Thinking of building a computer...

[snocross1985]

Well, the time has come where my laptop is good for typing and whatnot when I am around school, but I want a desktop for at home. I have been searching around here and have been doing my homework. Thing is, I do not use my computer for games. That is what my xbox and ps2 are for. However, I do like the idea of having a TV tuner in my computer that can also record TV. I use my computer a lot for cruising the web, word processing, storing pictures, making/editing movies. What components would be good for me since I am not a gamer? Also want to do this on a decent budget. I have been looking around and a lot of the builds I have seen were for gamers. Any help? I have bought from newegg before and will probably buy from them again.

 

[Brandons]

If your going to build it yourself, then good job

The first thing is what your budget is for this? A couple things to keep in mind is youl want 1gb of memory or more, probably a media center edition of windows, large hard drive for videos, even better two drives, one to install windows on and your programs, and a larger drive to put all your videos in (if your that serious about it). For tv tuners either an ATI all in wonder or some form of Tv tuner card. I dont know much about them (tv tuners) but i hear the all in wonder is pretty good. And if you decide to play the odd game its good for that too (no matter how much you like xbox/ps2, youl always find something for pc ).

The longer you wait the less expensives parts get as new ones come out. Just curious if you have ever built a computer before or are new to it?

Good luck

 

[snocross1985]

I have built other comps in the past, but never for myself.

As for pc games, though, the most involved I get in pc games now is the occasional rollercoaster tycoon or sims. I don't play any new games on pc.

 

[Josh]

Look at tigerdirect.com. I always see nice deals there but have never bought from them. I wonder for TV recording if a SATA RAID running level 0 would be good? According to the site below it would. Only bad thing is not fault tolerant. Loose one drive, loose everything. I would imagine you will want a hard drive running no less than 7200 RPM as well, which is easy to come by. Pricewatch.com also has leads on good prices. There is one other link that talks about a hometheater type PC. These may go to the extreme but they might give some ideas.

http://www.acnc.com/04_01_00.html

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1265778,00.asp

 

[old mechanic]

Check out a companys ratings at www.resellersratings.com before buying anything. Pricewatch should give you the lowest prices but nothing about the companys background. If you have to RMA-return anything or deal with rebates that could become a problem.
Tigerdirect sure does have some low prices like a AMD64 3300 2.4 GHz for $19.00. THats simply unheard of. Even tho they don't tell you its a Sempron with the crippled cache of 256 but that still is a great deal and should serve anyone well.
Memory is cheap now so buy as much as you can afford to. As said 1 gig or more depending if your motherboard likes to play with 2 gigs or if its compatable with certain memory brands or not. You need to do some research before you buy.
My choice for a pretty good rig at a resonable price:
CPU: AMD 64 single core at what ever speed you can get the best deal with.
Motherboard: MSI K8N Neo4-F.
Memory: Corsair value- 2 sticks of PC3200. 2 Sticks of 512mb each.
And build from there.
I buy from Newegg only with a few exceptions.

 

[snocross1985]

Anyone have recommendations on a video card?

 

[Josh]

FYI - Pricewatch does have store reviews. They have been doing it for a while now.

 

[old mechanic]

GForce 7600 GT. Well worth the $150.00???. Check it out to see if it has everything you need .

 

[old mechanic]

FYI - Pricewatch does have store reviews. They have been doing it for a while now.[/QUOTE
------------
I couldn't find any on their site. Where are they?

 

[Josh]

When you search for a particular item, you will get a list. You pich the part that catches your eye and it will give you a listing of al the stores that are selling the item you chose usualy lowest price first and there is a link for the store on the right side. under that are stars which represent the store rating.

 

[jester6]

If your gona do video editing, go with a dual core cpu. I would either go w/ a Amd 3800 X2 (about $120) or a Core Duo. I dont know how long it takes others as I havnt compared, I can usually ecode a 8g dual layer dvd around 1hr 45mins running both cores. Or can set it to 1 core & play a game, web surf, etc w/out any hicups.

Video card, since your not gona do any gaming a 6600 or 6800 will work perfect & can find them around $100 in pci-express form. Evga & XFX a good brands

Motherboard/ Harddrive, look for something that has at least 4 Sata ports w/ either Raid 0+1 or Raid 5, preferably Raid 5. They both give you performance gain w/ fault tolerance but raid 5 is a lil better. Raid 0+1 youll need 4 hd's, Raid 5 is a min of 3. Raid will give you a slight performance boost for read/writes to the hd which is good for video editing. DFI & Abit mobo's are the only 2 that I would buy. Every sata hd is 7200rpm except raptors (10,000rpm) which are expensive.

Memory, I only buy OCZ. If your not going to overclock their lower end ram will work well & can get 1g under $100.

Power supply, Again OCZ or Silverstream. They are both good brands & have 500w models under $100.

Anything your gona buy read the reviews on like newegg or google it. Whats your budget?

 

[Josh]

Video card, since your not gona do any gaming a 6600 or 6800 will work perfect & can find them around $100 in pci-express form. Evga & XFX a good brands

DO NOT buy EVGA! I am a field engineer for Lockheed Martin and it has been my job to support Dell Precision workstations that used that brand. Those cards were failing as quick as we could replace them. This was not site specific either. All of our sites had the same failure rates. This was with the FX5700 Ultra's so unless they have stepped up their QA, I would stay clear. No offense to Jester's recommendations. Hell I wish I could afford some of those other recomendations. Some of the systems I work on run RAID 5 at 4 terra bytes. Hell you could store the internet on there. LOL.

 

[huskyfan23]

DO NOT buy EVGA! I am a field engineer for Lockheed Martin and it has been my job to support Dell Precision workstations that used that brand. Those cards were failing as quick as we could replace them. This was not site specific either. All of our sites had the same failure rates. This was with the FX5700 Ultra's so unless they have stepped up their QA, I would stay clear. No offense to Jester's recommendations. Hell I wish I could afford some of those other recomendations. Some of the systems I work on run RAID 5 at 4 terra bytes. Hell you could store the internet on there. LOL.

That's interesting. I ONLY buy eVGA and have never had a problem. They have the Step-Up program and a lifetime warranty. They're great cards.

Definitely go with Intel's Core 2 Duo (Conroe). These are the best of the best in CPUs right now, and they're decently priced. They kill AMDs dual core chips, which forced AMD to drastically reduce their prices.

Since you don't do any hardcore gaming I'd just get a 6600GT and call it good.

OCZ has great PSUs, but the Enermax Liberty series is totally awesome.

For RAM, it depends on what motherboard you go with. Typically OCZ or G.Skill are the top dogs.

Video editing needs speed so probably go with a RAID 0 setup. Raptors are overpriced drives so I wouldn't go for those, unless you buy a few 150 gigs.

 

[Brandons]

yeah dont get the 36gb raptors, there fast as snot but cost too much

 

[Rhett]

I have always had good results with eVGA. But anyway, if I were building from the ground up, I would get a Core 2 Duo (even the lowest Core 2 Duo is awesome) over an AMD x2.

If you're going *absolute* budget, an AMD x2 3800+ (or 4600+) is probably the way to go. They can be had for less than $150 now ($190? for 4600+), and will probably drop a little more. 1 gig of ram in 2 matched pairs (someone mentioned OCZ ram, it's good stuff, but so is Corsair).

Core2Duo's are entering the market at higher prices than Intel said, but that doesn't surprise me. $320 for an E6600? That was too good to be true to me.

Budget Power supply, Seasonic, Enermax, OCZ. Avoid Antec.

Motherboard, right now you are limited with Core 2 Duo; but expect that to change in the next month or two as more Core 2 Duo boards become available. Core 2 Duo boards are expensive right now.

HD, any 7200 rpm SATA2. I feel like RAID would be nice for the editing/capturing but if you're on absolute budget then it's not 100% necessary.

 

[Brandons]

Well it also depends on how serious he is into video editing or capturing tv. If he just wants to watch the tv on his comp the odd time, or actually record it for later, or what not.

 

[snocross1985]

I would watch on occasion and sometimes record for later. Use it kinda like a DVR.

 

[Josh]

That funny you guys never had a problem with those cards. Of course they were bought as a lot and maybe we just had a bad batch, but in the course of a year, we replaced probably 50 or so and out of those about 10 were replacements for replacements. Oh well go with what you know I guess. I have only used PNY and BFG Tech boards with Nvidia chips. We just started using these new graphics cards from 3D labs that are PCIx with 750MB of memory. They are bad but they cost about 2000 bucks each.

 

[jester6]

Yea workstation graphic cards are sick but will skip the hole in your pocket & go right thru your foot.

snoc, ya still havnt mentioned what your budget is.

 

[BrooklynBay]

There are a few things to choose from, such as an AMD, or Intel processor, dual, or single core processor, Intel, or VIA chipset. Try to stick to name brand motherboards, since the cheap, no name brand boards have hardware incompatibility conflicts, frequent crashes, and hard to get brand specific drivers. Some motherboards have integrated sound, and graphics, but if you ever want to upgrade, you have to start playing with jumpers to disable the onboard functions.