I want to build a new computer but the thing is that i know nothing about the latest stuffs and their technologies.
So i want two things, one, is to learn about computers, and two, is to build a new computer ... But first things first.
Can anyone help me with that coz i am totally lost. And all i know is that after i learn about computers, i will get a P4 aimed mainly for gaming.
Here's some basics. For starters you should look into AMD chips for gaming. Amd and nforce2 boards are an excellent combo. The 2200+ and below are really cheap. The new nvidia fx graphic card disappointed almost everyone. The ati 9700 pro is the best price/performance video card out there. Corsair memory is the top memory for overclockers and www.newegg.com is a good retailer. Thats just the basics of the basics, i'll let someone that really knows what they are doing explain stuff.
You're at the right place if looking for info. Look around and read the Upgrade or Recommended system threads. You'll find lots of useful info. Then when you think you have decided what components you want post them (be specific of what brand/price and retailer). The guys on this forum will then help you decide which combination to choose.
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Well, you'll get a lot of arguments to the contrary, but I think you're making the right decision. The reason I'm saying this is, for the best gaming you want the best of everything, assuming you can afford it. AMD seems to be having trouble bringing new product to market, and their "top end" processors are lagging behind the P4 while at similar prices. I doubt AMD has any near future plans to remedy this situation. But since you're not building right away, you can watch and see if AMD gets out of the hole they're in by the time you're ready to build.
Near future products are "800MHz" bus chipsets for the P4. If you choose one of these, you'll most likely have two years worth of upgradability to look forward to. Right now the fastest chipset for the P4 is the SiS 655, and it will be getting revised soon to support the new bus speed. Intel's (Springdale?) chipset should follow.
Right now the fastest gaming card is the ATI 9700 Pro. Following the release of the GeForce FX, ATI will release an even faster card (9900 Pro?) in order to maintain their lead.
Computers are fairly easy to work on. You'll find a lot of bad product hits the market, but if you ask questions before you purchase you'll likely be able to avoid them.
<font color=blue>There are no stupid questions, only stupid people doling out faulty information based upon rumors, myths, and poor logic!</font color=blue>
Welcome to the system buiding family!!! Totally agree with everyone here. This is a good place for choosing hardware and getting a lot's of advice. And you can listen to the voices all over the world. Some small tips for you, try looking for the member in your area because the info they give you would be the most appropriate one. (Example: If you are in Australia, what for if you ask the price and after sell service info on USA??) And you have to decide which CPU you'll go for, Intel or AMD? Then you start to looking for the parts which suits your requirement best! Wish you having good time in learning and buiding your dream machine.
My PC has gone to hell... because it's a killing machine...
Also beware of info rom FanBoys (Guys that are completely brand biased). Intel and AMD both have their merits as do Nvidia and Ati. Right now from a pure performance view Intel and Ati are your best bets. (I run AMD and Nvidia at the moment for no particular reason).
The aim of military training is not just to prepare men for battle, but to make them long for it. <A HREF="http://forums.btvillarin.com/index.php?act=ST&f=41&t=327&s" target="_new"><b>MY SYSTEM</b></A>
Totally agree with Rubberbband. It is you the one who take out your hard earn cash to build your own system. Just ignore those FanBoys, they will only feel happy if you buy the same brandname they like but not neccesarily the best price/performance. Just buy the parts which gives you best performance within your budget. Also beware of those advises like "add $xxx more for xxx" if you are extremely tight on budget because you'll end up with overbudget and have to buy some bad product in the end.
My PC has gone to hell... because it's a killing machine...
Well i wanna thank you and all the other guys for these really valuable informations. I am really not in a rush for building my pc, i can wait till i really learn everything about computers as i don't wanna end up with a shitty machine and lose all my savings. Right now, at this moment it could help if you or any of the forum's guys tell me how and where to start learning. I am trying to read everything in the cpu section but i think i am lost, i can't really follow all these informations. I need to know where to start.
Thanx again for your great support and help. I know now i am in the right place.
You can start in the major differences of Intel and AMD CPU. Pay attention to keywords like "Hyper Threading", "Pentium-Rating", "Overclockability", "FSB" etc. And you should look for some reviews on CPU via internet too. Then the chipset to support all these CPU and features, once you've some basic idea on CPU and chipset, then you can start looking at motherboard, then graphic card and so on. Well happy learning!
My PC has gone to hell... because it's a killing machine...
Thank you ... i will be doing this for the upcoming weeks ... i am really eager to learn fast ... and never hesitate to send me any other suggestions or links that might help.
Thanx.
i thank you for having the courage to learn and do it yourself rather than follow the sheep to the nearest dell store. your doing your part to making the world a better place, lol
my computer is so fast, it completes an endless loop in less than 4 seconds!
Thank you Crashman for these infos. As i said i am not in hurry for building the ultimate speedy machine of mine. I will be waiting and meanwhile i will try to learn about it from the scratch. So tell me if you have any suggestions about how to understand these huge amounts of technology and reviews in a more simple and easy way. I am reading and i hope to get it all by time, but i feel it is not easy to follow.
Thanks man.
<A HREF="http://www.arstechnica.com" target="_new">http://www.arstechnica.com</A>
This website has very in-depth information on computers and their components, especially CPUs.
They just did an article which begins from the start, on how PCs work, and slowly introduces you to the binary concept, and to what data and instructions are. It should be what you should read, to get going, as it's the ultimate starter guide.
Good luck, and Ya Ahla!
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This post is brought to you by Eden, on a Via Eden, in the garden of Eden.
You have to be a bit carefull with the information you consume. Most enthusiast sites I read are AMD fan sites. There are a few Intel fan sites too. And some nVidia fan sites. And even a few ATI fan sites. I think this site is the least biased, although sometimes the information isn't that great. Anandtech is a good place to read about motherboards.
<font color=blue>Watts mean squat if you don't have quality!</font color=blue>
Well, I don't know nearly half about cpu's as some of the guys here, but, I'll try and explain the basics, and clarify some numbers for you. (BTW, if I am wrong with anything, please correct me)
The first thing you will notice about processors is the speed, measured in Mhz (Million cycles per second) or Ghz. Naturally, the faster the better. In very basic terms, a cpu does a certain number of instructions per each cycle. Intel built their processor for speed, and therefor each cycle, the P4 does a relatively small amount of instructions. AMD chose a different route, choosing to have their processors do more instructions per cycle, but have their chip run at slower speeds. For example, the Athlon XP 2800+ runs at 2.25GHz, but does a large number of instructions per each cycle. When reading about Athlon chips you'll notice thier PR number. Very simply, this is what the chip runs at compared to an equivalent P4. Therefore, a XP 2800+ is comparable to a P4 2.8Ghz. If you think of it this way you'll be allright.
Next is the front side bus. This is how fast the chip can recieve and send data, basically. Think of it as a highway. A 100 bus means cars can drive 100kph (or mph, i'm canadian, so i use kilometers) A 133 bus means you can drive 133kph. These speeds were used in the P3 era. what companies are doing today is multiplying busses. a P4 with a 400Mhz bus has a 100 bus*4. the current P4 have a 133 bus*4=533. I suppose one way of thinking about it is adding lanes onto a highway. A 533 has 4 lanes of traffic going 133, compared to a bus speed of 133, with only one lane of traffic going 133. Again, this isn't set in stone, just a bacic anology to help you understand the numbers. Intel's newest proccesor coming out will have a 200Mhz bus*4=800. The faster the bus, the more information that can travel. One of the last numbers you will probably come across is cache. Cache is memory that is directly on the chip itself. It is much faster than your ram. What happens is your processor thinks ahead and trys to guess at what your next command will be. It takes that command from the ram and loads it into the cache, where it will go directly to the chip. This helps speed things up because your chip doesn't have to wait for data from your slow ram. There are 2 types ,L1 and L2 (I suppose 3, some processors have an L3 cache, but we won't worry about that). L2 is the most talked about, and it is also the biggest. The Athlon recently got a L2 cache upgrade from 256kb to 512kb. This helps because it can store more information that can be fed to the chip. Intel's upcoming processor will have 1mb of L2 cache on it. Data goes from the L2 to the faster L1 and then to the chip.
Hopefully this helps you to understand the basics of processors, and clarify some of the numbers out there.
My advice would be to go out and buy a cheap second hand machine that you can play around with. I have had loads of fun playing around with old machines. Also you don't need anything wonderful and if you find you have software that won't run on your machine, you can UPGRADE!! Hooray! Try and pick up an old Pentium III machine or something and start tinkering....
Thanx Sargeduck about these really valuable informations. This is really the kind of stuffs i am after, and one can't find such infos in such an easy way. It really helped a lot and if you got more information concerning any other component of a computer just let me know, i will be listening and reading.
Thank you
Well sjonnie, i already have a 7 years old machine running pentium MMX 233mHZ, 64MB RAM, and only a S3 2MB Video card and this machine should have been already in the graveyard. Then i got myself a nice notebook (at the time i bought it) 3 years ago running Pentium III 600mHZ, 64MB RAM, 6GB Hard disk, 16MB ATI videocard, with an 8x dvd ... and it has been really nice to me but i use it only for work and surfing the net, never for playing games.
But i guess it's my time now for serious gaming ... and i can easily call any of my enthusiastic friends who are willing to pick me the best of the best ... i can go tomorrow morning and make one myself with few tips from you guys and from whatever salesman ... what about getting an Athlon XP 2 series together with nforce2 board, load it with DDR RAMs 333 or whatever and get ATI Radeon 9700 Pro, soundblaster Audigy, Klipsch 5.1 speakers or logitech or maybe creative 5.1 or 6.1, a plextor or philips cdrw or maybe a dvd, dvdrw, cdrw combo, and a WD or seagate or maxtor hard disk 80 GB 7200 RPM or maybe get two separate hard disks and get a nice solid case with a powerful power supply and the best fans i can get for it.
Anyway this is not really what i am after ... i need to learn coz i want to, it's very interesting i guess ... and then when i am done with the learning, no matter how long will it take, i can build my first computer by myself really understanding how it works and cherish it for maybe 2 or 3 years later before needing to upgrade it.
Well this is what i want to, i don't want to get an old machine and then upgrade it. I am after the technology for the time being.
Thanks for your advice.
Oh!! i have just read your post from the thread that goes under the name "learning ??" ... i checked the website you pointed at http://computer.howstuffworks.com/ ... this is what i really need. Its hardware library is superb. I will get to learn a lot from reading about these basic knowldeges.
It's a great site with valuable informations in it, and for this i can't thank you enough.
Thanx again.
) A 133 bus means you can drive 133kph. These speeds were used in the P3 era. what companies are doing today is multiplying busses. a P4 with a 400Mhz bus has a 100 bus*4. the current P4 have a 133 bus*4=533. I suppose one way of thinking about it is adding lanes onto a highway. A 533 has 4 lanes of traffic going 133, compared to a bus speed of 133, with only one lane of traffic going 133. Again, this isn't set in stone, just a bacic anology to help you understand the numbers. Intel's newest proccesor coming out will have a 200Mhz bus*4=800. The faster the bus, the more information that can travel. One of the last numbers you will probably come across is cache. Cache is memory that is directly on the chip itself. It is much faster than your ram. What happens is your processor thinks ahead and trys to guess at what your next command will be. It takes that command from the ram and loads it into the cache, where it will go directly to the chip. This helps speed things up because your chip doesn't have to wait for data from your slow ram. There are 2 types ,L1 and L2 (I suppose 3, some processors have an L3 cache, but we won't worry about that). L2 is the most talked about, and it is also the biggest. The Athlon recently got a L2 cache upgrade from 256kb to 512kb. This helps because it can store more information that can be fed to the chip. Intel's upcoming processor will have 1mb of L2 cache on it. Data goes from the L2 to the faster L1 and then to the chip.
