i'm in the market for a new pc. so i shopped around online and after some thought i decided that i'm going to just build my own. the extent of my hardware knowledge is limited to adding ram, video cards and disc drives so i have never done anything quite like this before and i need a little advice. i would like to keep it as simple as possible so nothing fancy. just the bare essentials. my budget will be about $500 to $600. i already have a monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, pci card and cd drive. i would most likely get a new monitor after its finished but that's another story. i'm going to get the rest of the components one by one starting with the case and powersupply. i did a little research and found an excellent how to guide. (http://www.pcmech.com/byopc/) links to other sites would be much appreciated.

the final specs i want to end up with (which are negotiable) and other components i'll need are

2.0 p4 or athalon equivalent along with a compatable motherboard (leaning more towards athalon)
512 ddr ram
80ish GBHD
64mb video card
a case to accomidate all this, some slots and bays for upgrade/expansion would be a plus
power supply
fans and adequate ventalation
all the wires, ribbons, adaptors and cables i may need
and the tools i'll need to do this (different size phillips screwdriver maybe)

i hope i'm not missing anything. i haven't read the guide i mentioned earlier in full. would this be feasible to stay within my budget? i'm also taking into account any problems or discrepancies i may run into. i'm confident i can do this. i just hope i don't have to saulder (sp?) anything.

All right, I've built a number of PC's and I'll try to impart some of my knowledge to you.

Rule Number One: Make sure the bus speed of the motherboard matches the CPU's and RAM's.
This was my first mistake when I set off building my own PC. I bought a motherboard with a 333MHz DDR bus, and a processor and memory with a 266MHz DDR bus. Technically, they are supposed to work together, because the mobo is supposed to be backwards compatible, but in reality, it's not always that easy. It didn't work and I had to RMA the mobo.

Rule Number Two: No force allowed when inserting the CPU.
That's what a ZIF socket is for. ZIF stands for Zero Insertion Force. Just be sure to lift the lever on the side of the socket first. Also, make sure that Pin One of the CPU is aligned with the Pin One hole on the socket, so that the CPU just drops in.

Rule Number Three: Go gently when installing the heat sink.
If you use too much force, you'll crack the CPU core and you are out however much money the CPU cost. Be sure to apply the force evenly and press straight down. Don't forget to buy some thermal paste, either. Scrape off that black crap that comes on the heat sink, and buy some Arctic Silver III. Use a drop about the size of a grain of rice on the CPU core before installing the heat sink.

If you're looking to save money, which it seems you are, you can look into overclocking your processor, which is something that I've done to my PC. The catch is that you have to be sure that you have adequate cooling, but it can save you a lot of money.

Make sure you get all your drives jumpered properly, so that you don't have any issues with master/slave. Speaking of jumpers, try to get a jumperless motherboard if you can afford/find one. It will save you having to set up the jumpers for the CPU on the mobo.

Here are some other sites you might find useful:
Building A PC Part One (http://www.tomshardware.com/howto/20020904/index.html)
Building A PC Part Two (http://www.tomshardware.com/howto/20020918/index.html)
Find deals on components (http://www.techbargains.com)
Froogle, for finding the cheapest price (http://www.froogle.com)

thanks alot for the advice. i'll make sure i keep all this in mind when i start building one. hopefully the whole venture will go smoothly and i'm sure it will for the most part. i never really considered if i wanted to overclock the cpu. it does sound nice to be able to get more for your money if it works like that. i don't really plan on doing anthing that that would require fast processing. though i'm sure that will change in the future. i'm not really educated in this matter but what i want to know is exactly would one go about overclocking their processor? the only thing i do that is real hog on my computer's resources is play DAoC. it's kind of a drag sometimes when you have 3 players playing the same game with only one computer.

OK, overclocking. Basically, overclocking is increasing the front side bus(FSB) and/or the CPU multiplier in order to make the processor run faster than its advertised speed. Most CPU architectures are the same, so a 1.8 GHz CPU is identical to a 2.2 GHz CPU, except for the default multiplier. So you can safely run the 1.8 at the 2.2's speed. Some CPU's have a hard-wired multiplier, which can't be changed without some fancy work on the CPU core itself, and those are usually better left alone unless you really know what the hell you're doing.

You can still overclock a CPU with a hardwired multiplier by increasing the FSB. Think of the FSB as a pipe that the data flows through. The higher the MHz that it's running at, the wider the pipe would be. For example, a 266MHz DDR FSB runs at 133MHz. You can increase this to say, 138MHz, which is a little gain. This FSB speed is multiplied by the CPU's multiplier to give you the CPU's speed. So if you have a CPU with a multiplier of 9.0, at our bus speed of 138MHz, you have a processor that's running at 2,484MHz, as opposed to the stock one which runs at 2,394MHz. Not a big gain, but without being able to modify the CPU's multiplier, you'll never get really big gains. To be really effective, you have to be able to modify both the multiplier and the FSB.

Sometimes, you'll also need to be able to adjust the CPU core voltage, because the signal in the core will get clipped off if it's running a lot faster than it was designed for. Increasing the voltage strengthens the signal and prevents crashing and instability.

A negative side effect of all this overclocking business is heat. Heat is caused by the electricity flowing through the CPU. The faster the CPU is working, the more heat is produced, and if you have an overclocked chip, it's making a whole lot of heat. You'll need a big heat sink, preferably made of copper, or at least with a copper core, and a lot of airflow through the case. There's more exotic solutions like water cooling, refrigeration, and peltiers, but I don't have any experience with any of those, so you'll have to look them up.

For your best bet in hardware, look at AMD. Their processors are better and easier overclockers than Intel, but they have the downside of being easy to burn up. But if you want big gains for cheap, and want them easy, you should go AMD. I have an overclocked AMD XP2400+, running at 2.3GHz that can thrash the competitive Intel Pentium 4's up to the 3.0GHz P4. In motherboards, your best bet is Asus, at least in my experience. You're looking for a motherboard. with FSB, multiplier, and core voltage adjustment controls integrated into the BIOS. A mobo with temperature monitors under the CPU isn't a bad idea either, because you'll want to be keeping an eye on those temps at first, while you make sure it's running good.

Stability testing is important when you are overclocking. To get a machine to be rock solid overclocked takes a lot of patience and time. Make all your adjustments slow. Move up 1MHz at a time and .5 on the multiplier every now and then. Use less of a jump if the mobo supports it. You don't want to burn up the CPU. Try to calculate how much gain you want, and what multiplier and FSB you'll need to get it. Most air-cooled chips are only capable of 2-300MHZ gain before you need a specialized cooling solution. Every increase to the FSB also increases the speed that the PCI and AGP bus speeds run at. If you're using cheap cards in those slots, they might cause crashes or not work properly. You should google for a program called Prime95. Every time you step up the CPU speed, run Prime95 in Torture Test mode for at least eight hours constant. If it can make it through that without causing a mathematical error(it'll tell you if the CPU makes a calculating mistake), then increase the CPU speed again. Keep doing that until it makes a mistake. If it makes a mistake, try increasing the core voltage a notch, but only do that once, MAYBE twice if you aren't running too hot. When you can't get it to run stable no matter what you do, and the temperatures are within acceptable limits(the AMD will burn up at 90 degrees Celsius, so try to keep it 75 degrees or less at full load), then run Prime95's Torture Test for a couple weeks if you can spare the time, but at least for a whole day.

Good luck!

Every computer I have built, I got the parts using http://www.pricewatch.com

If your going to buy them online, that's a good way to go. Save you a lot of money.



If you have questions as to what will work with what, or if something supports a certain feature, feel free to PM me. I work on computers for a living so it's fairly basic to me.

@eramnes

ENGLISH, mother fucker! do you speak it?! hehe, nah i'm just kidding around. lol. overclocking sounds a bit complicated to me. i probably should just skip that part and save it for a later date. thanks answering my question though.

@Luna

i appreciate the offer and i'm sure i'll need the help along the way. so far all i've bought was a case and powersupply. the new gta, metal gear and tony hawk underground 2 has sucked up my extra cash the past few of weeks. i plan on getting the MB next. i've looked on pricewatch and found this.

Asus - A8V (v2.0) 3000+ 90nm 939

Asus A8V Deluxe (v. 2.0) K8T800 Pro No-WiFi/Audio/GB-LAN/IEEE/USB/SATA/DDR-400 Athlon 939-pin - with cpu - Athlon 64 3000+ 90nm 939pin 512K with fan & heatsink - Set-Up & Ready to Run

it's going for $275 according to the site and it looks like a good buy. what i have heard though is that there are not many applications that makes use of the 64meg proccessors. i like the idea of motherboard/cpu combos that are ready to use out of the box without configuring the bios, voltage and such. would i have any compatablity problems with this thing? i'll probably just settle for this though.

AMD - M851LU-2800XP-FSB333

Athlon XP 2800 333 with cpu fan PC Chips MMBAMDXP2800 PC-Chips M863G Socket A//WITH AMD XP 2800 PC Chips MMBAMDXP2800 PC-Chips M863G Socket

it's costs less that half of what the athalon 64 is going for and it has 333 FSB.

Try to get a motherboard that uses channeled ram. This might be a feature only for Athlons..I don't know.

512 MB of ram is the barest minimum for XP. A gig of DDR 400 is well worth the price, then configure it as channeled by installing in the appropriate paired slots.

I built mine (Athlon XP3200) and a gig of DDR 400, and have been very happy with it.

Consider also buying a 450 watt power supply (Antec or comparable).

Consider partitioning your HD so that your apps are installed in a different partition than C. Your opearting system will run faster and defrag much much quicker.

C

When I built mine, I got the parts from EBuyer (http://www.ebuyer.com).

You might like to take a look at a toolkit (both types of screwdrivers etc.), and also an anti-static wrist band never did anyone any harm.


Rule Number Two: No force allowed when inserting the CPU.
That's what a ZIF socket is for. ZIF stands for Zero Insertion Force. Just be sure to lift the lever on the side of the socket first. Also, make sure that Pin One of the CPU is aligned with the Pin One hole on the socket, so that the CPU just drops in.
If only that rule applied to the CPU heatsink... lol

This thread was dead last month, but...

Yea, get the Asus A8V Deluxe

I have the same board with a 64 3500+ and it's very solid. Overclocked it to a 3800+ with the stock heatsink.