don't get a SLi board. Therefore I would get a DFI Lanparty Ultra-D. Probably the best 939 board out their that isn't SLi. Second of all, get a dual core processor. Are adverse to overclocking. If you aren't I would get a Opteron 165. It goes great with that mobo also. Third of all, don't get that graphics card. It is actually quite hard to find now adays, and the 7900 is a better for not that much money. So go with a 7900 GT KO or something. Definetly get 2GB's of RAM, probably OCZ or Corsair XMS right now, as they are cheapest at the moment for the quality. Nice HDD, nothing needing to be changed there.

Also, are you sure you want to go 939? I would right now, but you might not. As for PSU and case, I'd go with a Antec P180 with a Antec 550 W PSU.

DDay

 

[shadowduck]

Alright, so I've built some PCs from scrap parts before, but I've never gone out and put together a PC from scratch and I'm a bit lost. I picked out some components that look nice and cheap (my budget is $1000-1500) and will give me the power to run modern games (and and hopefully games of the future) or do some ocassional database analysis (which on my current computer [Dell 2.8GHz, 1GB RAM] takes days).

What I have so far (I picked thses components out a few months ago and they may be out of date):
ASUS A8N-SLI Premium
AMD Athlon 64 3200+
(2x1GB) DDR SDRAM Dual Channel
Geforce 7800GT
Creative SOUND BLASTER X-Fi Platinum Sound Card
Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD2500KS 250GB
Creative SOUND BLASTER X-Fi Platinum Sound Card

When I picked the parts out, the price was $1,133 (which is lower now), which means I have some money left to spend. How should I proceed. Are my components even compatible (I think so...)? Also, how should I decide what PSU/fan (the only things I didn't list) to get ? Can anyone offer some advice for this newcomer.

Agree with Dday mostly.. 7800 is a big no-no.. like he said.. That board is nice, but if you are goign SLI in 90 days, not worth the cash (like Dday) said.. Consider the DFI Lanparty Ultra D board instead. Are you a music nut? In most cases, onboard sound works just fine and willl save you more money.

 

[BrokenSegue]

I have a pretty nice sound setup (and I greatly prefer high quality sound), but after looking at the prices of the sounds card I might have to cut creative from my build plans. Oh yeah, I listed the sound card twice...that was a mistake. I might just pick up a cheap Audigy 2 or something (has to be better than onboard).

Yeah, I think I'll get that Lanparty board. Does everything I need it to. I'm DLing the manual right now.

I probably won't overclock my CPU at first (I'm nervous enough about destroying it or messing up during build), so is the Opteron 165 still a good choice? It's much more expensive (although, looking back the CPU I picked out is slow).

Also, and this is a really stupid question, how will I know if the ports on the back of the motherboard will line up with the slots in the back of the case? Or will I have to cut the case?

Besides that, I think I'm ready to buy the stuff.

 

[DDay629]

All motherboards come with what is called a io board. The io board is what is at the back of the case. The one that comes with the case is replaced with the one from your mobo company. So, no, you don't have anything to worry about. Also, the sound on that mobo is supposed to be pretty good. I mean, obviously not as good as a individual sound card, but still pretty damn good. Also, not much to worry about on OCing that cpu. It's practically asking for it after all.

DDay

 

[wun911]

swap the 7800GT for a 7900GT... it runs cooler and is overall better....

your x hi fi will kill the onboard sound just get it otherwise just get an audigy series. Onboard sound may sound ok but they take up 10-15% more system resources.

I like everythink else.....

 

[Kholonar]

An opteron is best when overclocked because it starts off at only 1.8GHz. Don't worry about the ports on the back of your board and case, you should be able to replace the port plate on the case with one supplied by the motherboard. Even if the motherboard didn't come with a port plate or you lost it or nuclear armegeddon claimed it... you could still just remove the case port plate and just use the motherboard without it. It isn't like you'd be able to tell the difference when it is completely out of view.


As an alternative to the 939 platform, the intel 975x chipset is a good future upgrade root as it should (although not set in stone) support conroe. Intel processors are cheap at the moment and not that much slower than amd 64 processors in gaming.

If I were to spend $1000 right now, I'd buy:

ASUS P5WD2-E Premium Socket T (LGA 775) Intel 975X ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail $239

Intel Pentium D 930 Presler 800MHz FSB 2 x 2MB L2 Cache LGA 775 Dual Core Processor - Retail $199

G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM Unbuffered DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit System Memory - Retail $199

SAPPHIRE 100149 Radeon X1900XT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 VIVO PCI Express x16 Video Card $349.99

Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3320620AS (Perpendicular Recording Technology) 320GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM $119.99

Creative Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS SB0350 7.1 Channels PCI Interface Sound Card - OEM $64.99

Which comes out at $1171.97 and gives you dual core that can be overclocked well (you won't notice a difference between an fx-60 and this in games). I'm tone deaf and can't really take advantage of an x-fi so that has artificially lowered my price a bit.

You will also have to add in the cost of a good power supply, some input devices, some optical drives, an operating system and perhaps most importantly that expensive monitor to view your games in high resolution.

 

[BrokenSegue]

As an alternative to the 939 platform, the intel 975x chipset is a good future upgrade root as it should (although not set in stone) support conroe. Intel processors are cheap at the moment and not that much slower than amd 64 processors in gaming.

I was under the impression that today's motherboards will not support conroe. If I'm wrong I might need to consider changing over to Intel...Maybe I'll just wait till July 23 and just pick up a conroe. The benchmarks I read in the last few minutes are quite convincing.

You will also have to add in the cost of a good power supply, some input devices, some optical drives, an operating system and perhaps most importantly that expensive monitor to view your games in high resolution.

I can scrounge through some of my old PCs to pick up optical drives (they're good enough, although they're all PATA) and I have a copy of XP (and I'm planning to dual-boot Fedora). So, no problems there. My monitor is getting a bit old, but I think it can hack it. I'll probably upgrade that last, once everything else is in order.

 

[bmouring]

if you aren't going to go SLi immediatly, don't get a SLi board

I disagree with this as the PCIe slot will undoubtedly have nice functionality in the near future (already starting to get gigabit ethernet and RAID controller cards based on PCIe 4x and 8x slots) even if you don't go with an SLI setup. I bought my board and never once entertained the idea of SLI, it just doesn't make sense for me.

 

[Kholonar]

Unless you bought the retain (not oem) version of windows xp, you cannot reinstall it on new hardware without breaking the terms of the licence. It might be a good time to play around with linux while you're waiting for vista.

PATA optical drives are fine, at the moment, SATA DVD drives are incredibly expensive.

About conroe support, we can never be entirely sure. There are quite a few sources saying that some 975 chipsets might support it. A BIOS update might be necessary. Reviewers keep getting told that the review setup they are given is in a "975x chipset" without any further details.

Conroe is an LGA775 chip and is designed to work with the 965 chipset (not totally sure). Got a picture, I doubt it's fake, of a 965 chipset in its packaging: MSI P965

Call me a cynic but I don't trust the "blah blah ready" slogan.

 

[BrokenSegue]

Unless you bought the retain (not oem) version of windows xp, you cannot reinstall it on new hardware without breaking the terms of the licence. It might be a good time to play around with linux while you're waiting for vista.

I have a legit unused copy of XPPro hanging around, so I might as well use it while I'm waiting for Vista. Anyone know if I'll want to upgrade to Vista or reformat and install Vista fresh?

About conroe support, we can never be entirely sure. There are quite a few sources saying that some 975 chipsets might support it. A BIOS update might be necessary. Reviewers keep getting told that the review setup they are given is in a "975x chipset" without any further details.

Conroe is an LGA775 chip and is designed to work with the 965 chipset (not totally sure). Got a picture, I doubt it's fake, of a 965 chipset in its packaging: MSI P965

Call me a cynic but I don't trust the "blah blah ready" slogan.

So basically I just have to wait for everything to become clear or buy now and hope they're actually compatible...Annoying.

 

[shadowduck]

Unless you bought the retain (not oem) version of windows xp, you cannot reinstall it on new hardware without breaking the terms of the licence. It might be a good time to play around with linux while you're waiting for vista.

PATA optical drives are fine, at the moment, SATA DVD drives are incredibly expensive.

About conroe support, we can never be entirely sure. There are quite a few sources saying that some 975 chipsets might support it. A BIOS update might be necessary. Reviewers keep getting told that the review setup they are given is in a "975x chipset" without any further details.

Conroe is an LGA775 chip and is designed to work with the 965 chipset (not totally sure). Got a picture, I doubt it's fake, of a 965 chipset in its packaging: MSI P965

Call me a cynic but I don't trust the "blah blah ready" slogan.

That looks faked, considering Conroe was a code name and the actual name of the product is Core 2.

 

[clue69less]

An opteron is best when overclocked because it starts off at only 1.8GHz.

I assume you mean a 165? The 180 is stock clocked at 2.4.

you could still just remove the case port plate and just use the motherboard without it. It isn't like you'd be able to tell the difference when it is completely out of view.

The port plate does keep some dust out.

Which comes out at $1171.97 and gives you dual core that can be overclocked well

I think he said he didn't want to OC.

(you won't notice a difference between an fx-60 and this in games).

Are you sure?

 

[Kholonar]

Yes, sorry, I meant the 165 as referred to earlier in the topic.

He said that he didn't want to overclock but it's always nice to have it as a bonus. Besides, I find once you build a system, you tend to get fidgity after a while. Even if you didn't want to overclock to begin with you often find yourself getting tempted.

In what I would consider a good test of a processor's power (encoding,rendering,etc), the FX-60 is about 25% faster than the 930. For games running at low quality settings you will see a similar difference (but you have to remember that the frame rate is often well above 100 at these settings anyway). For games at high quality, the difference is well under 10%. Then consider that even the 4800x2 is 3 times the price. Obtained from THG interactive cpu charts http://tomshardware.co.uk/cpu/charts.html

I use a 3800 X2 and am quite happy with it. It is, however, quite a bit more expensive yet not alot more powerful tha the budget intel dual cores.

 

[MrsD]

DO NOT BUY A SOCKET 939 WITH DDR400, IT IS OBSOLETE AND NON-UPGRADEABLE.
Socket AM2 with DDR2-800 is the same price and totally upgradeable when the 65nm X2 comes out.

 

[BrokenSegue]

DO NOT BUY A SOCKET 939 WITH DDR400, IT IS OBSOLETE AND NON-UPGRADEABLE.
Socket AM2 with DDR2-800 is the same price and totally upgradeable when the 65nm X2 comes out.

Seems AM2 boards and processors are considerably more expensive (well some of them). Stuff I've read seems to say that they aren't that much faster. Besides the expandability potential, is it worth it? If I'm going to have to wait until next year to get the best stuff for that socket (i.e. 65nm), I'd be better off just getting a Core 2 when it comes out this summer.

I probably won't overclock at first, but once I'm confident that I have it running I'll probably experiment...

 

[shadowduck]

DO NOT BUY A SOCKET 939 WITH DDR400, IT IS OBSOLETE AND NON-UPGRADEABLE.
Socket AM2 with DDR2-800 is the same price and totally upgradeable when the 65nm X2 comes out.

Oh come on stop with FUD. S939 is still a very viable solution that is tested and meets the demands of users. AM2 is a Rev A product and there is a very limited selection of product right now. Most people only upgrade 2-3 years anyway, so the totally upgradable point when 65nm X2 is out (12/06) is a moot point. Most users are not to rush out a buy a new PC in December b/c its 65nm. Hell most don't even know what 65nm means.

</rant>

 

[Kholonar]

I think you make a very valid point about people upgrading every 2-3 years. Besides, do you really think that a motherboard will have all the features you need in 2-3 years even if it still uses a compatible socket. I think about my last computer and the motherboard didn't support pci express, sata, dual channel ram or any of the other cool stuff we take for granted now.

We're at a point of flux (again) in the industry and you can either spend your money on old technology which will become unsupported or new technology that is untested and may need revising. I suppose this is why I think it's better to just pick up a bargin and forget about possible future upgrades. someone said that buying for upgrades is like purchasing a train ticket and waiting for the track to be laid.

What I am sure of is, once conroe and AM2 come out, prices on socket 939 and pentium d cpus will drop. Intel stated that they'd like to drop prices on their cpus to clear their stock.

 

[clue69less]

He said that he didn't want to overclock but it's always nice to have it as a bonus. Besides, I find once you build a system, you tend to get fidgity after a while. Even if you didn't want to overclock to begin with you often find yourself getting tempted.

Nail. Hammer. Head. Been there myself.

 

[TSIllusion]

OH GOD... 3200...

OH GOD... sum random 2 GB ddr ram

OH GOD... 7800 gt

OH GOD... 2 sound cards


you need to redo this

 

[BrokenSegue]

OH GOD... 3200...

OH GOD... sum random 2 GB ddr ram

OH GOD... 7800 gt

OH GOD... 2 sound cards


you need to redo this

I didn't end up buying any of those things...except the 2 sounds cards (gotta have that).

Anyways, thanks for your help people. I should have all the stuff by the weekend if newegg can get their act together.