building my first computer

[thubby]

Title pretty much says it all. I'm going to be building my first computer in the near future, and i need all the info i can get my hands on. good parts and where to find em, how to's, general info, everything.

[jazz1m]

Well first, what kind of computer do you want? Is it going to be for gaming, simple word processing/surfing the intertubes or in a professional sense (video, photo, sound editiing?) You will need significantly different hardware for your computer for each one. Also, what is your budget?

I can give you my specs on my comp, I made this approximately 4 years ago and it's still going strong!

Intel Pentium 3.0ghz
1 GB DDR ram (Kingston)
300 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200 rpm
550W Antec Truepower
Geforce 6600
Creative Soundblaster 7.1
Asus P4S800D-X
Raidmax Samurai Case

[Ninja Chocobo]

* Wait until the Intel i7s get to a reasonable price. Three to six months should do it. I know this isn't 'near' future, but the i7s are a serious improvement over the Pentium 4 and Dual-Core range.
* Asus' P6[letter] range are solid (i7-compatible) motherboards, as I understand it.
* nVidia GeForce 9800-odd will suit you for at least three years, with the latest games and such, especially if you opt for the 1GB version/s.
* RAM is easy to upgrade. That said, by the time the i7s are reasonably priced, DDR3 will also be. Get 3GB if you're running 32-bit, or 4GB if you're running 64-bit. Preferably with as few physical sticks as possible.
* Hard drives are dirt cheap. They're about AUD$100 for 750GB now.
* I don't know much about cases, but they tend to come with pretty decent power supplies nowadays. You'll probably want one over 600W though. (I don't know much about PSUs either)
* If you've got a DVD drive in your old computer you can pull it out of that.

That's for a gaming computer that'll stay fairly current for at least three years. O'course, someone who knows more is probably going to come along and advise against everything I've just said, but at least I tried.
And remember: It's like putting together a really expensive jigsaw puzzle.

[Forthork]

Generally Newegg.com (http://www.Newegg.com) is the best place to shop for parts. They have decent prices, and cheap or free 3-day shipping. The first choice you have to make is to use an Intel or AMD processor. AMD generally has cheaper, but slower processors. Right now, Intel has Core 2 and Core i7 processors, i7 being their newest processors, which are faster at most things, but come with a price premium, and require a more expensive Socket 1366 motherboard and DDR3 RAM as opposed to the cheaper Socket 775 board and DDR2 RAM for Core 2 Duos and Quads. AMD sells Athlon x2 (dual core) and Phenom x4 (quad). Both work on Socket AM2 (with an updated AM2+ and the upcoming AM3 being newer, but backwards-compatible.) They also just released their new processors, Phenom II x4, which currently use AM2+ and will later use AM3. AM2/+/3 motherboards are all significantly cheaper than Socket 775 or 1366, with AM2/+ using cheap DDR2 and AM3 using DDR3. At this point I would like to mention that currently, DDR3 offers no real performance gains over DDR2, but comes at something like 3-4 times the price.

On to graphics cards. Any modern board you will buy will have a PCI-Express x16 slot, be it 1.0 or 2.0. Currently, not much of a difference in price or performance, but future graphics cards will take a performance hit in 1.0 slots. Therefore, you will be buying a PCI-Express card, if you are going to be gaming. Otherwise, you should be fine with a nice on-board chip. For a card, you want at least 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM with a 256-bit bus. Like processors, there are two brands, nVidia with the more expensive and powerful cards, and ATi, with weaker, but better priced, cards. I should also mention that with graphics cards, and processors, in most price ranges, each brand has competitive products. But Intel and nVidia have the most expensive ($500+) products, and in the sub-$150ish region, ATi and AMD usually have better performance per dollar.

Everything else should be pretty easy. Get SATA hard-drives and DVD drives, a decent case, and maybe a few fans. Also, do not cheap out on a power supply. But only name brands, with enough wattage for your PC. Any cheap component can die, but if a power supply does, it can take anything in your computer with it.

Also, if you can give me a budget, the purposes for the computer, and, if gaming, the resolution of the monitor you plan to use, I can gladly make an example build.



That's for a gaming computer that'll stay fairly current for at least three years. O'course, someone who knows more is probably going to come along and advise against everything I've just said, but at least I tried.


You called? Those are decent recommendations, but Core i7 is not that great improvement over Core 2 Quads. Similarly priced i7s and Core 2s perform about the same, and you can save a lot of money on other parts by not using i7. That said, i7 have many advantages, mainly in applications coded for muliple threads, and if the OP wants to wait, that's great, but I don't see i7s and DDR3 becoming reasonable compared to Core 2 and DDR2 for at least another year.

[thubby]

It's going to end up as the new family computer, which means mostly word/excel school projects, web surfing, and 4 people's worth of personal music and assorted junk.
my sister would be thrilled if it could run WoW above minimum settings though.

I am also planning on building myself a gaming rig, but that's coming out of my pocket, and it's money i really don't have atm.

and is this (http://computer.howstuffworks.com/build-a-computer6.htm) a good beginners guide?

[jazz1m]

It's going to end up as the new family computer, which means mostly word/excel school projects, web surfing, and 4 people's worth of personal music and assorted junk.
my sister would be thrilled if it could run WoW above minimum settings though.

I am also planning on building myself a gaming rig, but that's coming out of my pocket, and it's money i really don't have atm.

and is this (http://computer.howstuffworks.com/build-a-computer6.htm) a good beginners guide?

If it's just a basic computer you don't need a lot of crazy stuff, I would suggest

1. Asus motherboard with at least agp slot (or PCI express) and minimally 3 PCI slots
2. 1 GB Ram (kingston)
3. 250 GB harddrive (seagate, lacie) SATA is great and the connectors are slim, good to keep the computer cool
4. Nvidia 9400 or even 9200 or Geforce 6600
5. 3.0 ghz cpu
6. 480-500W power supply or less (antecs are always nice)
7. sound blaster 5.1 if you have speaker
8. DVD burner/CD burner
9. Case, eh basic one is fine just make sure the dimensions fit the motherboard and it's always nice to have front USB slots as well as back ones
10. Cooling: Definitely don't skimp out, you don't want to fry your CPU, antec makes great heatsinks. Make sure to apply the thermal paste correctly.

Should be plenty for WoW as well as basic stuff. Should cost around $500-600 at most.
places to look
newegg.com, tigerdirect.com, pricewatch.com

[mangosta71]

Hope you have better luck than I did. Built my first three and a half years ago. PSU blew out after just a couple months, it ran hot (ie my room was consistently 10-15 degrees warmer than the rest of the house), had a number of other issues that popped up from time to time... A month ago, I finally decided to retire it and got a high-end prebuilt gaming rig from Newegg for $1200. And came with a warranty, so if I have any of the issues that plagued my old one I'm not SOL.

In all honesty, a prebuilt machine will probably not be significantly more expensive than one you build yourself, and in my experience, the difference more than makes up for the hassle.

[Forthork]

Based on that, definitely get an AMD processor with an AMD board (the actually brand doesn't matter, just that it uses a recent AMD chipset, like this board (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128360).) They come cheaper if you need less. The board has one of the best integrated graphics chips, which is more than sufficient for your needs, saves you the cost of a card, and should play WoW on high settings. Get either this Athlon 7750 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103300) (dual core) or a Phenom that fits your budget (if you want really cheap, you can get an slower Athlon for like $50, and will still perform well for what you need. Get some RAM that suits your needs (chances are, DDR2 800.) You can get 2 gig sets for $20, 4 gigs for $30 after rebates if you are lucky. You should be able to salvage your hard drive and DVD drive if you want to, otherwise get SATA drives, DVD drives go for ~$25, and 500 gig HDD are close to $60. Buy a good PSU this (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371005) is sufficient, you might be able to find a better deal. Grab a case (if you get a small motherboard, you can get a small case, and if you get the board with integrated graphics, you can get a slim case.


Hope you have better luck than I did. Built my first three and a half years ago. PSU blew out after just a couple months, it ran hot (ie my room was consistently 10-15 degrees warmer than the rest of the house), had a number of other issues that popped up from time to time... A month ago, I finally decided to retire it and got a high-end prebuilt gaming rig from Newegg for $1200. And came with a warranty, so if I have any of the issues that plagued my old one I'm not SOL.

In all honesty, a prebuilt machine will probably not be significantly more expensive than one you build yourself, and in my experience, the difference more than makes up for the hassle.
Bad suggestions. Not only will you save yourself a lot of money by building yourself, it is a learning experience that will save you money in the future, if you build another PC, and can give you quite a sense of accomplishment. Chances are, you skimped out on the power supply, which is something I, and a few others, have just now informed the OP not to do. Now, if he does have a failure, if he bought parts from good brands, his warranty for the individual part will be longer (I buy graphics cards with lifetime warranties, HDD with 5 year, most everything else is 3.) Even if something does fail, it is much more convenient to only ship out one part.

[Hzurr]

* Wait until the Intel i7s get to a reasonable price. Three to six months should do it. I know this isn't 'near' future, but the i7s are a serious improvement over the Pentium 4 and Dual-Core range.
* Asus' P6[letter] range are solid (i7-compatible) motherboards, as I understand it.
* nVidia GeForce 9800-odd will suit you for at least three years, with the latest games and such, especially if you opt for the 1GB version/s.
* RAM is easy to upgrade. That said, by the time the i7s are reasonably priced, DDR3 will also be. Get 3GB if you're running 32-bit, or 4GB if you're running 64-bit. Preferably with as few physical sticks as possible.
* Hard drives are dirt cheap. They're about AUD$100 for 750GB now.
* I don't know much about cases, but they tend to come with pretty decent power supplies nowadays. You'll probably want one over 600W though. (I don't know much about PSUs either)
* If you've got a DVD drive in your old computer you can pull it out of that.


This post actually describes to the letter the PC I purchased this previous Monday. I should be getting the parts in by Thurs or Friday. I think the only difference is I picked up 6 Gigs of ram

I was able to get a couple of good bundle deals, so I've got the 2.66 GHz i7 processor (The price goes up significantly after you go above 2.66 You're better off overclocking it slightly, especially since I've read reports of overclocking this to nearly 4.0 GHz without significant cooling problems, so OCing it to 3.0 shouldn't be an issue)

Like other people have said, don't skimp on the PSU.

As far as HardDrives go, I was at Fry's Electronics earlier this week, and they had 1TB HD's on sale for $100 (but they were fairly low-quality drives), so if you go with a higher quality, you should be able to get at least 750 Gigs for USD$100 or less)

Anyway, the above mentioned computer cost me under $1500, including shipping (an equivalent from Alienware would have been over $2k), so there's definitely a savings in building it yourself.