Buying computer hardware

[RedXVII]

Im going to be building myself a PC soon for the first time to replace my old box (i think, providing i have enough cash). Hopefully, itll be a pretty decent gaming machine. Im pretty nervous about it, cause it might mean paying for a component, then me screwing it up somehow - and wasting my hard earned cash.

Anyone know anywhere i can get good advice and information regarding how to build a pc with components only. Ive used/programmed computers quite a bit but never really built one, and more often then not i dont understand alot of what the numbers on and type of componets mean. so if anyone has any tips/tutorials or places i can find them please let me know.

Secondly, in your opinion,

is it better to buy the outrageously expensive hardware in hope that it lasts a very long time
- OR -
is it better to buy really cheap components and keep upgrading

Thanks alot guys
RedXVII  :U

[asmfan]

As for me i would suggest you to wait some time till 2 new platforms appear from AMD - AM2 and from intel - Core 2 (Conroe)... Because you dont find them till late summer/ autumn...
AnandTech.com, XtremeSystems.org etc.

[asmfan]

Also my other advice- buy expensive motherboard and cheap processor. It is always easier/cheaper to mov:) to a new processor in some period of time than to a new platform totally changing everything. Also look at new MS Vista's hardware requirements to know the minimum for the nearest future...

[Mark Jones]

Red, there's tons of mainboard manufacturers out there. Whatever you do, don't buy a cheap mainboard! When I first started building boxes I bought a cheap board and had nothing but problems with it. Then I tried an IWILL board, which was okay. Then a Gigabit board, better. Last board is a Soltek and it is great. They are my favorite board vendor now, check them out: http://www.soltek.com.tw/

You can find an unlimited number of system building tips on the 'net. Google it.

[P1]

Always build to your current situation of need.  In the end, the amount of money you have, will over-rule the technical aspect of your choices.  I find there's never enough.

Regards,  P1  :8)

[MichaelW]

I'll third the recommendation to start with a good motherboard, regardless of what other components you select. And in my view the key to selecting a good motherboard is to first select a manufacturer that has a reputation for producing reliable trouble-free products. I have had very good experiences with Asus.

[hutch--]

I agree with the idea of making sure you use a class motherboard as well. I long ago learnt that a fast processor alone is not good enough, bus speed, memory speed and a whole pile of oher factors effect how fast a machine will be generally. My 2 PIVs both use reasonably high end Intel boards and they have been glitch free every since the machines were built.

The AMD I own uses a cheap WinFast board with built in video, ethernet and sound card and the video locks up from time to time and I have never been able to track it down but it usually happens when running a browser. When I can be bothered I will buy a higher end cheapie AGP*8 video card for it as it is a reasonably good machine for most tings apart from the occasional video lockup.

I would advise against boards that have built in sound and video as they are rarely ever any good and the seperate cards you can buy easily outperform them and they do not cost all that much if you are careful. I run 128 meg WinFast video cards on both PIVs and they seem to be able to run anything well. As long as it does not have built in video, a server board for a single processor is usually a good place to start as they tend to be built for high data IO.

[Ghirai]

I suggest an asus nforce (go for the best model you can afford), the're great :U

[Mark Jones]

Asus (video card) was another brand I tried. Pretty good, but driver updates were slow and sporadic and only lasted for a year. Ended up using NVIDIA reference drivers and losing some of the cool card features. It was also a video capture card, and the NVIDIA WDM drivers didn't work as good as the OEM drivers, which was really annoying. That was part of the reason I jumped from the Athlon to Athlon XP. My current slot-A board from Soltek however is over three years old and they are still making BIOS updates for it. :)

Also keep in mind that mainboards, video cards, CD-R's and DVD drives often have update-able FLASH BIOSes. Check the manufacturer's pages every-so-often for updates. Usually this will have to be done from a true DOS window, so keep a DOS boot disk handy.

[RedXVII]

Thanks for all your advice. I will go for a high quality motherboard from one of the companies you lot have mentioned.

Does anyone know a good place to get hardware from? (Im in the UK btw) I get the feeling ebuyer is good, but its not updated with some of the more latest models (they are lagging by about 3 months), which makes me kinda worried.

Cheers  :U

[Ossa]

Hi,

I've always used Micro Direct: http://www.microdirect.co.uk/

Ossa

[dioxin]

Go for good quality, branded components throughout.
I like Asus motherboards. Is that 3 recommendations for Asus? Must be something in it.
Best value is to go for something that was state of the art about a year ago, that way it's still very good and has a long, useful life ahead but it no longer has the premium price associated with the brand new stuff.

For the main components (Motherboard, RAM and CPU) I no longer plan with upgrades in mind. I'd treat them as a single entity and when it's no longer up to the job, I'd replace all of them together.

Paul.

[P1]

RedXVII,

Just before you buy, run the list of components with price, by us for a peer review.  You be surprised at what we can get for the value.

Regards,  P1  :8)

[Mark Jones]

Paul, that's my motto also. Replace the whole box every x number of years.

You could also compare prices at PriceWatch.com. I'm not sure how many UK vendors are listed but it's worth a look even just to compare prices.

[RedXVII]

As P1 suggested, im gonna run this by everyone. I figured i should go for the best of yesterdays technology as usual. Like, the gamecube and playstation 2's nowdays are mega cheap - i remember when they were blowing holes in peoples pockets.

Right, heres my shopping list, ill update it when people make suggestions/i find out more.

Heres where im at so far... (all links are ebuyer, but its just for the components, ill look around later for cheaper parts)
AMD Athlon 64 3700 CPU Skt 939
Sapphire Radeon X850 XT 256M GDDR3 PCI-E
   And from that, i had a wee look at the 939 ASUS cards, im not get SLI so i came to this board...
Asus A8N-E SKT 939 NFORCE 4 AUDIO LAN PCI-Express ATX
Creative SoundBlaster Audigy 4 PCI Soundcard
  With this, i can get the OEM for much cheaper, but seeing as i dont know anything about system building, i didnt know if the OEM came with any of those wee wires you have to attatch in the box. Can anyone advise me if this does actually need those wee wires?
  After that, i want 2gB of the fastest RAM i could get my hands on. But i got confused looking for "DDR400" when the words "PC3200" and "DDR2" popped up.
  Then i went to look at the hard drive. And dont have the foggiest clue what the difference between a IDE, SATA, SCSI drive types.
  Also, can anyone advise what kind of power supply ill need? (how the hell are you meant to know this?)


Thanks for all advice so far!