Building your own computer

with the sata cables its a easy thing to do, but you can find the round pata cables if your gonna build with the old style drives.....why?

dom60 wrote:

with the sata cables its a easy thing to do, but you can find the round pata cables if your gonna build with the old style drives.....why?

Even the SATA cables can block/split airflow, as small as they are. Besides, good cable management also makes the interior of the case look nicer.

hey demon just a question here ummm look'n at build'n a coupla new puters for me and wife and give the kids our old ones (not worth the money to up grade them since they are like 5-6 yrs old each)( wait older lol thats the age of mine!) twife does facebook and crud on net and some pic storage so hers is no biggie but i was wonder'n i do some vid copy'n since kids are hard on the disks and play on DC should i be looking at a multi core or is there a better option and i DO prefer AMD and am happy with asus MB's altho they be a lil pricey... now my budget sux but i have found at geeks.com some decent prices for stuff

was just kinda figure'n to get the best/newest that i could afford lol

Here's a top of the line set-up using AMD's Black Edition Phenom (some may quibble)

Thermaltake Armor Black Tower Case
$169.99 plus shipping—standard price
http://thermaltakeusa.com/Product.aspx?C=1277&ID=1404

Asus Crosshair III Formula AM3 790FX Motherboard
$210.00 plus shipping-cheapest price found on e-bay
http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=2Y4dQFaJ6gPN18cQ

AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Deneb 3.4GHZ processor
$189.99 plus shipping—cheapest price found on e-bay
http://products.amd.com/en-us/DesktopCPUDetail.aspx?id=591&f1=AMD+Phenom%e2%84%a2+II+X4&f2=&f3=&f4=512&f5=&f6=C2&f7=45nm+SOI&f8=&f9=&f10=False&f11=&f12=True

Tuniq Tower 120 CPU Cooler with blue LED fan
$65.00 plus shipping-seems to be standard price
http://www.tuniq.com.tw/Cooler%20Info/Tower-120.htm

ATI Radeon HD 5970 2GB 512bit GDDR5 DirectX 11 Graphics Card
$750.00 plus shipping-seems to be the standard price
http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/graphics/ati-radeon-hd-5000/hd-5970/Pages/ati-radeon-hd-5970-overview.aspx

Western Digital WD1001FALS 1 TB SATA Hard Drive
$100.00 plus shipping-best price on e-bay
http://www.westerndigital.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=488

G.Skill 6gb 1600mhz DDR3 ram (3 X 2gb sticks)
Price varies but around $200.00
http://www.gskill.com/products.php?index=217

LG 22x DVD Burner with Litescribe
$25.00 plus shipping-standard price

Corsair CMPSU-850HX 850-Watt HX Professional Series 80 Plus Certified Power Supply
$180.00 plus shipping—stand price
http://www.corsair.com/products/hx850/default.aspx

Figure around $1500.00 or so apiece. You can play around with some of the components and save some more money, expecially with the video card and ram. If you want to go to liquid cooling, use the Armor Plus LCS case and take off the Tuniq or take off the Tuniq and go with Asetek's LCLC and keep the Armor case

I would run Windows 7 64 bit on this system.

However Dom,

Think in these terms:

AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE $220.00 average price
Intel i7 920 $240.00 average price

Look at the difference in performance:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/default.aspx?p=102&p2=47

The Phenom II X4 965 BE barely comes close to the I7 920 with similiar pricing ranges.

Now........

The AMD 965 BE is the top of the line for AMD..........Currently. Intel's I7 975 XE ($800.00+) is the top, but look at the comparison:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/default.aspx?p=102&p2=99

Granted, the Intel processor is 4 times the price......................but for performance, it cannot be beat. This is the reason I moved from AMD to Intel when the quad cores came out along with AMD's response to the Q6600 processor. It cannot even beat out the nerfed 17 processor (I5 750)

Ok like I got 200+bucks to drop on a cpu! let alone being able to afford 1500 for a system!

but i hvae been doing a little checking and i see that the am3 chips are backward compatible with the am2+ borads and that would allow to use some cheaper mem and still allow for a future upgrade by just get'n a new MB and mem which would do a small i admit boost in the system

i'm just a poor bloke that looks for a doable system without kill'n my cash flow which is very close to being zilch

and i like the idea altho i haven't yet is with the blackbox amd chips are set so you can over-clock and playaround with the system!....AMD even has software to help you do that!

dom60 wrote:

Ok like I got 200+bucks to drop on a cpu! let alone being able to afford 1500 for a system!

but i hvae been doing a little checking and i see that the am3 chips are backward compatible with the am2+ borads and that would allow to use some cheaper mem and still allow for a future upgrade by just get'n a new MB and mem which would do a small i admit boost in the system

i'm just a poor bloke that looks for a doable system without kill'n my cash flow which is very close to being zilch

and i like the idea altho i haven't yet is with the blackbox amd chips are set so you can over-clock and playaround with the system!....AMD even has software to help you do that!

Do what I do..........buy one component at a time

And by the time you're done buying all the necessary components, a new architecture twice as fast would render the "newly" build system obsolete ;p

Ghost wrote:

And by the time you're done buying all the necessary components, a new architecture twice as fast would render the "newly" build system obsolete ;p

Depends on how long it takes to buy all the components............

ok i must start saving sinc ei only got 1000 pesos .. arround 100 dls :S wich its nothing...

LMAO!!!

Hatter thats WAY more than what I got!!!!

Got a new box for Christmas, just need to slap it all togetyer. I really like the case. Newegg rulz!

Core 2 Extreme QX9750

PNY VCGGTS2501XPB GeForce GTS 250 1GB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card

Antec Nine Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3P LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard

XIGMATEK HDT-S963 92mm Rifle CPU Cooler

G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 Model F2-6400CL5D-4GBPQ

LITE-ON Black 24X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 12X DVD+R DL 24X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM 2MB Cache SATA DVD Writer - Bulk - LightScribe Support

OCZ Fatal1ty OCZ550FTY 550W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready Modular Active PFC Power Supply

TON80 wrote:

Got a new box for Christmas, just need to slap it all togetyer. I really like the case. Newegg rulz!

Core 2 Extreme QX9750

PNY VCGGTS2501XPB GeForce GTS 250 1GB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card

Antec Nine Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3P LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard

XIGMATEK HDT-S963 92mm Rifle CPU Cooler

G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 Model F2-6400CL5D-4GBPQ

LITE-ON Black 24X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 12X DVD+R DL 24X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM 2MB Cache SATA DVD Writer - Bulk - LightScribe Support

OCZ Fatal1ty OCZ550FTY 550W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready Modular Active PFC Power Supply

Nice. However, I would recommed that you go with DDR3 ram, else it could create a bottleneck since the processor/mobo/vid card are all DDR3.

Check your mobo specs to be sure.

I'm pretty sure that only the Core I7 and other like Gen. procs support DDR3. All your Core 2 gen Procs are DDR2 (P45 chipset).
The video RAM is independent of the MoBo/Proc memory requirements as they usually differ.

well i do like a new computer or at least an improvment..
the current computer i have right now is quite obsolete

so answer the questions first

1. What do you use your computer for right now?
mostly gaming.. and in weekends i watch series

2. How important is your internet speed to you?
quite a bit

3. What do you visualize as your future needs in the area of office suite processing and/or graphics?
well not much since i only play ut2k4, and since i have no intentions for more games... currently my schedule is well full on weeks and qute empty in the weekends

4. What are you planning to do differently with a new computer that you currently don't do?
not much, just that i have issues with my current, recently it just started to turn off at random ( i know its not the cooling system, since i got 3 fans, and it can turn off when i just start my computer. weird uh?)

5. What is your budget towards the purchase of a new computer?
unknown

6. How much time a week do you spend on the computer?
well 2 hours from mon-fri means 10 hours and during weekends can stand 12 (most of this time is for watching TV ( well series) hours, which means 22 hours a weak

7. How much time do you spend cruising around on the internet? E-mail and IM? Online purchasing?
no hour

8. What are the specifications of your current computer?
i will post this latter.. but the main problem is the mother board..
its old, therefore everything is week

pentim4 3.00 ghz
1.5 GB ram
512 video