I’m coming up on a time when I should upgrade. I use my machine for work, 90%. I do heavy Phootoshopping, design, and increasingly, 3D modeling.
I currently use a Dell Dimension 4100, which has really beeen wonderful, but the manual says it will only accept 512 MB of RAM, which I’m pinned at, so upgrading this one is a limited option.
Because of that, I’d like my next system to be more flexible. I wonder if I might achieve that and save a little money by putting together a custom machine. I’ll have a few months at least to learn and put things together and test it.
Questions:
1) Any good books/websites to help me through this? I’m no techie but I’ve been into the guts of this machine before with no major issues (video card, memory, etc.) so I’m not a total newbie.
**2) About how much can I expect to save? ** I’d like to weigh my time and my desire for that warm geeky feeling against whatever savings I can expect.
There most certainly are guides to building your own PC. My dad just used one of them himself and he’s not exactly the most computer-literate guy around.
There seems to be a Dummies book for any task and PC building is no exception.
I’m not sure how much you will save but you certainly will be able to make a fast machine and your future upgrade path will definetly be cheaper. I would suggest an AMD based system for cost savings and NForce based motherboards. Here are some PC building links. PC MechanicHardware Centraland a good Forum for questions on hardware and problems that may arise. TechIMO
I really like making my own computers and they run pretty darn well. Happy building.
Absolutely, Stolichnaya. And once you do your first build… you’ll wonder why you didn’t attempt it earlier.
I can personally vouch for VirtualDr, if you wanted some hand holding, throughout the process. Many members have started their own thread, and built their machine in “real time”…as it were.
Just some input from my personal experience–I built a few of my own computers, and honestly when all was said and done I had ended up paying more for the components separately than if I had bought a complete, comparable system from somewhere such as Dell. YMMV, of course. Flexibility is key, though, and a couple of my old machines (450 MHz AMD K6, for example) are obviously in need of an upgrade. At this point, there are motherboards out there that will take the PC100/133 RAM from those old computers and use them to run a 1.5 GHz or so Athlon processor. Quite an upgrade, and cheap, too. Try that with a Dell. Such is the true beauty of building your own system.
I think the key is that if you already have a system, you are doing a true upgrade and can definitely save money. Building one totally from scratch is a slightly different story and can vary in price. Sometimes Dell has complete systems for bargain prices.
My point is that if you want to get a blazing fast computer, why pay for:
Keyboard
Mouse
(Monitor)
CD-Drive
Case
Floppy Drive
Power supply (depends)
Memory (depends)
Video card (depends)
Sound Card
Hard Drive (depends)
Operating System (depends)
All that kind of stuff ads up. The more you have already, the cheaper your project is.
nowadays due to the obviously much larger scales Dell, gateway etc work on building your own system is usually slightly more expensive then simply buying a pre-built system.
but as people have already said building your own system offers you flexability and easy upgradability. you also generally end up with higher quality non-proprietary parts.
also, do yourself a favor and buy the majority of your parts online.
Right now i’d personally build an AMD based system on a nforce2 chipset motherboard. AMD chips are considerably less then Intel’s offering’s and still offer nearly all the speed that intel’s have(the p4 3.2 ghz has a slight advantage on the fastest AMD chip I believe). Nforce boards come pre-equiped with everything under the sun. Network, modem, sound(very good sound might I add) and some versions even come with a integrated video(which should be plenty unless you also do heavy gaming, in which case you’ll want a descrete video card). after that you’d just need memory(make sure the memory at least meets the minimums the CPU requires), a harddrive, a case, an operating system and you’re good to go.
These are the parts my husband is saving up for:
AMD AthlonXP 2700 333MHz FSB OEM processor $138
512 MB PC3200 400MHz RAM $82
Asus A7N8X-DX nForce2 motherboard $137
400 watt power supply $45
Zalman “Flower” Heatsink & Fan $32
That comes to $434, plus shipping ($8), because he already upgraded his video card and already has a good case, not to mention already having drives (floppy, hard and cd). So while the first built-from-scratch may not be as cheap as a Dell, all future upgrades should be. I’m actually using a floppy drive in my latest PC incarnation (Pentium 2.4GHz) that originally came in our old 486.
Building a PC is easy - if it works. If it doesn’t work on the first try, you’ll have a hard time finding which component is faulty, or which two components are incompatible. You can’t take the whole thing to the shop and say “it doesn’t boot, fix it.” (Well you could but it’ll be expensive.) Upgrading is much easier. You replace one component, and if it doesn’t work, take that component back to the shop and get it replaced.
I’ve built several systems for myself but I’d only do it again if I had some parts lying around, or better yet, an older computer (but not TOO old) to be cannibalized for parts. Otherwise I’d buy a complete system.
I built mine from scratch (well, 'puter geek boyfriend helped a BUNCH) and I totally love it. It’s not that hard. Most of the instructions come with the parts you buy, and if you’ve been around computers much, with any decent “Upgrading/Repairing Computers” book you can do it.
It wasn’t cheap, but it’s worth it. Depending upon what you use it for it can vary a great deal in price. I bought the highest end CDR/sound system etc, because I teach dance/aerobics and record a lot of music. I also bought the best graphics cards etc (at the time, I’m sure they’re obsolete now this was 2 years ago :D), because I love playing RPGs.
Dell has cut the price of their computers so low that you can’t make one yourself for less. They include the operating system too. They use a bios lock activation, so you never have to ativate XP & you can change the system all you want & no activation necessary.
All I can say is: I don’t know that I’d recommend the AMD. I had an AMD Athlon-based motherboard, it worked fine for two years, and just a few weeks ago, the hard drive and the motherboard had simultaneous crashes. The repair guy I brought it to (in the hopes that the hard drive could be salvaged; had I been resigned to a new one, I could definitely have installed it myself) told me he’d been having so many returns on AMD stuff, he’s stopped carrying them. So I got an Intel Celeroin-based motherboard instead.