I've got some money saved up and thinking of building myself a new computer. I've done upgrading to older systems, more memory, new PCI cards, new HD's and optical drives, even replaced a floppy and HD in a laptop, but never build one completely from scratch. I think I have all the basic ideas down, but the only way to learn is to try. Here's the parts list I've come up with so far.

Pentium 4 2.8Ghz, 800Mhz FSB HT

Asus P4P800 MB, 865PE chipset (HT), 800Mhz FSB, 2 SATA slots, 8X AGP, integrated AD audio, 10/100/1000 ethernet, 8 USB 2.0, 2 Firewire.

2 sticks of Corsair XMS extereme 512M PC3200 (400Mhz), 1Gig total

ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128Meg

Western Digital Raptor, 36G 10,000 rpm SATA HD (planning to add a standard IDE ~100Gig for storage later)

Lite On DVD/CD reader, Lite On 52x CDRW

Cooler Master alumium case and Enermax 431W PS

NEC/Mitsu 19" CRT

WinXP Home

That's pretty much it. Ordering basically everything from New Egg, around $1800 for everything. I was wondering if anybody had any opinions or things they'd change. I'm basically building a strong gaming machine that can do pretty much anything without spending a fortune.

I'm going with the 2.8G P4 and 865 chipset rather than a 3.2 or 3.0 and 875 becuase I figure by the time it becomes an issue, the Pentium 5 and Athalon 64's will be out so save the money now. Same with the 128Meg 9800. They have a 256Meg but it's $120 more and by the time I need 256, a much faster/better chipset will be out. I don't plan to move this thing much so I'm sticking witha cheaper CRT rather than an LCD for now. I've also used Lite on stuff before and liked it, so I wanted use that. I decided not to go with a DVD-R for now because I'll never use it and by the time I need one, they'll probably be $100. Almost everything is retail, except the HD which is OEM only right now. Probably going to order this week (still doing some research) but I wanted some opinions. Thanks, seeya.

 

looks very nice. i bet itll be a sweet system.

question, why sata? what are the benefits of it. is there a cost difference over ide?

 

Thanks. I figured it's a faster interface, build into the motherboard and not that much more expensive (aside from the reduced size, but I'm not an MP3 junky).

http://www.tomshardware.com/storage/.../wd360-02.html

Basically it's SCSI speed without the need for SCSI and I figured with the OS and applications loaded on to it, it should scream and a seperate HD will give me all the space I'll ever need and enough room for a lot of backups.

 

uh...make that 2.8C a 2.6C and and buy some higher speed ram...i have the same exact ram with a 2.4C...its straight to do 3.0 OC but can't do much more....a 2.6C can do 1:1 and be fine with a good OC....sure the fsb wont be as high but performance overall will be better....sweet vid card, i got the 9600 pro

 

i've read that sata really has no great performance boost over ata133 but i've heard great things of raid 0 with those raptors...i have raid 0 with my ata133 and i installed win xp pro in 10 minutes

try to buy another raptor so you'll be ultra fast with raid....but does that board have onboard raid....i'm sure 875p mobos do but not sure about 865

 

looks like a really nice system...
but i rather cut down on something and get a dvdburner included..

 

2.8C? Sorry, but I don't follow (like I said, new to building them from scratch). For now, I'm not planning to do any overclocking but the MB will support it if I try (locked PCI/AGP speed and lots of voltage settings).

I've though about a RAID 0 for it, but i wasn't sure if I wanted to or not. The MB does have built in RAID support.

http://www.asus.com/prog/spec.asp?m=...eluxe&langs=01

I just wasn't sure if it would be worth buying the second HD and buliding the RAID array. I've never used a RAID setup so I'm not real sure about all of it (I know what is it and what it does, just never used it).

 

^^^this is my first pc i've ever touched the insides of...i'm 17 and its all really simple...i've overclocked it way past 250fsb but wasnt stable.

You can't really messup your system unless the PSU messes up...

 

I though about geting one but I honestly don't think I'd use it much. I'm not big into grabbing rips off the web or making copies of my friends stuff (I have about 4-5 DVD"s I've bought an never watched). Besides, I think there 2 competing standards right now so I'll just wait and let them figure it out first and let the price drop. By the time I do decide to get one, they'll probably be around $100 and the media will be a lot cheaper.

 

theyre actually not that much than $100 rite now if you know where to get ur deals

btw...b4 you make any purchases...
i strongly advise you to take a visit to www.anandtech.com
you can find good info and deals on computer gears there..