building my own computer...need help..

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gkowal

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hey guys !! i hope you can help me I am in need of a new computer but my budget is not that good... and what i was thinking is that i will build my own comp.. but here comes a problem i`m not sure which MOTHERBOARD and Processor i should get...
i was thinkng to get AMD and here is where i need your help people i was thinking of getting XP 2100 but i don`t know which motherboard should i get ASUS , ABIT which company? and then which motherboard there is so many of them but i know i want DDR memory and NO SOUND on it(which is hard to find today)... and then the processor.. can someone give me some EXAMPLES? list the motherboard and processor that go pretty good together?? I `m going to use my new computer with programs like CUBASE, REASON, sound forge and lots of PLUGINS... ALSO as i was thinking since i have an old SOUNDCARD SBLIVE maybe i should get something new? but here again comes a problem of MONEY... soundcard for less then 200$... or should i wait with soundcard and buy something more expensive later on...? THANK YOU!!!!!
 
Here's a very powerful combo for the money. It's a popular combination among computer enthusiasts on a budget. I will mention up front that being an AMD system there might be an additional step or two in setting it up (more chipset drivers to install... not really a concern any more though... just use the one's on the motherboard install CD and all is good). Stability should be good, and for the money you'd be hard pressed to get a faster system.

AMD XP 1600+ $56 at newegg.com
Samsung PC2700 DDR memory, 256 MB $89 at newegg.com
MSI KT3 Ultra2 motherboard $80 at newegg.com
Alpha 8045 Heatsink/fan $48 at newegg.com

Total = $273

Not bad. A few comments:

There is a new MSI KT4 Ultra board, but it's a little more pricey, and the KT3 Ultra2 has proven stability. There may be other motherboards that are of equal quality, but after some long and hard searching I found none (for AMD) that offered the same stability and speed for that price. No frills, no extra bells and whistles (other than some great overclocking features), just stability and good price.

The XP1600 from Newegg is a very overclockable CPU, especially with the recommended memory and motherboard. With that combination, you can essentially have an XP 2200+ processor for the price of the 1600+. If you're interested in this further, I'm sure we can answer more detailed questions along those lines (but with the above recommendation, it's a no-brainer).

The heatsink recommended is on the expensive side, but here's why: For one, it cools quite well (from the choices newegg offers, and ordering from one place has its advantages), and will allow you quite a bit of overclocking headroom. For another, the fan that comes with it is a 4000rpm 80mm design, and is quite a bit quieter than the 60mm fans found on most heatsinks. That is important for a computer doing recording.

For AMD systems on a budget, that is my recommendation. You can match the performance with an Intel equivalent for just a bit more money. I don't have those prices at hand, but I would guess another $50 or so. The benefit: the only one I can think of is that the heatsink/fan for an Intel P4 might run even a bit more silent than the one recommended above. The drawback: a little more money... the P4/Intel system could be just as fast and would certainly be as stable. Intel systems right now are faster at the high end, but that isn't for someone on a budget.

If you need a really silent computer, a PIII based Celeron-T might be more suitable, though I admit I'm less knowledgeable about those. Expect price to be a little higher, and performance to be a little lower, in trade off for the nearly silent running.
 
My learned friend above does indeed proffer sage advice.
Never buy the fastest chips(they extract a hefty price premium and whatever you buy will obsolete in 6 months anyway).A good shop/supplier should be able to recommend compatible cpu/mobo combo.
Good hunting
 
I build systems as my line of business:

ABit KG7 board
AMD XP-2100 processor
Alpha PAL8045 heat sink
Zalman northbridge heat sink
Matrox G450 AGP video card
Crucial memory, 1 stick at least 256mb, or 1 stick of 512mb
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sound card
Antec SX-840 cases (www.emscomputing.com)
Artic Silver III heat sink paste for the cpu
Win2000/SP2 or higher

Avoid:
Seagate hard drives
No-name memory
Cheap heat sinks
SoundBlaster cards

The above system is the most rock-solid reliable I have come across to date. The KG7 board is at end-of-life, but is a real deal at $55 at newegg.com as of this writing. The USB and AGP implementations work just fine.
 
In general terms, I've always been a fan of ASUS brand motherboards.
 
I'd have to disagree on the "avoid Seagate HDD's" thing. The Seagate Baracuda ATA IV is an excellent drive, reasonably fast, reliable (much more so than IBM's 'Deathstar' series, and as good as any WD or Maxtor) and as quiet as they come.

Besides, Seagate also makes the Cheetah X15 15,000rpm U160 and U320 SCSI drives. They don't get any better than that, for any price.
 
computer purchase

Hey!
If you aren't all that comfortable with building a computer from the ground up theres a great website I ordered some things from called www.Accessmicro.com . You can specify what hardware you want and they'll put it together for you and charge you like a 8 dollar burn in fee. I ordered just a motherboard/processer/memory but you can have them assemble the whole thing as well and the prices aren't bad. I just had too many near-misses when trying to mount those heatsinks to the processor :). I'll rather have a processor crack on somebody elses dollar :). Just a suggestion. I was pleased with my purchase from them.

haha ibm "deathstar"....oh..unfortunately I have one of them...i'm gambling with my life here huh...well not really..i backed everything up about a month ago :)

hope this helps.

dlv
 
Hey Bigus Dickus, I have an AMD 1900+. Can you overclock it? Is so how? Any sites that explain it?
 
djc said:
Hey Bigus Dickus, I have an AMD 1900+. Can you overclock it? Is so how? Any sites that explain it?
Click to expand...

You should have a bit of room left in that processor. It's running 1.6 GHz default, and should probably make it to 1.75 or better with decent cooling.

The first question is what motherboard do you have? The second is do you know what kind of CPU heatsink and fan you have? If you're lucky, it could be as easy as changing a few numbers in the BIOS. Just a bit less lucky would be having to change a few dipswitches on the motherboard. Really unlucky would be performing surgery on the processor itself.

Sites to check out:

www.anandtech.com
www.tomshardware.com
www.hardocp.com
www.amdmb.com
 
try for a maxtor hard drive first, western digital (jb) series second and forget the others pretty much, (excuse) IBM for sure... this is a very overlooked area of data storage, buy the wrong hardware and all your efforts can be gone in a flash, (ie IBM) unless you have deep pockets (backup) that is...

and look for the B version Tbred 1700, they run cooler and clock higher if thats what's your into, there's an artical at overclockers.com on the B version cpu subject...

samsung is the best bang for the buck right now, so, bingo there, as for main boards try and go with the kt333 chipset i guess but do some research first, i shy away from big board makers now because they got cought up in the preformane race and just did to much to fast as in Asus case, i run Epox but find MSI runs very well and don't have the quarks Epox has, amdmb.com forum has plenty of user info, and never believe the candy coated reviews you see on web sites, they get hardware for there lovely input reviews as sad as that (favor factor) is...research is the key to a great system and forums tell it all, good and bad...
 
Bigus Dickus said:
I'd have to disagree on the "avoid Seagate HDD's" thing. The Seagate Baracuda ATA IV is an excellent drive, reasonably fast, reliable (much more so than IBM's 'Deathstar' series, and as good as any WD or Maxtor) and as quiet as they come.

Besides, Seagate also makes the Cheetah X15 15,000rpm U160 and U320 SCSI drives. They don't get any better than that, for any price.
Click to expand...

Agree 100%. The Seagate B4's are excellent drives. Very quiet, plus I like that weird sweet synthetic smell they have, intoxicating. Their SCSI tech has always been ahead of the game. In the past, like 3 years ago (and much earlier) Seagate was putting out some questionable IDE drives. Then again so was everyone else. I'd avoid WD like the plague. Maxtor's are good as well (they use to be crappy to).

It's a crapshoot. Any drive can fail at anytime.

Backup your data often. That's what that CD-RW is for.
 
Yes, Seagate had some less than decent drives a few years ago. So did Maxtor. Western Digital and IBM drives ruled the roost in terms of reliability then.

Now, Seagate makes excellent drives, and not that Maxtor has discontinued all the old Quantum lines, their drives are pretty good as well. Wester Digital still makes some good drives (especially the JB special edition drives, very nice), but their lower end ones are suspect. And, agreeing with everyone else, the IBM drives are to be avoided like the plague!
 
bgavin said:
I build systems as my line of business:

ABit KG7 board
AMD XP-2100 processor
Alpha PAL8045 heat sink
Zalman northbridge heat sink
Matrox G450 AGP video card
Crucial memory, 1 stick at least 256mb, or 1 stick of 512mb
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sound card
Antec SX-840 cases (www.emscomputing.com)
Artic Silver III heat sink paste for the cpu
Win2000/SP2 or higher

Avoid:
Seagate hard drives
No-name memory
Cheap heat sinks
SoundBlaster cards
Click to expand...

My first post! Just wanted to point out that this configuration above, really speaks more to the overclocking/gaming crowd than to the home recording crowd. I'll agree with the AMD cpu, and buying good memory. But the artic silver paste and overkill cooling fans are really quite unecessary for home recording.

Personally on my work/gaming machine, I use a 3DCOOL Tornado case with 4 case fans plus the power supply fan, the CPU fan, Video card fan and Northbridge fan. And you guessed it..it sounds like a jet on takeoff. Now my recording PC has only one fan and the name of the game here is "Run Silent" so it doesn't obscure the monitors during mixdown.

Final note, I found a great article which disspells many of the myths associate with hard drives..take a look and decide for yourselves.

http://computers.cnet.com/hardware/...st.co.1016-8-20069949-2.txt.1016-8-20069949-1

Enjoy..
TransHuman
 
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