Topic: Grateful for advice on building my new rig

[elsmandino]

Hello everyone,

I am proposing to build the following PC:

Antec P-182
2 X 2GB Corsair PC6400 RAM
E8400
ASUS P5Q-E
HDD X for
1TB Samsung Spinpoint OR 640GB Western Digital Caviar Black (For OS and Programmes)
1TB Samsung Spinpoint (For important Documents and Media)
Corsair TX 750W
Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 - Vapour X
Pioneer DVR-215
XP

By way of background, I shall be buying Windows 7 64-bit, when it comes out and then maxing the Ram.
I am not a big gamer and am unlikely to upgrade the graphics card and will certainly not be adding a second card - the only likely future upgrades would be a couple more hard drives, perhaps more fans (if needed), a TV Tuner Card/TV Capture Card and a dedicated sound card.  I might upgrade to a Quadcore in the next few years - my current computer is an AMD XP 2500, so you can see I leave quite a while between upgrades.  I am also certain I would like to take the Intel rather than AMD route.

Other than the usual, I use my comp for basic video editing and music recording with Cubase and the like.

Have spent quite a while coming up with the above specs and would be really grateful for your comments before I take the plunge - anything that I should change, recommended alternatives or additions etc.

The only thing that I have noted that is that perhaps the 750W is perhaps overkill, even including head room for upgrades.  I

know that having a much more powerful PSU than requested is not bad, but is a waste of cash if a weaker PSU would do. PSUs are something I know little about and am not entirely sure.

Another thing is the hard drive I should use for my system files.  The Caviar is slightly faster than the spinpoint, but the spinpoint is a whole 320GB extra for little extra cost - what would you choose?

Would also be grateful for any estimates on how much you think this would cost to put together - is it better to buy separately or get it pre-built by a company (I have read online that getting it done this way can be pretty competitive).

Many thanks

Al

[Sandra]

The last time I did a similar build for myself I went to a local PC shop with the list of parts I had decided to use and asked them for their best price.
I had already priced them individually on Ebuyer and the local shop came out to about £30 more on £800 of parts.
I went with the local shop as I used to get a small discount on stuff I bought and as it happened when I went to pick the parts up he said he needed an extra £15, I asked what for and he said hed got hold of the next CPU as it was on a special offer at his suppliers which was another £75 from Ebuyer, so it worked out slightly cheaper after all with the faster CPU  

I dont think the PSU is overkill, better to have too much rather than too little, the PC will only use however many watts it needs and may well run cooler if the PSU isnt running flat out.

The bottleneck of the PC is the CPU, less so now that Intel are incorporating the northbridge into the CPU, so I have never seen the need for really fast hard drives. As long as they have 8 or 16mb cache then I dont think youd really notice much difference.

Not sure about the GFX card as I tend to go for Nvidia but havent checked the specs out of the more recent cards, otherwise it looks like you should have a nice PC.

[Noobo-k]

Hello one and all,

I have a got a really old computer and have started to notice a few problems in terms of speed.

I would like to buy a really high spec computer but, in light of the new i5 coming out, I shall be waiting until next year now for reviews on the CPU and the new mobos.

I have decided to build a budget computer for the time being and then plug it up to my 40" LCD in my living room once I buy my top spec computer.

Having scanned the internet and magazines, it seems that AMD offer the best value and have come up with
the following:

Athlon 64 X2 4200+
Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H
Gigabyte GZ-X1
Hard drive for Windows and my progs
DVD-RW - taken from my old computer
1TB Spinpoint (which I keep my music, camcorder footage etc) - taken from old computer
500GB IDE Hitachi Drive for Back up - taken from old computer
4GB RAM
Antec Basiq Power 350w ATX

Using the above bits and canabilising bits from old computer, I reckon I can build a fairly good computer to keep me going that is cheap as chips.

Just a few bits advice would be appreciated:

Q1. Will the power supply be good enough for all this? and some upgrading in the future?
Q2. The CPU is the lowest spec dual core - would it be cost effective to get something a little better?
Q3. I would like the ability to upgrade bits as time goes one.  I really do not understand how the AMD chips are named. I know that the MOBO supports AMD2+ - what CPUs could I upgrade to in the future?
Q4. What speed of RAM should I get - noted that they range from DDR2-400 to DDR2-1066.  Obviously, the fast it gets, the more expensive, but what is the recommended speed, without being a waste on my board, and would be good for my situation
Q5. Have no idea which HDD to use for windows and my programmes.  Not only do you have to consider brands, but also cache size and size.  Would anyone recommend anything in particular?  One thing that concerns me that only the biggest drives have the big cache, but then would a big cache necessarily help with a modest build?  Also, would a huge drive then be wasteful as I am unlikely to stick masses of programmes on it and I read that system drives should be kept small
Q6. As my back up drive and RW are ide, I was thinking of using round shielded cables instead of the usual ribbon ones - is this a good idea?

As you can probably tell, this is the first computer for which I have had to choose the bits for myself and your help would be great.  Hopefully I can learn some stuff before I have to build a fast one next year.

Noobo-k
UK

[Sandra]

Are you the same person as "elsmandino" as your IP address is in the same range and you are asking a similar question ?

[Noobo-k]

Hello,

I am actually his partner.  Alex has been fiddling with these forums for a bit and keeps changing his mind as to what to do.  He also doesn't really know how to use forums.  I use forums a bit but know nothing about computers.  He was a bit embarrassed about asking similar questions again so I got him to write down what his latest plan was and said I would see what I could find out.  Sorry if he has asked the same question twice.

[Sandra]

Thats OK, it just seemed a bit strange to be asked a similar question so soon and from the same IP range 

Its a bit late now so I will read both threads again tomorrow and see what I can come up with in way of a reply.

[Simon]

Topics merged to avoid duplication.    to both of you!