EPT[h] Also Building a comp - Page 2
| Forum Index > General Forum |
|
IzzyCraft
United States4487 Posts
| ||
|
IzzyCraft
United States4487 Posts
| ||
|
CharlieMurphy
United States22895 Posts
| ||
|
Months
United States356 Posts
go to their hardware section make a post about what you want, they have aLOOOOOOt of experienced computer users | ||
|
Months
United States356 Posts
| ||
|
[X]Ken~D
377 Posts
Intel Core 2 Duo 6420 22" Widescreen LCD Windows Vista Home Premium or Windows XP 16x DVD+/-RW Drive 250GB Serial ATA Hard Drive 56k modem 1 GB RAM Ram & HDD is cheap to upgrade. Their system and case is quiet. I use to built my own system, but the Dell systems I have now overall are great. | ||
|
comabreaded
United States2166 Posts
| ||
|
IzzyCraft
United States4487 Posts
On June 26 2007 18:07 [X]Ken~D wrote: Dell computers around $700 includes Intel Core 2 Duo 6420 22" Widescreen LCD Windows Vista Home Premium or Windows XP 16x DVD+/-RW Drive 250GB Serial ATA Hard Drive 56k modem 1 GB RAM Ram & HDD is cheap to upgrade. Their system and case is quiet. I use to built my own system, the Dell systems overall are great. dell tends to rip you off im sorry but this is true dell does this alot they make system with only enouhg power to run what they put in there and if you add anything say like more ram the system wont run right or at all also most likely you can buy those parts seperatly for half the price their lcd sreens are really good though but dell is a rip off in general cheep parts create choke points in your computer where the performance is caped these are usualy the mobo ram and cpu so those are ususaly the most important parts to buy the 8600gt and the 7900 are both solid gpu cards if your holding out for cheeper dx10 cards that can perform | ||
|
teh leet newb
United States1999 Posts
2. That PSU looks like it's from a POS manufacturer. Get a quality power supply like a 500W Fortron, Seasonic, or Silverstone, just to name a few. 3. If you want a CRT, check around locally. I just got a flat screen unopened 17" eMachines CRT for $10. Best of all, you don't need to pay to ship a monster monitor. 4. Get either a 2900XT or 8800GTS. Those are great buys at the moment. The 2900XT is still kinda new, so not too much info is known about it. It seems pretty good in the benchmarks that have been released though, especially for the price. PS: Don't listen to Izzycraft, he/she has pretty much no idea what he's talking about. | ||
|
HeadBangaa
United States6512 Posts
I've read a lot of conflicting reports concerning chipsets for Core 2 Duo-supporting motherboards. I played it safe with an intel chipset, but the RAID capabilities are piss-poor, so I had to get an expansion card to do my bidding.. Also, before you pick out parts, it's important (!!!!) to know if you are gonna install linux. I n00bed out here, and I had to wait until the open source community developed fixes for known bugs in driver software. I'm actually still waiting (just don't feel comfortable with buggy middleware controlling my data platters, I guess Im crazy), so I've got no linux on there for now.. but Windows XP screams! Also, what kind of hard drive configuration were you leaning towards? Single drive? RAID? I also highly recommend getting a motherboard with PATA, as some manufactures still spit out PATA devices. For example, I grabbed a great DVD burner for $20, but the analogous SATA version from the same manufacturer costs $50. I'd rather put $30 into quietter fans than trusting an optical drive to last more than a year or two, so I wouldn't worry about future-proofing by going 100% SATA as of right now. edit: I've been burned on a rebate only once, and it was a no-name on a CD-R bundle. Generally, if you follow all the instructions, you get your rebate. I never shy from MIRs | ||
|
red.venom
United States4651 Posts
On June 26 2007 15:59 .kaz wrote: If you plan on spending over 1k, just buy a factory made PC and beef it up with a nice video card and some new memory, it'll run any game you want it too, and its a lot easier. This is a good way to get horrible crap components(mobo, hard drives) and build a real shitbox of a pc. If you KNOW how to build a pc, there is no reason to pay for anything premade. Just get all components and assemble like voltron~ Just in my opinion of course; ] I know it would be easier to do it that way, but it really isnt hard to assemble a pc to begin with after your first time(which can be pretty daunting though). | ||
|
CharlieMurphy
United States22895 Posts
On June 26 2007 19:10 teh leet newb wrote: 1. I've gotten pretty much every rebate successfully redeemed in the last like 2 years. 2. That PSU looks like it's from a POS manufacturer. Get a quality power supply like a 500W Fortron, Seasonic, or Silverstone, just to name a few. 3. If you want a CRT, check around locally. I just got a flat screen unopened 17" eMachines CRT for $10. Best of all, you don't need to pay to ship a monster monitor. 4. Get either a 2900XT or 8800GTS. Those are great buys at the moment. The 2900XT is still kinda new, so not too much info is known about it. It seems pretty good in the benchmarks that have been released though, especially for the price. PS: Don't listen to Izzycraft, he/she has pretty much no idea what he's talking about. POS? piece of shit? No I got quality advice from a customer at Fry's about that PSU and he actually bought the same one. I heard Antec and Thermaltake were the better Manufactureers for PSUs. He was saying shit about voltage being and important thing as much as the Wattage. I have a 17" crt , its too small expecially when I get my leet setup all together. 8800gts is what like 300$ ? thats way over my limit. Whats the deal with video cards? Like whats the difference between the chipsets PNY,BFG,Leadtek,EVGA,XFX,ASUS,ATI, etc etc. Which ones are good and which ones are bad? IS any other hardware supposed to drop in price besides the CPUs soon? asfaik these are best: INTEL > AMD ATI = Geforce EVGA,nvidia GFX cards MOBO? Maxtor,seagate,raptor HDs antec,thermaltake PSUs Corsair,OCZ RAM Why or Why Aren't these good or better than others? | ||
|
chiflutz
Romania1025 Posts
2. That PSU looks like it's from a POS manufacturer. Get a quality power supply like a 500W Fortron, Seasonic, or Silverstone, just to name a few. Listen to the man on that, he knows. Antec and Thermaltake have great cases, PSUs are just 'good'. And voltage > wattage (importance-wise). PNY, BFG, Leadtek and so on aren't chipset names. They provide solutions (read products) that incorporate similar chipsets provided by nVidia or ATI (basically the only two competitors in the video card market atm). Taking the 8800 series from nVidia as an example, cards offered by names like Leadtek and XFX use that reference chipset and modify it as necessary. That's where the extensions come in (i.e. GTS, GTX, XT, XTX, w/e), they can be used to determine whether that card uses a 'lite' or 'extreme' version of the same chipset. Prices are a way to compare, but not always. Intel > AMD indeed, at least for now ATI <> nVidia - no idea about the latest ATI series, the 2900 I usually go with Asus for mobos, please post if you have better ideas, I'm planning on buying a new rig in a while Seagate bought Maxtor about 6 months ago and made it their 'low-end' division. Cheaper, less durable hdds, basically. Raptor is the market name for Western Digital's 10k rpm line, afaik PSUs - read above I used to prefer Corsair RAM, heard OCZ is great, no DDR DIMM I've ever used failed on me so far, don't really care about 'squeezing the last drop of performance' out of stuff. Experts, please advise. Edit: Oh yeah, and I was gonna tell you not to listen to IzzyCraft, but teh leet newb beat me to it. | ||
|
CharlieMurphy
United States22895 Posts
As it stands now I'm agreeing with that because my 3 1/2 year old comp is an ASUS mobo and it died last year. I've yet to replace it. | ||
|
TheMusiC
United States1054 Posts
as far as ram goes, there're a lot of companies that put quality products out. corsair, ocz, crucial, patriot, mushkin, super talent are the main contenders here. again what memory you buy should depend on whether or not you plan to overclock, as some sticks overclock better than others. sometimes you'll have to go into the BIOS to manually set ram speeds/frequencies/voltages, as some mobos will auto-detect and default the memory to speeds much much lower than what they're listed at. | ||
|
HeadBangaa
United States6512 Posts
On June 26 2007 22:21 CharlieMurphy wrote: I've heard that Asus is not that good compared to gigabit or abit. Whats the differences? As it stands now I'm agreeing with that because my 3 1/2 year old comp is an ASUS mobo and it died last year. I've yet to replace it. To choose a motherboard, you have to choose a chipset. It's not linear; the answer will be different depending on your needs (like mentioned previously, gonna install Linux or no?, etc). P965 chipset is economical, and Intel claims it has the best Core 2 Duo support. Their 975 chipset, though older, performs better in many benchmarks with Core 2 processors than the P965. The nVidia offerings (650i, 680i) are expensive and good performers, but not the best option for you. I'm not familiar with the other chipsets right now. I'm running with the P965 on a Gigabyte mobo, currently. It's fine except for the Linux caveat I mentioned earlier (which is probably resolved already). ps - I use ASUS boards often as possible; by far the least failure rate, in my experience. They had many offerings with the 975X chipset a couple months ago in the $200-$250 range on newegg. Gigabyte had a bunch of P965 boards for ~$100, and they're a very good brand, too. | ||
|
sc0rchedst0rm
Ireland176 Posts
I'm not too familiar with Motherboards... personally I try to use a reputable brand, and then just look for features. For example, I got the XFX 680i Lite mobo to match my XFX GPU, and because it has 2 full speed 16x PCI-Es, but thats out of your budget. If you're atall interested in overclocking, be sure to get a mobo with multipliers and voltage settings unlocked. My buddy made the mistake of buying a cheap board and then found his multiplier was locked at below 7x, so he can't even get the full speed out of his CPU. I would suggest 680W is WAY more than you need now I think about it. For me, my electricity bill (the great leveler) constrains me to about 500W considering how much I use my PC. Seasonic M12 has 4 12v rails and good wattage, and modular cables, so it's pretty much guaranteed solid. Don't know about price, might again be out of your budget. Whatever happens DON'T fall into the trap of thinking a PSU is a PSU is a PSU. They can make a HUGE difference to stability, performance, etc. Maybe try S12-E or just basic S12 (I'm a Seasonic fan so I don't know much about other brands) If the E6600 is dropping in price that'd be the new "best-value" but it'd still probs be out of your budget. If you don't mind dropping 300MHz you could look at E6320 instead of E6420. OCZ Gold or Platinum, or Corsair XMS2 would definatly be the way to go, like I already said. DON'T go for a single 2GB stick. Always match up pairs of similar sticks. Raptors HDDs are unbelievable in RAID, or even single. But they're smaller storage for greater cost. If you're really budget constrained you might be better going cheaper HDD and putting more money towards GPU or CPU. | ||
|
FatRine
406 Posts
320mb GTS 2gig of pc6400 ram (ocz,corsair) Corsair 520hx powersupply, easily the most priceworthy top of the line powersupply on the market right now. 520w is plenty for pretty much all builds except those with 2 gfx cards. by the way, 7600gt is a shitty card. Not worth getting unless you got like a P4 or something. | ||
|
sc0rchedst0rm
Ireland176 Posts
However I think budget is contraining 320 GTS and the E6600, so corners must be cut. 7600GT isn't "super" by any means, but it will allow mediumish settings on many games (probably not Crisis or such like), but it IS cheap, and when you have to stay under $1000 an 8800 GTS can be pushing the boat out a bit. | ||
|
notdragoon
66 Posts
| ||
| ||
