Building a machine

[Swarmalicious]

Hiya Lurkers,

Hope you've all been well.
After having not met the minimum requirements (and I mean REALLY not met) for the WoW beta sign-ups, I figure it's about time to invest in a new CPU. It is tax return time, after all.

I have picked up decent chunk of knowledge about what goes where and which does what when it comes to computers - family members call me when they get a cable modem or need to install some more ram, or whatever. I feel confident that I could build my own machine, although I've never done so before - I want to if for no other reason than to avoid getting ripped off by gateway or dell. :) However, aside from knowing how to type "pricewatch.com" into the address bar, I have no idea what I'm doing or where to start. Particularly when it comes to installing an OS & cd drive onto a brand new hard drive... how does that work exactly?

Any tips from you guys out there who're savvy in the area? Any suggestions for brand names & power concerning vid cards, processors, etc? (Essentially and eventually, I want something that can handle poster-sized images in photoshop without a lot of slow down, and be able to play WoW like a freak when it comes out :) ).

Any pearl of wisdom you can bestow will be treated, as usual, like holy scripture.

Thanks,

Swarm

[Artega]

As always, there are two camps when it comes to computers: Intel, and AMD. Which processor you choose will influence what type of mobo (and to a lesser degree, which company) you will need to get. Currently, the AMD FX-51 is essentially the fastest proc on the market, and there're some kind of overheating issues with the Extreme Edition P4 procs, but I don't know a lot of information on that.

Top-of-the-line video cards are the Radeon Pro 9800 XT and GeForce 5950 FX, made by ATI and nVidia, respectively. As far as I know, they're essentially the same thing - they'll both be able to run WoW, HL2, and Doom3 at their best.

As for RAM, I'd get at least 512MB minimum, and 1024MB is always nice if you have the extra cash. Stick with Corsair or Mushkin, and only them - other brands are crap. If you go Corsair, take a good look at the XMS series - it's VERY fast, though a tad expensive.

Hard drives are a mixed bag - I'm fine with a standard 7400rpm 40 or 80GB drive, though some want the extra capacity afforded by the massive 120GB, 160GB, and even 200GB variations. You can also set up two hard drives in a RAID 0 or RAID 1 condition, though you'd have to ask others on the particulars of that.

I myself am thinking about crafting a system of my own, using an Athlon64 3200+ as the basis, and I've wondered about how one goes about installing CD-based Windows XP on a fresh computer.

[Nastie_Bowie]

I built this computer I am on now. It was my first attempt. Talk about a learning curve. :lol:

First thing I learned is that over 512 ram, Win 9X can't handle. So figure on Win2K or XP.

I'd suggest a backup hardrive and a DriveImage type program. In the event that you need to "C:\format", the backup can save a lot of frustration. Loading the drivers, in the right order, can be a pain.

I will never buy an off the shelf machine again.

Good luck!

NB :rolleyes:

[Charon the Hand]

Building a box from scratch is not too tough, though the first time I did it, I had heard so many warnings about static electricity I was scared to death I'd fry the motherboard by just looking at it funny. (I didn't, at least not then; it was a few years later that it started smoking at power on.) I've built 3 systems over the past few years and now I have boxes of spare parts and cables, feh.

Anyway; what I'd advise for the true beginner is to buy a pre-assembled barebones box (case, power supply, motherboard, CPU, fans/heatsink) from some onlinewarehouser then haunt pricewatch and/or ebay and/or Best Buy for good prices on hardware you want. There are differences between the way the AMD and Intel processors run, but let's put it this way; if you don't know what those differences are already, chances are they won't affect you and you don't need to. For the record, I don't either. AMD is usually cheaper for a given performance level (clock speed is no longer the sole measurement of performance).

The absolute minimum hardware you need for boot is the above plus cdrom drive OR floppy drive (both won't hurt) RAM (agreed with artega, 512MB is pretty much the minimum you want these days), video card (something like a NVIDIA Ti series is cheap and plenty good enough for the next couple years), hard drive (brand is pretty irrelevant, 80GB is nice, 40GB is cheaper) and an OS with boot disk (WinXP [the only OS you're going to be able to buy off the shelf] should be a bootable cd, so if you set the motherboard bios to boot from cd, you won't need a floppy at all).
As well as the old keyboard, mouse, monitor combo (all sold seperately). The nice thing is that if you alreay have a computer, you can cannibalize it for parts you can use, cdrom, floppy, hd and peripherals can all be swapped. Sound card, modem, dvd etc. optional.

The drives, if you're buying them new, will have really badly done instructions with mostly pictures and a few cryptic lines of text in 8 different languages telling you how to physically install them. Not too hard, but it will take some interpretation in spots (don't forget to ground yourself before touching the hardware by touching the plugged in metal case). There are also dozens of tech help sites strung across the web; google your particular problem with hardware and you'll get hundreds of hits.

Now that I think about it, you will need a boot floppy to format the hard drive before installing the OS. Create one with your old box and use it for the new box. It should have fdisk.exe on it. Run that, create your partitions, set one active, then format. Then you can reset the bios to boot from cd for the OS install. I swear, it's not as hard as I'm making it sound.

Whenever I'm in the market for buying new hardware, I do heavy duty surfing of tech sites to find a consensus on particularly good models, then I search for them. It's some work, but in the end I'm pretty confident I'm getting the best upgrade for my money. Good luck.

[kandrathe]

A friend of mine is now building them professionally. We worked on this one together about a week ago. It cost him about $2000 USD, but it was done solely as a show piece of what is possible.

From my experiences I would recommend: The prices on AMD processors are cheaper for similiar performance, but Intel's Xeon is currently one of the fastest (based on 3DMark). Avoid Celeron, and anything slower than 400Mhz FSB. You can build a solid machine with either architecture. ASUS, MSI, and ABIT make the best mobo's for DIY building. Good quality DDR333 PC2700 ram is cheap enough and fast enough in most mobo's, certified RAM is too expensive for me. I would select your processor, then choose a good mobo that supports that processor, then choose memory that works with the mobo and then the peripherals you want. If you get a mobo with raid hardware built in on board, consider getting 2 smaller HD's and configure in hardware raid 0. Try to find a case without a power supply, then buy a separate good quality power supply. I just witnessed a bad power supply that came with the case blow out 2 mobo's before taking itself out (which can be very frustrating and expensive).

I currently have 2 PC's (1 at home, 1 at work) built on Asus A7N8X mobo, 1GB Kingston DDR333 PC2700, Seagate 7200rpm 80gb HD, OC'd AMD 2800 Bartons, and Radeon 9800 Pro 128 GPU. It performs like a stock AMD 3200, with PC3200 ram. These cost me about $1000 USD each, but mostly due to the GPU. I am happy with them.

I really want to build a machine with this mobo, or a dual Xeon CPU based on the Asus PC-DL Deluxe mobo.

These guys are my sub-zero hero's.

Edit: Just saw that an AMD posted a higher 3DMark score today. Edit2: Price changed after he added a Plextor CDRW/DVD-RW.

[Logic_X]

Personally...I haven't had experience assembling a computer either :P - but I do have recommendation for parts (basically because I was bringing in advice for the past about 8-10 months about current/up and coming technology from some friends who work with assorted computer review/assembly companies).

Processors:
If you're in for the long haul with this computer (2+ years) - it's recommended you get a 64-bit processor, your best deal for the money is either going to be an Athlon64 3200+ or Athlon64 3400+ (depending on if you want good, or biggest bang without busting your wallet - the AthlonFX is the bleeding edge, but will cost you almost 2x as much as the Athlon64).

If you're only planning to have this computer for 1-2 years - the Intel chips are ok, but in many cases Athlon64 3200+ will surpass them in the price : power ratio. (of course, Intel chips are still superior for rendering and office work, while Athlons are superior for games and such)

Current 64bit processors on the market: Optitron, AthlonFX, and Athlon64
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Video Cards:
I'd go with ATI Radeons, they're DX9.0 Compliant, nVidia suffer when using DX9.0 due to nVidia doing things it's own way :P.

Maybe watch and check to see if nVidia gets in gear with its newer cards (haven't kept on the ball with nVidia since the 5900 released)

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Rest of the stuff is really your own choice...but yea, Corsair memory is nice (I'm getting it in the prebuilt :P....customized the sin out of it).

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Interesting little tidbit for everyone who thinks Alienware is overpriced heh....at least it's cheaper than Dell :P (which is true for comprable higher end systems).

But there are cheaper places to buy AMD based systems (Cyberpower PC for example is quite a bit cheaper).

Note: I splurged and bought Alienware for a few reasons: They have a good business record, and their cases look better than any other case, custom or otherwise, that I have ever seen, but that's just my opinion :)

[kandrathe]

Processors:
If you're in for the long haul with this computer (2+ years) - it's recommended you get a 64-bit processor, your best deal for the money is either going to be an Athlon64 3200+ or Athlon64 3400+ (depending on if you want good, or biggest bang without busting your wallet - the AthlonFX is the bleeding edge, but will cost you almost 2x as much as the Athlon64).

If you're only planning to have this computer for 1-2 years - the Intel chips are ok, but in many cases Athlon64 3200+ will surpass them in the price : power ratio. (of course, Intel chips are still superior for rendering and office work, while Athlons are superior for games and such)

I would still like to see more software written for 64-bit processors, and more 64 bit bus architectures before I take the plunge. At this time, I think dual 2.8Mhz Pentium4's would be faster for the same price.

[Erigion]

Processors:
If you're in for the long haul with this computer (2+ years) - it's recommended you get a 64-bit processor, your best deal for the money is either going to be an Athlon64 3200+ or Athlon64 3400+ (depending on if you want good, or biggest bang without busting your wallet - the AthlonFX is the bleeding edge, but will cost you almost 2x as much as the Athlon64).

If you're only planning to have this computer for 1-2 years - the Intel chips are ok, but in many cases Athlon64 3200+ will surpass them in the price : power ratio. (of course, Intel chips are still superior for rendering and office work, while Athlons are superior for games and such)

Current 64bit processors on the market: Optitron, AthlonFX, and Athlon64
------------

Video Cards:
I'd go with ATI Radeons, they're DX9.0 Compliant, nVidia suffer when using DX9.0 due to nVidia doing things it's own way :P.

Maybe watch and check to see if nVidia gets in gear with its newer cards (haven't kept on the ball with nVidia since the 5900 released)

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The Athlon 64 3000+ has the better price to performace ratio. The extra 512 KB of L2 Cache isn't really going to hamper performace. Neither the 3400+ or the 3200+ show enough gains to really justify spending the extra money on them. One problem with the Athlon64 chips is that the motherboard chipsets just aren't developed enough compared to the P4/XP chipsets. Another problem is that the AMD socket roadmap is a tad bit murky right now. So there is a chance that upgrading from a current socket 754 chip might prove difficult.

If you want to go with a 32 bit chip the ones you should consider are the P4 3.2C, P4 2.8C, or any of the Barton cores from AMD.

If you go Intel get a motherboard with the 875P chipset, if you go with an AthlonXP get a NForce2 motherboard, and the KT800 is the way to go for the Athlon64.

Bah, I'm two days late to tell you about the sale NewEgg had on a Radeon 9800 Pro, 230 for a nearly top of the line card is damn good. But if you want to spend 200 or less for a video card it's either between the Radeon 9600XT or the GeForce FX 5700 Ultra. If you're careful where you buy the 9600XT you'll still get the voucher for HL2, which is basically 50 dollars off that card. Another card to consider is the GeForce 5900SE which is just a bit above 200 dollar. Whatever you do, don't buy the 5600, that card was an utter failureand preformed horribly.

Like others have said, at the top it's between the 9800XT and the 5950Ultra, buying carefully will also get you a HL2 voucher for the 9800XT. Be prepared to spend at least 300 dollars for one of these cards, although both Nvidia and ATI are coming out with new cores in March, so these cards won't be at the top of the food chain soon.

[NiteFox]

I would still like to see more software written for 64-bit processors, and more 64 bit bus architectures before I take the plunge.

If you build it, they will come.

[gronbek]

Hi,

I just ordered the following, which i see as the top of the line:)

P43.2
Leadtek Winfast 5950Ultra
2X512 OCZ 3200 LE platinum, 2.2.2.2.7 memory
Sb Audigy 2 player
Maxtor Diamondmax 9 120 GB HD
Pioneer DVD rom
Asus P4S800D-E deluxe MB

/Anders

[kandrathe]

:D I've just been burnt a few times by getting too enthusiastic for a particular technology direction. I would like to see that momentum is clearly staying in that direction. I think I will be convinced when Intel releases their first x86-64bit ( reworked Xeon) chip ala. CNet - Intel shifts 64-bit emphasis. It is good to see that Microsoft has built a 64-bit version of XP, but it is currently optimized around Intel Itanium technology. I would like to see more high end game developers (other than Epic) jump on the band wagon.

[kandrathe]

Your choices are good (I still prefer my Radeon 9800 pro), and as for "top of the line", I think we shall still have to see what happens to software in 2004. You will be happy enough with your kit (it will run most anything really fast). If you are like me, I wait until my current machine is 4 years obsolete before changing.

Nordic Hardware -- Review of Leadtek 5950 Ultra

AMD FX51 vs P4EE 3.2

[gronbek]

Hi,

Yes, my old trusty 1000 Mhz Thunderbird is now replaced by a P43.2.
I really can't remember when i bought it. I know i bought it when it was the hottest thing on the market.
And it costed me more than 10000Kr. approximately 850 dollar at that time.
Now the price for a P43.2 is less than a 3rd, or 4th :)

/Anders

[gronbek]

Hey, Kandrathe !

I read your review of the Leadtek 5950 card.
I also read the latest review of that card compared to a bunch of other cards over at Anandtech.com
Q1 2004 Vendor Graphics Card Roundup.

Why are your results so different, the Leadtek card leads by a huge margin in the Unreal T. 2003 tests?

Thanks,
Anders

[Quark]

Microsoft has two 64-bit OS versions currently. One for Itanium, which has been out for quite awhile. But nobody cares about Itanium. The one you linked to is a preview version of 64-bit XP for x86-64 technology.

Now, I wouldn't jump all over this OS yet. It's preview for a few reasons, the main one being that current driver support sucks. According to a recent Anandtech article, running a WinXP 64-bit over WinXP gives you around a 20% decrease in gaming performance. All other types of programs they run are either slightly worse or better. That's running on the same exact system, an Athlon64 chip. Note that those are all 32-bit applications, so many of them are benefitting from 64-bit without even being recompiled.

So currently the best configuration you could go for is an Athlon64 chip running 32-bit Windows. However, once XP 64-bit's drivers take off, it will most likely be faster than it's 32-bit brother, even running 32-bit applications. Once more companies like Epic start recompiling to make 64-bit code, the gap will widen even further.

[kandrathe]

I was deceived by this page. :)

Top 5 reasons to get Windows XP 64-bit

My further reading of the AMD support by Microsoft corroborates you. I was still working with knowledge from January of 2004. The AMD beta version is so new, even Microsoft can't get their PR story straight.

[kandrathe]

From the Anandtech article:

We are going to overclock each card to its highest stable core and memory speed, and then run a few select benchmarks to cover the most recent few DirectX releases as well as OpenGL. All told, 23 cards were benchmarked, so we didn't have the ability to run a whole suite of tests on each one.

I suspect it has to do with their OC skills with various cards. Once you step into the OC'ing realm, you really need to have quite a bit of knowledge on how to maximize the performance of any individual card. The NordicHardware review was a stock out of the box comparison.

Here's another review to chew on.
9800 XT vs. 5950 Ultra

[Swarmalicious]

As usual, lurker feedback = superb.

When I get the cash pried from my clenched fist, I'll let you know how it turns out. :)

The only thing scaring me a little, considering how insanely lazy I am, is the idea of having no customer support... hassles, in the form of troubleshooting & repairing, are not my forte, to say the least. I really like it when something breaks to have little more responsibilty than making a phonecall and having a free replacement part Fed-exed to my house per warranty.

(Of course, if the remote isn't within arm's reach, I don't watch tv either). :P

Thanks again guys - notes have been taken.

[kandrathe]

Here is some additional stuff not covered above.

I do this to insure the base of the heat sink is very flat (microscopically), as they often are concave or convex. It takes a couple hours generally and it is well worth it and removes any worry of the CPU overheating due to poor contact with the heat sink. Use a good quality thermal paste.

You also don't want the weight of the CPU's heat sink resting solely on the CPU silicon wafer, so most installations will require a shim to surround the CPU. Look at the CPU and/or Mobo manufacturers site for the recommended installation.

The only thing scaring me a little, considering how insanely lazy I am, is the idea of having no customer support...

That was my sentiment as well, but think of it this way. If you do it correctly and have a sweet fast machine for a huge price savings, those savings are insurance against future failure. The most common problems I've seen have been between power supply and motherboards, and neither of those are expensive ($50 - $150) in comparison to the price of the entire package. That said, getting a trusted good quality power supply can save you tons of frustration and will help to protect your other components. $20-$30 of extra quality in a power supply can save you time and money when you find yourself trying to get the supplier to take back the motherboard(s) your bad power supply has zapped.

Have fun. Once you do this I doubt you will ever buy one off the shelf again. :D

[Wim-sama]

you're right to think about support.

Building the computer is like lego. put the harddisk in, click the PCI cards, put the proc. on the board, don't forget the cooling,....
a piece of cake

The problem is getting the right parts and getting from a good company with good support (something you don't read that much about on those tech sites).
I bought myself a really nice 19' Iiyama CRT, but it had a little problem with the top layer (anti reflection layer peeled off).
now I'm almost 3 years later and all I had are problems with the support and the screen (believe me, not having a screen can make it hard to use the computer ;) ). I gave up and bought a flat screen.

If you want the ultimate performance the best option is to make it yourself.
But if you want to be sure of some decent support those pre-built systems aren't so bad.