Christmas Present.

[Monster]

Well for christmas my parents are gonna buy me a new computer. I was thinking about building it myself to save some money or just so i could customize it.

Do you guys think Iam better off building it myself or buying a new one prebuilt from a company.

Whichever could you guys leave some suggestions. Thanks!

[Wilbur]

Building it yourself is always a better idea, assuming you have the knowledge to do so.

What sort of spec you looking at?

[Monster]

I have basic knowledge of doing it. And iam sure there are tutorials online that could show you. If not i could have my friend help.

This will be my main PC, looking to spend around 1k. Max being around 1150. Ill be using my 24" monitor so dont need monitor.

Iam pretty sure all i need is.
1. Motherboard
2. CPU
3. RAM
4. Power supply
5. Video Card
6. Computer case

If anything else, please inform me. And maybe go on newegg or tigerdirect and add everything to a cart and take a ss of it.

[thorian]

if you already have a monitor, building it yourself is absolutely the way to go. If you need a monitor, sometimes you can get a better deal as a package.

pricewatch.com is pretty decent, along with the ones you've mentioned.

[Monster]

alrite seems iam going that way then.
Can anyone give me a good deal in my price range?
Iam just afraid iam gonna get parts that dont go together.
So a list of parts in the $1k range.
Thanks, would help a ton, after i get this PC iam gonna 5-box, if i can afford subscription for more than a month.

[Wilbur]

Quad Core CPU, Either an Intel Core 2 Quad, or an Athlon Phenom
RAM, around 4 gigs, DDR2 PC6400.
Motherboard Socket 775 for Core 2, Socket AM2 for Athlon.
Graphics Card, 8800GT or above, 512 MB should do you.
A power supply of around 500+ watts, make sure its a brand name, as cheap PSU's are the death of most computer systems.
Any case will do as long as its got a couple of fans in it.
It might also be an idea to buy a couple of low capacity SATA 2.0 drives as this will give you a fair performance boost when loading textures across 5 instances of WoW.

I don't live in America, but I'm fairly confident you should be able to get all of this for <$1000.

It might also be an idea to get a second monitor.

[Terbulous]

Ok, here is what i came up with, this should be everything you would need, assuming you have a keyboard, mouse, and monitor.

Antec Nine Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16811129021

DFI BLOOD IRON P35 mobo
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16813136038

XFX 8800GT alpha dog edition gfx card
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16814150254

Rosewell 550 watt PSU
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16817182017

Intel Q6600
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16819115017

4GB of G.Skill DDR2 800 RAM
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16820231122

Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM 320GB HDD
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16822148140

All of that is for a grand total of

...$1,066.93

so, its not bad, the gfx cards are drastically marked up atm, so you might find one cheaper from another site.

On a note for the Athlon Phenom, that processer is actually really bad, they claim its a "true quad core" , and that may be true, but the intel Q6600 beats the crap out of that AMD.



Hope this list helps, if anything to give you an idea of what you need to be looking for.

[Monster]

Thanks. This helps a ton. Gotta see what the rents say. Worse comes to worse i buy some the parts myself and they get rest.

[thorian]

video card is cheaper here:
http://www.allstarshop.com/shop/simprod.asp?pid=19016&ad=pwatch

processor cheaper here
http://www.clubit.com/product_detail.cfm?itemno=A1938460&cmp=OTC-pricewatch




both off pricewatch, gotta keep in mind shipping tho which i didn't look at.

[Diamndzngunz]

My Only Suggest For the Mobo....

1st the one you have chosen is not SLI compatible so if you were wanting duel graphics cards it would not work.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813188015

I would suggest that. By far a sick ass board also from a trusted company.


I would also suggest checking out the EVGA graphics cards.

The Power Supply... I would double check if it is SLI compatible. Just in case you decide to do duel graphics. Friend has burnt up some cards in the past for not having a SLI compatible Power Supply.

The memory. If I am not mistaken Windows XP only read up to 3g. 64bit is higher. Vista is much higher. So make sure you are aware of that.


I hoped I helped out with this..




Ohh and also. Check out the 8800GT's their from what I hear are the best cards on the market for the price. Down side is its PCI Express 2.0 and those boards are expensive.

[Shogun]

Don't forget things like the DVD burner/drive, any cables you need if the parts are OEM and double check what they do/don't come with, it sucks to get the entire components list then realise you need a cable to finish it that you can't get until the next day. Major kick in the teeth :P

If you've never put a PC together before you might want to research it first, and/or get a friend to help that has some experience with it :)

[jrox]

My Only Suggest For the Mobo....

1st the one you have chosen is not SLI compatible so if you were wanting duel graphics cards it would not work.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813188015

I would suggest that. By far a sick ass board also from a trusted company.


I don't agree with this. Unless you're running a 30in monitor at 2560x1600 SLI is a waste of money. Not to mention the fact that the nvidia 680i mobos aren't going to support the new intel 45nm processors (as of january) So you will be stuck with your Q6600 until you get a new mobo.

This GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3L seems to be the rave among 1kish system builders.
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16813128059

if you look around at clubit.com zipzoomfly.com buy.com you can usually find one for about $86.

[murmur]

I have basic knowledge of doing it. And iam sure there are tutorials online that could show you. If not i could have my friend help.


I built my first computer at the beginning of the year, and If I can do it I'm sure you can. It's really simple once you know what you doing.

I ordered all of my parts from newegg.com and everything arrived in great condition. They have super fast shipping too. I love that site.

If you want to read up and learn tomshardware.com is an awesome resource. The forums there are great too.

[thinus]

I'll promote the other way just to be different :)

I built my previous machine myself, ordered all my parts from the cheapest sources (remember to include shipping costs).
Tip: make sure the processor comes with a fan or heat sink and if it is not pre-assembled that it comes with some thermal paste as well.

Some annoying things to watch for, your case and PSU, the PSU wires might not reach where you want to place your harddrives. The PCI-e cards can be very long and mounting your hard drives in the bottom most brackets in a midi tower case will avoid them being in line with the PCI-e card. But some PSUs will not have long enough wires to reach the bottom of the case.

My motherboard also came with really flimsy SATA cables that broke if you looked at them too hard. Fitting those flimsy cables and then putting in a PCI-e card and trying to avoid pushing against those cables in cramped space was more of a pain than it should have been.

My motherboard also didn't have the I/O shield bundled with it, the little metallic plate that goes at the back over the connecters. By the time I noticed I had already installed the motherboard and I wasn't going to disassemble the whole machine again so I could send the motherboard back. I tried to get a I/O shield out of the supplier but eventually had to give up.

-----------------------------

Last week I started looking for a new machine. I compared prices from lots of different companies. I used their websites to pick all the components I want in my machine and compared the prices. I picked a single company which had a competitive price, was close to me and a good reputation.

I ordered all the components from them, about $2000NZ and asked how much it would be to assemble it which turned out to be $40NZ. Now when spending $2000NZ it just doesn't make sense to me to go through the hassle of building the machine yourself when you can get it professionally done by people that do this for a living.

I ordered it about lunch time, asked them to build it for me and I picked up the machine the same afternoon. I went home, turned it on, checked the specs and then installed the O/S. If I had a problem I could just pop back to them the next day.

$40NZ well spent I think.

[Hippieman]

For a PSU(Powersupply), I'd recommend NorthQ. They're scilent, they're efficient and they're very VERY stable (which is a big "yey" when you're running the bigrigs you get nowadays).