Building a Computer from the Ground Up

In My Humble Opinion
1

Everyone knows that the cheapest way to get a brand new, state of the art computer is to build it yourself, piece by piece, right?

Okay. For all you techno-geeks… imagine I’m giving you a budget of $1200-$1300. Build me the best computer that you believe money can buy for that amount. I want speed, storage… it will be used for everything from video & music editing to game playing to casual web surfing. So be thrifty, but buy the best you think is worth the money… with enough left over for, hopefully, a nice flat panel LCD. :wink: Show me the specs and tell me why you think each selection is a good idea, because this may just become a reality very very soon.

Thank y’all :smiley:

2

Actually, I do not believe the cheapest way to get a new pc is to piece it together. Some prices: These are from Fry’s website because I cannot find Sundays ads. Note, the following aren’t the latest greatest systems.

A+GPB P4-ATX250W Power Supply $24.99

Intel Pentium 4 2.4AGHz, 1MB 533MHz FSB Socket 478 $124.00

Abit AI7 i865PE ATX Socket 478 Mainboard $106.00

ATI 64MB AGP Video Card with RADEON 9000 3D Chip Windows $79.99

CaseArt Black Marble Matrix Full Tower ATX Case $129.99

CLABS AUDIGY 2 ZS SOUND CARD $99.99

MEMOREX 52X32X52X CDRW INTERNAL DRIVE $49.99

3.5" 1.44MB INTERNAL FLOPPY DRIVE BOXED UNIT $12.99

Maxtor 120GB 6Y120L0 Diamond Max $89.99
Total $717.93 excluding monitor, RAM and some other stuff. Monitors are ~130.00 for a cheap 17’ CRT. Flat panels are ~250.00(refurbished) and up.

From Best Buys Sunday newspaper add. (And Best Buy isn’t the best buy)

Intel Pentium 4 3.2 gigahertz
512 RAM
200 gig HD
DVDRW drive
16" .25 dot pitch monitor

Total 999.97 after rebates. (It didn’t have specs on the sound/video cards)

Which leaves a difference of 282.04 for you to buy ram, a monitor, keyboard, mouse, network adapter/modem and anything else I forgot.

Fry’s has better prices on Thursday and Sunday and there are way cheaper stores than Best Buy but this should be close enough for an idea.

I’ve built ~30 computers for people over the years and I am not going to bother anymore. I don’t think you save enough to matter. Especially if you factor in your own time.

Slee

3

I usually build my own and the time I broke down and bought one (from Compaq) I despised the thing and it didn’t last nearly as long as I thought it should have.

FWIW, these are the things I usually do.
I usually get a roomy case and the largest power supply available. Roomy because it is easier to work inside, there is plenty of room for add-ons, and things tend to run a bit cooler. I get an Intel motherboard and get it mounted in the case. Mounting the mobo isn’t really that difficult, but it is time consuming. I get an Intel mobo because they tend (IMHO) to be more reliable.
Get the fastest processor I can afford. Buying a slower processor will save money but it is at the expense of longevity on the machine.
LIkewise, max out on memory. It doesn’t have to be the fastest possible but the more you have the less time the CPU will spend on disk-paging.
Graphics card. Probably the fastest are the NVIDIA cards. Good for games, good for video work. If you can afford the one with 128MB of memory it is a good investment. The most reliable card I have ever found are Matrox. They are not the fastest or cheapest but they work well and there are damn few driver issues. I’ve always liked that.
Sound cards. I have a home stereo hooked to my PC and haven’t really been able to tell the difference between high-end cards and those built into the mobo. For plain stereo, an older Soundblaster card or the built-in sound card on the mobo will work fine. If you need surround-sound or the like then you’ll have to get a later model.
Disk drives are getting cheaper every day. I try to use the highest RPM drive I can find for my system drive and slower HDs for data storage. I usually get Western Digital Caviar drives.
For a CD ROM drive, just about anything will work. I’ve used Phillips, LG, Creative, etc. and really haven’t been able to tell much difference. Putting a DVD drive on a PC is more trouble than it’s worth for me. I’ve added one a time or two but the pain of driver issues, region coding, and lack of speed has never been worth being able to watch movies on my PC. It is easier to just get the video in MPG format and stash it on the hard drive.
Something that is non-critical but very handy is a wireless KB and mouse. I got one just a few months ago and frankly love the things.
Last but not least is the monitor. My old 21 inch CRT monitor just died and I upgraded to a Samsung flat panel display. The thing is great from a space standpoint but isn’t nearly as good as the CRT monitor. The resolution isn’t as good and the speed isn’t so hot either. If I had to do it over again I would buy a large CRT-type monitor.

FWIW, this is what I do. Good luck to you.

Regards

Testy

4

All prices estimates from , Newegg , which is in my opinion the best place to buy computer parts.

CPU Athlon 64 3000+ Retail (includes HSF) $165

Motherboard ABIT “KV8 Pro” K8T800 Pro $99 - note this board includes decent onboard sound, if it doesn’t work for you then look at other soundcards.

Video Card SAPPHIRE ATI RADEON 9800 PRO $197

RAM Corsair Value Select, PC3200, two 512MB sticks $157

Hard Drive Western Digital 160GB 7200RPM SATA - $100

Optical Drive Lite-On 12X DVD+/-RW Drive $64

Power Supply Thermaltake W0014 Silent Purepower 480W $55

Operating SystemMicrosoft Windows XP Home Edition $87

Caseinkworld Black/Silver ATX Mid Tower Case -$25.50 - Note cases are more personal items, I would go out to a store and look at them before buying; this is more of a place holder, though the pics of the case look good.

Floppy Drive Any will do, $10

Total Price - $934.
This will give you a very powerful machine, capable of playing any game out there right now quite well, and should handle all other tasks out there very nicely. Hopefully you can pick out a monitor/keyboard/mouse/misc extras for the $270-$370 you have left over; these items are best tested in person.

This machine includes a power supply from a good brand; you never want to be cheap out on the power supply, it is what it feeding electricity to everything else in your computer. Whatever you do sure you get a power supply made by Sparkle, Antec, Enermax, Thermaltake, or if you have a lot of cash, PC Power & Cooling. A 350 Watt power suppy from a good brand is much better than a generic 450 or 500 watt power supply.

Note that this computer has a faster processor, much faster video card, includes RAM, a bigger Hard Drive, a better optical drive, but has a worse sound card than than the system sleestak speced out.

5

Very nice, thanks! I can save a bit of money, as I already have an OS, but in turn I’m going to need a network adapter (preferably wireless, as the room it will be going in is upstairs and around a few corners from the wireless router), and monitor and such.

What if I wanted to swap out the CPU with an Intel? What would you suggest?

Also, I’m a laggard in terms of DVD burning… what’s the difference between DVD-R/W, DVD+R/W, DVD-R, DVD+R, etc?

6

I’ve built computers before, I had a job doing so back when the 286 was introduced. I have a P3 which is comprised of parts that I accumulated over the years - it just kind of evolved out of a 386. My last computer was bought from Starburst Technologies via eBay. I went through their upgrade page and added up what you would pay for a P4 - 3.2, 512 DDR 3200, ATI 9600, 160G HD, DVD-R/RW, 400W power supply: $925.

7

Intels are generally more expensive (roughly $80-100 more at a comparable speed). Remember, the AMD number schemes aren’t like Intel’s “Ghz” rating. A AMD 2600+ runs at the same speed as a 2.8 Gig Intel (take the AMD number and add 200 as a rule of thumb).

R/W = Read / Write. The +R/W is basically a write mode specification. You’ll see DVD discs on the shelves as DVD+R/DVD-R and DVD+RW/DVD-RW. If you only have (for instance) a DVD+R writer, you can only use DVD+R CDs. RWs allow you to reuse the DVD as long as you don’t finalize the CD.

Newegg is the best place for pricing in the US. Order from them. RandomLetters’s system is great. And if, at a later time, you need more power it’s simple to upgrade.

8

Err, I mean, what’s the difference with the - and + standard? Which would allow me to burn DVDs that would play on DVD players, etc?

9

Oh! Well, to you, there’s no difference. There’s a bit of a war between the 2 formats though.

http://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html#4.3

This link gives you a rough outline of all the formats.

Most DVD players should play both formats unless it’s an older model. If you have an older DVD player (+4 years old) you might need to confirm it’s specs online to see if it can even play a computer writen DVD. I believe - (dash) is the older of the 2 formats and should be more readily supported. I personally just buy whatever’s on sale :smiley:

10

It’s probably enough to know that there are differences. I recently learned (the hard way) that my fairly-old DVD player didn’t play DVD+R or DVD-R. So I had to go out and get a new one, which supports DVD+/-R, DVD+/-RW, VCD, SVCD, etc.

-lv

11

1: Buffalo Wireless 802.11g card $37.99 - My parents use this card in two of there computers, and it works perfectly. Almost any other wireless G card will do though; you can pick up a pretty good from Linksys at Walmart for $40 too.

  1. You would’t be able to swap out the CPU with an Intel; AMD & Intel use different sockets for there CPUs. Right now AMD has a considerable tech lead over Intel, especially in gaming. In Doom 3 for example, the Athlon 64 3000+ I put above outperformed a 3.4ghz Pentium 4. Athlon 64’s also run considerably cooler than the newer Prescott core Pentium 4’s, and the 64 bit extensions will allow you to upgrade to a 64 bit OS sometime in the future (or now, if you like Linux) while still running all 32 bit code very fast.

  2. Read that thing badmana posted to get a hang on the mess that is DVD formats.

12

If you went with an AMD Barton CPU and motherboard you will save a little money. I always found the hard drives to be a bottleneck in heavy computing.You should consiider running 2 hard drives in RAID. You should get a nice perfomance kick with this, or at least get the 10,000 RPM Raptor drive from Western Digital. Its faster but a little bit pricier.Antec makes good cases and power supplies and there are several choices.Save some money for a good set of Klipsch speakers. You won’t regret it.

13

Everyone seems to forget software, which can add up to quite a chunk unless you’re happy to have ripped versions of it (which I for one am not).

One of the best reasons to go store-bought is you get tons of software for really cheap prices, as well as pretty decent systems anymore for not much dosh.

14

Well, IMHO, most of the software included in OEM computers is junk, and there is usually much better free stuff available online, like Media Player Classic, Winamp, OpenOffice, AVG or Avast for anti-virus, free version of Zonealarm for the firewall, and so on. Most store-bought systems also come come with POS power supplies & cheap motherboards - those alone are good reasons to stay away from storebought stuff.

15

From the ground up, eh? No need - you can actually use lots of very sophisticated subassemblies, to wit:

Start with a Z-80 microprocessor. They have a pretty elegant instruction set and also they automatically run around refreshing the DRAM by jiggling the address lines between reads and writes. You can use Zilog’s or Intel’s peripheral chips with it - hey, who hasn’t used the 255 programmable peripheral interface chip?

There’s a few printed circuit board makers who advertise in Nuts and Volts magazine, and they have programs available on their websites that make it pretty easy to lay out double sided boards with vias and everything.

I think a 16 key pad with 4 + 4 lines is plenty.

And LCD dot matrix displays with a single TTL serial input are getting pretty cheap and easy to write for.

On the plus side, I think it’s possible to build a computer without bugs this way.