ok my last machine was a 700 mhz intel/celeron which i built and ive finally trashed. im now going for 1.8 gigz AMD/Athlon machine using these parts:
"SY-KT600 Dragon Plus v1.0" made by soyo for my motherboard
and a "Athlon XP 2500+" for my processor
also my ram is 1 gig of Corsair ram.
anyways can some people give me some tips or tell me some mistakes that newbies commonly make so i wont make them.
Board
Board is one I've not heard of. IMO ASUS makes the best mobo's. I'm solely an ASUS user.
Good RAM though I prefer Mushkin or Crucial.
CPU
Perhaps you might want to up your CPU to a Barton core - Athlon XP 3200+ . The price difference is neglible for the performance you will gain.
Video card
I recommend anything by NVidia manufactured by LeadTek. LeadTek cards are not cheap but they are some of the best....IMO.
Sound card
Audigy 2 or something should do. Also most ASUS boards have the NForce 2 chipset on them which has very good onboard sound. Sound doesn't really matter to me because quite frankly I haven't noticed any difference in a long time between cards. EAX is good, but only if the programmer's use it in their game. If they don't...too bad. There are some new DirectX drivers from Creative that auto-incorporate EAX into the function calls...but again no major diff for me.
Drives
I recommend anything by Western Digital or Maxtor. I've had both crash but both are very fast, and every drive will crash eventually when it wears out. I'd stay away from SATA drives as I've not seen enough of a performance gain to warrant the cost involved. Steer clear of Seagate drives because quite simply they suck. You want a 7200 RPM drive. There are some 5200? RPM drives that are good to.
Monitor
Sony is the best, but the most costly. Samsung is a good monitor that won't make you go bankrupt. I've had several NECs and all of them have had problems with either color or tearing -> due to crappy cheap power supplies.
Keyboard
Hey, as long as it types....who cares?
CPU fan
Get the Thermaltake fan that is designed for your CPU of choice. Thermaltake has some of the best cooling fans I've seen.
The rest should be self-explanatory.
I had a Soyo board one time that was utter crap. Of course, that was back in the days of Pentium II, so they might've changed just a tad since then
Corsair makes good RAM. Just make sure if you are overclocking that you get a good speed of RAM, say >PC3200.
As for the HDD, I would most definitely buy a Maxtor. Stay away from Seagate, my friend got one not too long ago and it stopped working the first week he got it. I've heard a lot of people with troubles with Western Digital too, but hey, they're cheap. I would definitely use Maxtor 7200 RPM, not a 5400. I got a 5400 in my comp in my room and hard drive reads are horrible slow. If you have the money, I think 9600? RPM aren't too expensive. Although, they are out of my budget.
As for graphics, I really don't know what to tell you. I've owned a few nVidia cards, and I liked the older ones, but I don't really care for the newer ones, like the GeForce FX line, or the GeForce 4 MX line. GF4 Ti is the last series of chips that I liked. If you can find a good cheap ATI card, I'd get it. Just don't get anything below a 9600 (I think that's their newest midrange).
you say its utter crap because why? what didnt you like about it.Originally Posted by bludstayne
I had a Soyo board one time that was utter crap. Of course, that was back in the days of Pentium II, so they might've changed just a tad since then
as for the hard drives i got 2 western digitals i think everything i have is fine.
btw my case that i got for it just came in the mail today theres one part that im not positive on what its for its hard to explain it, ill try to get a picture of it with my dads digital camera.
ok i got the machine setup today, the termometer for it says 93 degrees "F" (farienheight however you spell it) i was thinking, is this too hot? or could it be its measuring temperature at a realyl hot spot thats much hotter than other stuff.
whoops, thats my old name i coudlnt get it to logon the other machine for some reason.
anyways, just wondering, on the soud card theres a lineout, speaker and mic, i wanna plug my speakers into the speaker jack and my bass amp into the linout to make a kind of ghetto sound system. but it doesnt seem the linout makes any sound. i thought lineout was to you sound go out that isnt volume controlled?
I've had my Barton 2500 running at 2.2Ghz with the stock fan and just barely a temp difference. I'm not sure if you'll be able to push the 3200 the same.Perhaps you might want to up your CPU to a Barton core - Athlon XP 3200+ .
Is that a CPU temperature or case temp? Either way it's good.
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