New Computer

[Les_Worm]

I think its time to get a new computer. I have a desktop in the basement but its a POS. I do all my poker and school work on my laptop. Its nice but I'd like to have a new desktop. I am thinking of maybe putting one together but seem to be overwhelmed by all the different places to buy parts online. Anyone direct me to a couple good sites to build your own? Also if there are any places you can buy a system online that isn't too high priced let me know. Thanks

Worm

[lonnie]

I've had excellent service from http://www.tigerdirect.com

I've done quite a few of their rebate deals and gotten them back promptly. They run some really good specials.

[mike4066]

for just parts? check out www.pricewatch.com

or dude get a dell haha

[BoondockSaint]

Id put it together yourself piece by piece and get everything from newegg. They have the best prices and best shipping and everything for build your own shit. This is what i recommend and let me tell you it fuckin screams and beats 2600$ dell XPS system cause ive benchmarked em side by side with my friends who did pay 2600 for his.

Asus k8v se deluxe mobo

Athlon 64 3400+ (i have a 3200+ that beat his shit but the prices have come down enough where I would get a 3400+)

Graphics card your choice but dont go lower than a radeon 9800 pro if u want it to be kick ass (as low as about 200 now I think)

Sound card also your choice but I recommend an audigy 2zs platinum with the live drive. Not that big of a deal what u choose though. The motherboard has built in dolby 5.1 with optical out anyway so u really dont need anything.

Ram get the corsair 1GB twin kit that comes with 2x512mb sticks and is pc3200. its about 154 i think. Dont get expensive ass shit thats like 300 cause the difference in performance is nihl and it doesnt even come almost close to justifying the price. If ur gonna upgrade anything make it the graphics card.

Just get a western digital hard drive ATA with 8MB buffer or use your old one whatever size you want. Get SATA if u have a decent amount of computer knowledge cause u have to do some special shit. All the other shit is real easy.

Um nothin else I can think of. Just about any case will do but dont go too cheap. Get a decent thermaltake powersupply or one of the other major manufacturers some they usually come with shit ones.


Now I realize you probably arent gonna get anything I just said but seriously it is a phat ass machine and can play doom 3 with ultra everything and same with half life 2. Its a very nice setup. Shouldnt cost you more than like 700-800 maybe as little as 600. I got a lot of added shit that took it up past 1000 but u dont need it. They have nice NEC dvd burners for about 62 bucks. If you have any questions ill be happy to answer em.

[BoondockSaint]

Oh and mike was probably being sarcastic with the dell stuff but they are nice machines and I have owned 2 and never had a problem with either of em. Its just i get a new one every year and this time choose all my own shit. Just dont upgrade anything with a dell - downgrade it all then get it and upgrade it yourself and it still comes out way cheaper. As long as you dont max shit out it aint bad deal. They screw you on the upgrades. And dont buy any extended warranty either. Thats a scam they never break - at least not that i have ever heard of.

[Les_Worm]

Boondock, I'll definately check out that site and I may have some questions for ya in the new few weeks. I gotta get it before Jan. 10 though b/c I'll need it for school b/c I may give my laptop to my sister. Thats right around the price I was looking for though, thanks.

[Les_Worm]

I should be able to pick out everything alright except for the motherboard. I was looking here ( http://www.newegg.com/app/manufact.a...alog=22&DEPA=1 ) but there is too much there for me to have any clue what to get. Any suggestions?

[BoondockSaint]

yeah just type in k8v - wait ill find it and get a link

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...131-490&depa=0

K its that right there. Now if you are plannin on SATA from right off the bat and dont know much about computers dont get this one cause i need to do some special stuff with preloading drivers or something. If you are using old drives or IDE drives like just about every drive in exsistence today it is a flawless install. Even has a special audio thing build in where if u screw anything up where it cant boot this robot actually tells you exactly what it is wrong - its like CPU FAN ERROR - or CPU ERROR (when you dont have the pins right) or other crap. I happened to be unfortunate to have a slight pin bend in my athlon and of course squished the thing flat on the processor and had to fix it with a razor blade and thank god it worked. Make sure that crap is lined up and drops in real smooth before u pull that lever down to put in the processor.


But everything is 100% plug in play(except SATA drives) and u just pop in the windows XP CD the first time u push the power button and its a brand new comp.

[lonnie]

Be careful with Pricewatch. They are selling a lot of refurbs and OEM models that don't have the same warranty and have a much higher fail rate IMO. A lot of the Pricewatch vendors are a little shady.

Having said that, you CAN get the best deals at pricewatch. I still buy stuff there from time to time, but prefer to get high fail parts like HDD's and CDR drives elsewhere. Do a little research into the individual vendors first.

[HeavyP]

New Egg is definitley the best place to buy the majority of your parts. Great prices, very fast service and very reliable.

[Aceofone]

I've had excellent service from http://www.tigerdirect.com

I've done quite a few of their rebate deals and gotten them back promptly. They run some really good specials.

Carefull w/ the tigerdirect, they sell alot of refurbs, non-disclosure agreements prevent me from mentioning names, but some systems are simply rebranded *cough*rhymeswith dewitt slackard *cough* systems, if you popped the case you might find a lot of proprietary hardware that doesn't belong.

[BoondockSaint]

Hey les I forgot to tell you if you get the motherboard I showed you in the link make sure you get a socket 754 ahtlon 64 processor and not a 939. A 939 is fine to get if you want one since they go into higher gigahrtz but you need a different mobo for em. They make the 3400+ in both the 754 and the 939 so make sure u get the right one. It has it towards the bottom of their descriptions youll see it. THey are about 220 I think. You can get 3000+ for like 140 or something I think which probably is the best deal all around but I like the power myself so I usually dont get the best deal at the time. 3000+ would still scream though compared to what you are used to for sure.

[mike4066]

I was pretty much joking about the dell thing until i thought about it some more last night.

If your into re-furbs dell sells them.

http://www1.us.dell.com/content/prod...=04&l=en&s=bsd

Click on desktops then "dell outlet" You can get a capable computer for a decent price if you catch it at the right time.

[evilevilmatt]

Looking at this stuff makes me want to upgrade my system. Well I guess all i would keep would be the harddrive and A/V cards. I really want to get one of athlon 64s. So now I'm wondering the downside of getting an OEM processor. Is it only the warrenty that differs?

[BoondockSaint]

Dude the difference in price in an OEM and retail is like 5 bucks and usually less. It is not worth going with OEMs cause you dont get the heat sink and fan and the athlon 64s come with pretty damn decent ones that you will probably change. It will cost you more in your own processor fan and heatsink if you get the OEM. RETAIL.

And I agree with mike about dell except the refurb part. Dont get refurbs but dell is all about getting the stuff at the right time. About a month ago they had a promo a freakin fu*kin 19" flat panel and it was their highest end one they sold for like 500 bucks. It was free shipping too and come out to an insane deal for a 3ghz new p4 processors (not the old 3ghz cause they did make new versions) it came out to like a smiggin over 900 bucks so you were getting the comp for like 400.

[evilevilmatt]

That makes sense. Ok, so no OEM processor. I may end up changing my video card after all. Its a 64MB, was next to top of the line 2 years ago. I see a bunch of reasonable 256MB ones on newegg. Any suggestions on that stuff? What to avoid/What is a good to look for?

[DavSimon]

Another good place to serch for good prices is Tom's Hardware: http://www.tomshardware.com/

I also like Tiger Direct for parts and pieces not whole systems, got my 19" Sceptre LCD from them last year for $399...pretty decent monitor for a very good price. New Egg is excellent as well...just do the legwork and compare prices and you can put together a great system for a little work and very little money.

[LeFou]

.. but dell is all about getting the stuff at the right time. About a month ago they had a promo a freakin fu*kin 19" flat panel and it was their highest end one they sold for like 500 bucks

Yeah, I got a one-day special on my new laptop from Dell -- $750 off a $1500 machine. I can't actually rag on Dell, but was bummed to find one of the DIMM backs went bad within a few days.

Also I asked the guy on the phone if I could recover my work using one of my LinuxLive CDs and he basically said "no way" and that I had to reinstall. This was false; it was a piece of cake.

I find that support folk 'round the world basically hang up on you when the word Linux comes out of your mouth. Alas.

[BoondockSaint]

That makes sense. Ok, so no OEM processor. I may end up changing my video card after all. Its a 64MB, was next to top of the line 2 years ago. I see a bunch of reasonable 256MB ones on newegg. Any suggestions on that stuff? What to avoid/What is a good to look for?

Well I have an all in wonder radeon 9800 pro. Dont worry about ton about the onboard memory. In all the tests the difference between a 9800 pro 128mb and a 256mb was like almost none. Definetely not enough to justify any more than 10 bucks more. It was just a few frames a sec here and there. The all in wonder only comes in 128mb cause all the extra shit on the card like video capture and and all the radio tv tuner record shit. It outscores the 9800 pro though and keeps up with the XT pretty damn close(it has its GPU at slightly higher clock rate along with the ram also I believe. Its like 235 at newegg right now - i got mine off some dumb ass brand new sealed like probably 3-4 months ago on amazon marketplace for 224. You may want to check back there.

But these are the comparisons on my machine and my friends dell that was 2600.

Processor
Athlon 64 3200+ ------- P4 3.2ghz or 3.4ghz cant remember exactly
1 gig 2x512 pc3200 ram ------ 4 fu*kin gigs(he is a retard I know)1gigx4
Radeon all in wonder 9800 pro -------- Radeon 9800XT 256MB
IDE 8mb buffer WD hard drives ------ Serial ATA drives of some sort
3dmark2001 score Mine 20,100 something --- His 18400 something. Higher is better.

Dont think any other equipment of his is relevant. Its a DELL XPS with those big blue cases. Looks incredibly phat its just a rip off in performance for 2600. He obviously screwed himself when he probably paid 500 bucks to get 4 gigs of ram. He wanted max everything though so thats what he got.

[BoondockSaint]

.. but dell is all about getting the stuff at the right time. About a month ago they had a promo a freakin fu*kin 19" flat panel and it was their highest end one they sold for like 500 bucks

Yeah, I got a one-day special on my new laptop from Dell -- $750 off a $1500 machine. I can't actually rag on Dell, but was bummed to find one of the DIMM backs went bad within a few days.

Also I asked the guy on the phone if I could recover my work using one of my LinuxLive CDs and he basically said "no way" and that I had to reinstall. This was false; it was a piece of cake.

I find that support folk 'round the world basically hang up on you when the word Linux comes out of your mouth. Alas.

Damn that sucks. I have never had any bad experience with their gear. It wasnt a refurb was it. I will never buy refurbs. I also never bought one of their laptops so I dont know how they are.

And never even ask those retards come on you should know that. 99% of the time u always know more than tech support. Those guys are so retarded. The only cool tech dude I ever got was one from my broadband provider cause they outsourced it to these geeks right inside their house and we were talkin about how we own everyone at CS and rule the world. It was a ping issue I was getting like 3mb downstream but my ping was like 400 and i couldnt figure out what the f**k was goin on.

The first thing I did with my dell though and always do is format the hard drive clean and install my own shit. I hate how they feel the need to add so much extra junk on their stuff.

[Les_Worm]

Boondock:

I think I am going to get this cpu. http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproduc...103-501&DEPA=1

What mobo would you suggest for this? I don't think I'll ever get a sata hard drive so I'm not worried about that. Also that other mobo you suggested is capable for up to 3 gigs of ram. I think that may be a bit much b/c I'll never put that much into it. What ya think?

[DavSimon]

Mother boards are fairly inexpensive, you may not use 3gigs of ram this year, but sooner or later as things progress you may need it. 2 years ago I never thought I would want or need 1gig of ram...low and behold, I am considering adding another 512 to take mine to 1.5gig now. Although I may just move up to the Athlon 64...and new mobo, I didn't realize the prices had come down so much....very reasonable!
The big benefit of building it yourself is you can save money...and upgrade easily. I will use my same case, power supply DVD drives, hard drives...easy upgrade and now it seems cheap too.....just what I need right before Christmas - upgraditis.

[Les_Worm]

I'm not really into gaming or anything so I don't really need a high end graphics card or a buttload of ram. Poker is about the extend of my games. For everything else, I play PS2.

[BoondockSaint]

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...103-486&depa=1 I would get this processor instead. Its the exact same except a different socket (754) so you can use the motherboard that I recommended before(only one I have used to build from scratch so I'm not sure which one to get on the other ones) and its 7 bucks cheaper. Yeah the 3000+ is a great choice for the best value. Even if you did care about games it would still tear shit up.

If there is a specific reason you want a 939 socket processor I can find one but I'm thinkin you just picked it because it was the 3000+ that u saw first.

Oh and about the ram that has nothin to do with the price of the motherboard thats just about the standard now if not 4 gigs. They have all have tons of expansion but just cause u have it doesnt mean you have to use it. 2 512mb sticks will do you fine then if u ever want to drop another gig in there you can (which u never will if u arent into gaming and like video editing and graphics arts and shit).

[Les_Worm]

If there is a specific reason you want a 939 socket processor I can find one but I'm thinkin you just picked it because it was the 3000+ that u saw first.

Thats exactly true. It was the first one I saw. I am going to get the 754 instead and the mobo you first recommended.

[Fnord]

1600x1200

nuff said.

[BoondockSaint]

Fnords statement has nothin to do with what your buying - u need a 19 inch monitor for that but all graphics cards you buy will let you run it that high incase you were confused.

[BoondockSaint]

And since u dont do gaming i would recommend something like a 9600XT cause they range from about 130-160 and are really good cards. I upgraded from a 9600pro which is basically the same thing and it was still a very very nice card.

[DavSimon]

Not all 19" monitors are capable of that resolution...particularly LCD's (unless they are very expensive ones)

I am in the market for a new monitor (at least interested in looking for a new one) I have a 19" LCD that does 1280x1024...I really want one that will do 1600x1200..Considered a 23" and over Thanksgiving looked at a 30" LCD TV/Monitor....What are you using Fnord?? I really would prefer LCD...I don't want to give up the real estate to a large CRT again. I can shop around....but I was wondering if anyone had a nice monitor they want to brag on.

[BoondockSaint]

Ah yeah shit I knew that I just wasnt thinking he would get a LCD flat panel. Yeah if you want it that big get a flatscreen 19" normal CRT monitor.

[Les_Worm]

I'm going to get a CRT monitor, Just because I have the room for it and saving money is always good since I'm in college.

[FyrFytr998]

I know it's not a build it yourself PC, but I just bought a new Alienware Area 51-m 7700.

3.6ghz Intel CPU
2gigs of Dual Channel DDR RAM
60gb 7200RPM Hitachi HD
8X Dual Layer DVD R/RW
256mb NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GO

I cannot wait for it to arrive!! Merry Christmas to me. :P

It cost an arm and a testicle, but I can't lug a desk top around from station to station.

[Spook]

Whenever I'm looking at building a new PC I always check out what http://www.sharkyextreme.com/ is reccomending in their "Buyer Guides" Just scroll down the left side of the site and look for them. There are usually 3... Value - High End - Extreme.

The "Value System" is usually more than adequate for people's needs and works well as a gaming or all-around system.

And since more often than not a person wont be needing many of the things on the list by using old things from their old system (operating system, monitor, maybe CD drive, etc.) You can often pick them up for almost half of the budget they use.

When it comes to purchasing stuff, I use http://www.newegg.com almost exclusively. Sure you might be able to find things a bit cheaper somwhere else... but these guys are fast, reliable, and have a fabulous selection.

Many of the places you find on the net are just run out of somebody's garage and you could litterally be throwing your money away. The peace of mind is more than worth the few extra pennies I "might" save somewhere else.

[Fortune 500]

Another vote for new egg. Excellent service.

[Les_Worm]

Another vote for new egg. Excellent service.

Yeah, Im getting all my stuff from newegg. I''m just trying to get the final pieces together.

[zenbitz]

This may not be applicable to you situation, but I have had good sucess with the following method:

Find one of those little shops in a convient location that builds machines. There is 1 near my apt. that has a top end gaming rig (no monitor) for about 1000 (maybe short on ram...).

Basically, these is maybe 20-25% more than putting it together for yourself, and maybe 10% more than buying on line BUT if it's some how bolluxed or breaks, you can get it fixed WITHOUT shipping it anywhere.