Fancy having a go at building a pc

[thejames]

I know this comes up every now and then but, her goes...

I fancy having a go. Haven't got extensive knowledge of computers but reckon i've got enough to get by on.

To begin with to build a v basic (but quality) one, looking at...

A case of some descript
A motherboard - AMD Athlon 2800+ Processor
80 Gb HDD
512 DDR Ram
CD re-writer drive
keyboard
mouse
decent graphics card
monitor - normal (ie. not tft/flat etc) 19"+ screen

Software isnt important ;)

And, to be added... modem, printer, soundcard & speakers, DVD re-writer and anything else ive forgotten...

Is this enough to get start with or have i forgotten something? How much is this setup likely to cost? Ie. How cheap can i do it? :D

Cheers, Jim.

[Psycosis]

could ask me :)

Thats all you need, maybe a soundcard if there isn't one onboard, possilby a Lan card if you are using broadband with a router?

And don't forget if you are getting a case to get one with at least a 350W Powersupply.
Strangely enough pc world are doing 450W ones for a good pirce.

www.Ebuyer.com do good prices on most kit

[thejames]

Cheers mate. I've been looking at ebuyer but i kinda just see lots of prices. Which means, to me at least, the crappest to the best and doesn't really help. How much is it likely to cost? Can you do a rough calculation for me. Are we talking like 400 notes or closer to a grand?? :confused:

[SFC]

at a rough guess 500 notes is about your starting price if you go for a cheapish monitor

buy a copy of Micro Mart from your local newsagent, it's a weekly on pulp paper for about £1.40 and it has all the cheapest suppliers, details of trade fairs, etc.

[Papa Lazarou]

Get one of them NForce2 motherboards if I was you. It'll almost certainly have sound built into it.

[TAS]

Sorry to hijack the thread, but just a quick question... are the sound cards on the latest motherboards any good? I have always been told by people at computers shops.. etc... to stay well clear of these because they are shite?

Is this true?

[Tenman]

Absolutly more than adaquate, unless you're a HiFi freak who likes to do a lot of things with music, in which case you'll be looking at spending a few hundred notes on a sound card anyway

[stoofer]

the nforce 2 onboard is good, as long as the board uses the nforce sound (some dont for odd reasons)

most other onboard sound is awful and has compatibility problems with lots of software.

if you wanna do it cheap and overclocking doesnt scare you, there are athlon 1700+s that will overclock like a mofo. saves you plenty of cash.



http://www.overclockers.co.uk sell top stuff and deliver lightning fast.

dont skimp too much on the monitor, it can improve the experience an awful lot to at least have a half decent one.

[Vipers]

how bout this:

Azure 4 bay case
A7n8X Delux Mobo
Xp2800+ cpu with suited HSF
512mb DDr333
FDD
80Gb ata 133 7200 RPM
16x DVD
Pioneer 105 DVD Writer
Geforce 4 Ti4200 128 Mb AGP x 8
56k Modem
19" CRT
Ps2 Scrolly mouse
Ps2 Multimedia Keyboard

hows £900 sound?

[Dan@DB-Power]

If you change your mind and want a 17 inch monitor. I can do you a deal on a second hand one.

Dan,

[Psycosis]

I built my pc less than 2 months ago, it cost me (bits bought from ebuyer) less than £400 for the whole thing excluding a monitor.
thats with a decent nearly top of the range Ati Radeon card with a TV out.
512meg DDR Ram
Asus A7V333 mothorboard (you can get better now) with onboard sound
Athlon 2700
cheapie case. Which i never used.
80gig HD

[TAS]

Have you ever thought about going to a computer fair? you wont have any guarntee but you can pick up stuff at ridiculous prices!

[Vipers]

depends who organises the computer fairs and who has stands there. you shud always get garantee if its a www.presigeevents.co.uk computer fair cuz most of companies who are at these ones give you a garantee e.g. winsor leisure ( scrubby looking guy but hes failry cool, prices are the cheapest but pretty reasonable), can't remeber the others to be honest but most of them there will give you a yrs warantee unless they's well dodgy.

[SpeedyPete]

In my experience, its always best to do it seperately, sure you'll save yourself a few bob in the short run with onboard stuff, but they cause more problems than not in the future, plus you cant just whip em out like you can seperate items (should they die).
Plus the internal modems etc. are crud, and on board graphics is nothing to write home about.

You want to do your own system, so why not do it properly and get all the bits seperately, plus its more fun :)
And I've quite happily built my systems for a couple of hundred buying newish kit, second hand on ebay and when QXL was good, saved a bucket and was well up to speed.

If you need any help along the way bud, pm me I'm an IT support engineer.

Ta
Pete

[AshT_200]

I looked into it this week, and believe it or not, it works out cheaper to buy a ready built box.

My Brother bought a Compaq Presario (No monitor) P4 2.6 (Latests test show that the new P4 core pisses over the Athlons) for 600quid all in.

Included WinXP and MS Works with Word XP.

I don't think I could have bought sperates for that.

Came with DVD, 40 speed CDRW, 512MB DDR Ram, 80 Gig HD, NVIDIA GForce 4, Plus onboard Video (Radeon I think) Only thing that lets it down was the Soundcard, but he had an Audigy to plug into it. :)

[stoofer]

cheaper for a ready built box, yep, but not all the components are like for like.

but then - it all depends what you want to do with the PC as to what you need

[AshT_200]

Just to recap, the numbering system of the Athlons, has no bearing in comparable speed to the Intel chips.

An Athlon XP3000+ (Thoroughbred Core) supposedly is rates at 3x Performance of Original Thunderbird Core.

The P4 Willemette Core was admittedly a damp squid, but since Intel moved to the Northwood core, things have changed.

Also consider that the 3.06GHz P4 is available to system builders for $371.73 and the Athlon XP3000+ is available to system builders for $371.07, the price gap isn't so big. But the performance is.

[Papa Lazarou]

Originally posted by AshT_200
Also consider that the 3.06GHz P4 is available to system builders for $371.73 and the Athlon XP3000+ is available to system builders for $371.07, the price gap isn't so big. But the performance is.

To the likes of Dell or someone maybe, but buying 1 unit from a retail outlet AMD is still quite a bit cheaper than Intel. The performance difference is not that great, it really depends on the benchmark.. Some favour Intel heavily. Games tend to run about the same.

[stoofer]

for high end stuff the P4 chips are better value for money.

when looking for a 'bang for buck' sweet spot, the athlons still have it imho at about the 2400+ mark.

depends what you need.

[AshT_200]

Have to say my 2.4Ghz Compaq EVO Laptop pisses my M8s Athlon 2600. Oh he has the same laptop and says the same thing.

The P4 is faster than the Athlon and AMD know it...... which is why they are launching Sledgehammer in a few months. 64 Bit IA32 compatible. Nice:)

:thumbs:

[stoofer]

theres more to speed than the processor...

btw at the same MHz, athlons are faster than the P4 equivalent. they just dont go up to the same MHz as the P4s and havent been scaling wuite as well.

Im a firm believer that both companies need to be strong, the market (us) got screwed when there was no competition to Intel back in the pentium/P2 days.

[thejames]

Originally posted by Vipers
how bout this:

Azure 4 bay case
A7n8X Delux Mobo
Xp2800+ cpu with suited HSF
512mb DDr333
FDD
80Gb ata 133 7200 RPM
16x DVD
Pioneer 105 DVD Writer
Geforce 4 Ti4200 128 Mb AGP x 8
56k Modem
19" CRT
Ps2 Scrolly mouse
Ps2 Multimedia Keyboard

hows £900 sound?

Cheers for all the replies guys. :thumbs:

Vipers, im quite impressed with this spec. Seems its a good, quality package thats got all the things i'd need. :D Just outta interest (for the mo... ;) ), where did you get this from? Or do you build them yourself? Or do you work for Pc world??! :p ;) :D

[Vipers]

its my company i work for, i'll be officially registered from 1st july but do this on the side at the moment, it wud go thru the books just not till 1st july but u'd have it way before then obviously.
thing is, i can't think of a decent name, the name i was going to use is taken and so are the ones of near spelling which has annoyed me, any ideas

[SpeedyPete]

How about VIPER Systems

(or VIPER-S for short) :thumbs:

[andyf]

Intel > Amd

[AshT_200]

Originally posted by stoofer
theres more to speed than the processor...

btw at the same MHz, athlons are faster than the P4 equivalent. they just dont go up to the same MHz as the P4s and havent been scaling wuite as well.


You can't compare this, because the clockrate of the 3000+ is only comparable to the old wilamette core. The Northwood core runs much faster than the wilamette at the same clock frequency


Im a firm believer that both companies need to be strong, the market (us) got screwed when there was no competition to Intel back in the pentium/P2 days.

My thoughts exactly.

[Vipers]

any are you saying Intel are gretar than amd or u saying i shud try that for a name?

i like that VIPER System

[andyf]

Originally posted by Vipers
any are you saying Intel are gretar than amd

:thumbs:

[Duff Man]

For games, the graphics card is more important than raw cpu power to a certain extent and it it unlikely that you would get anything <2.0GHz these days anyway.

I manage quite well on a 1700 XP OC'ed to 1800 XP specs paired with a MSI GF4 4200 128mb OC'ed to ~4400 speeds. Also got a tasty audio setup which makes all the difference if your into games etc.

Plays grand theft auto vice city with no slowdown @ 1024/32bit so im happy :)

Just for the record Intel > AMD (in price :D ;) )

[thejames]

Update.... :D

Built it! Approx 63% of way through the hdd format Windows XP Pro does before install, literally as i type!

Hopefully all will be well. Had a slight battle getting the S-ATA hdd recognised but seems ok so far. :thumbs:

Went for AMD 2500+ in the end with intention of over-clocking it to 3200+.

Oh, and got my 19" TFT through today.... :notworthy :notworthy :notworthy