Hello,

I am thinking of building myself a new computer as the one I have at present is alittle outdated, its a 2.0Ghz Intel with 256MB of SyncDRAM running a couple of hard disks totaling 200 GBs. I know something but not alot about specs so I need some advice. I am aiming to build a computer that will last me for at least two years and not become too out dated in that time so if there is a serious break through in up and coming processors then I'd rather sit back and wait a while as long as its not going to be too long.

Ive been looking at Intel and AMD, top spec of Intel being 3.6GHz and AMD 2.2GHz (as far as Im aware), I wish it was as simple as just choosing the highest and going with that although nothing is that simple. I dont know what would be the fastest in practice as I have heard in the past that Intel despite having top rate processor speeds on paper arent as good in practice as other processor makes. I'm working to a budget but want to achieve top spec, I wont need peripherals.

I have one more question, will the hardware I choose affect the software that I will be wanting to run on it as I can remmember reading somewhere that XP runs better on Intel systems than other hardware, although that could just be myth.

Any ideas with what I could do with my old system? I'll get nothing for it if I choose to go ahead with the upgrade. Any advice?

Many Thanks.

AND/Intel handles XP just fine, no problems there. If I where you I buy the 2nd best processor, it will last you the longest while not being the most expencive. e.g. Intel Pentium 4 560 3.6 GHz cost 2999DKR vs Intel Pentium 4 560 3.4 GHz at 2001DKR thats a 1000DKR, prise difference for .2GHz (5.5-6DKr to 1$)

You will however highly probeble need a new motherboard and ram, also 256MB ram is not much, shell out some more $$$ for 1GB or at the very least 512MB.

also if you have a old grafik card you may have to change that to, and the you need a DVD burner and a TFT monitor 21" atleast, and a cabinet with plexiglas sides panels and little colored lights in the fans to make it look cool.
Not to mention a cold cato lamp and a bigger Powersupply,a printer that can both scan,fax and read flash card from your digicam and still print picture share images, remeber the digicam need 1 of those to.

Did i mention you also need a Extrenal USB harddrive for easy data transport data and cute little usb keychain for all the day2day document and funny movie clibs oooh and cordless designer keyboard and mouse with a glass mouse plate.

I've heard about heat issues with the fastest Intel processors. See articles in tomshardware. (http://www4.tomshardware.com/cpu/20041114/index.html)

Yea, intel need to fire there marketing tinheads and produce something cool :(

Note to self: Get silver-oxide based thermal compound and avoid third party coolers and motherboards. Thanks for artical, very interesting.

Yeh, Ill need a new motherboard and RAM which I was thinking of getting 1GBs. Dont know what kind of graphics card Ill get cause a GeForce 2 just aint good enough.

Gonna get an aluminium case, BTX compliant.

Hello,

...serious break through in up and coming processors...
In two years, Intel and AMD will probably be producing 64 bit processors for the mainstream market, and Intel will still probably be selling 32bit Celerons. Also, in 2 years duel core processors will be within an affordable price range. In the next year, there will not be many changes to what mainstream-market processors are available, but in 2 years the story is different. I don't know if that'll influence your decision, being that waiting a year with a computer like yours is hard.

In the last month I put together a new computer from my old 1.7ghz Pentium 4 with DDR2100 ram.

I decided on getting an AMD Athlon XP 3000 with 1GB of DDR3200 ram. What I bought was

no-name-brand new computer case (http://www.3gplaza.com/estore/control/Computer3G/productdetails?id=1288):
$28 /w shipping

Abit Nf7-s v2 motherboard:
$75 off eBay /w shipping

Athlon XP 3000 and cpu shim (http://www.portatech.com/catalog/viewitem.asp?ID=10092) :
$115 /w shipping

Heatsink and fan (zalman 7000cu) (http://www.bestbyte.net/Product.cfm?ProductID=1402&CategoryID=6&Keyword=) :
~$40

1GB dual channel ram (Kingston HyperX, 2x 512mb sticks, latencies: 2-3-3-6) (http://shop4.outpost.com/product/3746176?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG) :
$166 /w shipping

40GB IBM harddrive:
$38 off ebay /w shipping

Miscellaneous stuff (Arctic Silver compound, extra case fan...):
~$20

Total: $482

I had a CDRW drive, a Zalman 400w power supply, floppy, all type of cables, monitor, and a Radeon 9500 video card. Using my old monitor saves a lot of money. Prices have risen for Athlon XP processors in the last week, so has the price for that ram, and that case that I bought. I'm using it for school work and casual gaming. Doom 3 runs great, probably 40fps average on High quality mode. Far Cry also runs smoothly, on medium to high quality effects.

Although I went for an "older" processor line, I'm extremely pleased with it's performance, especially for the money I put into it. If I could have spent about $1000, then I would have gone with an AMD Athlon64. Athlon64's don't have heating issues like the newer Pentium 4's, they relatively are a better value (price vs performance), and I wouldn't have to worry about avoiding DDR2 memory which is a lot much more expensive and doesn't yield enough of a performance increase to justify the cost.

One benefit on an Intel system, right now, is support for PCI Express, for your graphics card....but I wouldn't want to shell out a lot of money for a PCI Express GFX card on top of the more expensive motherboard, processor, and memory. The benefit of PCI Express is upgradability, within a year, ATI and NVIDIA will probably forget AGP completely.


Dont know what kind of graphics card Ill get cause a GeForce 2 just aint good enough.

I think the best deals out there (for an AGP card) are either an ATI 9800se or ATI 9600 xt. Both are under $150. I don't really follow Nvidia's product line, and I think Nvidia's Directx 9 cards are either super expensive (over $200) and perform great, or medium priced (@ <$150) and are sucky compared to ATI's cards @ <$150.

Now is not a good time to build a computer. If possible, just add a couple sticks of RAM. And wait.

wait for the pentium-M that are coming out soon, or for more mainstream 64bit chips and build something a little cooler/stable than going all out with the 3.6ghz lucifer chip.

It sounds like you've got a reasonably decent system right now. What do you use your computer for? Unless you need a rocketsled (and face it, nobody does ;)), maybe all you'll need to do is upgrade your RAM like Xerxes said.

Hello,

I am thinking of building myself a new computer as the one I have at present is alittle outdated, its a 2.0Ghz Intel with 256MB of SyncDRAM running a couple of hard disks totaling 200 GBs. I know something but not alot about specs so I need some advice. I am aiming to build a computer that will last me for at least two years and not become too out dated in that time so if there is a serious break through in up and coming processors then I'd rather sit back and wait a while as long as its not going to be too long.

Ive been looking at Intel and AMD, top spec of Intel being 3.6GHz and AMD 2.2GHz (as far as Im aware), I wish it was as simple as just choosing the highest and going with that although nothing is that simple. I dont know what would be the fastest in practice as I have heard in the past that Intel despite having top rate processor speeds on paper arent as good in practice as other processor makes. I'm working to a budget but want to achieve top spec, I wont need peripherals.

I have one more question, will the hardware I choose affect the software that I will be wanting to run on it as I can remmember reading somewhere that XP runs better on Intel systems than other hardware, although that could just be myth.

Any ideas with what I could do with my old system? I'll get nothing for it if I choose to go ahead with the upgrade. Any advice?

Many Thanks.


The AMD 64 FX is the best for it will be ready for the 64 bit applications. Although it is a little slower than the INTEL it actually can do allot more if you'll just go to AMDs' site and look at the specs.

I think your current computer is plenty good right now.

Any ideas with what I could do with my old system?
You could give it to me! :D

Now is not a good time to build a computer. If possible, just add a couple sticks of RAM. And wait.

wait for the pentium-M that are coming out soon, or for more mainstream 64bit chips and build something a little cooler/stable than going all out with the 3.6ghz lucifer chip.

Thanks for all the help, I dont need my current system to perform at blistering speed, I dont really play games. If I were to play games which I would like to do possibly I wouldnt as new games generally need really good spec.

I think I may wait alittle while and add a stick or two of RAM. I may just change the case.

your 'old' pc is better then my new pc!! i built it myself too!
more memory would help a bit, make sure you get memory that is a close spec to your existing memory as possable.....

The memory my system runs on at present is SyncDRAM, I found it quite difficult to get a hold of it last time. My system previously only had 256MB, I got a further 256MB. The first post has a mistake in it, it should have read 512MB RAM.

do you know about latency and memory speed? try to match those as best you can.

Yeh, I think the memory I got was similar.

Could I overclock this pentium 2.0ghz to good effect if I were to water cool it? That could keep me going until the 2.4 Athlon becomes affordable then I could transfer the watercooling equipment over and use it to build a silent PC when I get the athlon.

yeah, watercooling will help your overclock, my 2.4 has been pushed to ~ 3.2Ghz......just make sure you lock your PCI and your memory.
lock the PCI/AGP to ~ 33.3 and 66.6 (on mine it comes up as 34/67)
and lock the memory at stock speeds but lower the latency whilst you OC'ing untill you have it stable, then raise the latency, then the Mhz...

just push it up in little steps, come on here, make a post, play some game etc, restart, push some more...

Right, I've decided for now to just upgrade the case. I've decided on the Coolermaster Stacker.

My spec will be as follows:

2 cold cathod 12" lights,
Thermaltake Hardcano 12,
Crossflow fan to go with the Stacker with an additional 4 fans.
2 harddisks
Cd-r/wr
DVD-r/wr
P4 2.0ghz
512mb syncdram
floppy drive
a decent graphics and sound card.

Ill be upgrading the spec soon so I was wondering what kind of wattage I would be looking to get. Any recommendations of a good PSU?

Thanks!

Heh, just snag http://www.emachines.com/products/products.html?prod=eMachines_T3256 and call it a day. You can build better, but you can't beat the convenience at that price. At Best Buy they usually have packages where you get a monitor and a printer for a damned good price. Plus you get a restore CD. Building your own comp is fun, but sometimes you just don't have the time to deeal with all the shit that 'can' happen. If you or someone else ever fucks up your comp you just pop in the restore dic to reformat, no more hours of fucking with it.

If you're a gamer may want to consider upgrading to 1 or 2GB of ram and putting in a new vid card, nVidia 6800 or Radeon x800/x850 series, both amazing cards. A Sound Blaster Live 5.1 is nice too, only about 30 bucks; snag a decent set of 5.1 speakers for $60-$100 and you're set.

My 2 cents.

Yeh the big companies sell decent PCs now at bumper bargain prices, Ill give you that. My spec is actually very similar to that just now so I would have nothing to gain by buying that computer.

I have a flat screen 15" monitor and a decent printer as well to do me so thats not a problem either.

If my computer was really bad I would consider just buying a computer ready made and maybe swapping the box for a decent looking item. Thats basically what I want to do just now really, get a decent looking box and making do with the components i have already for the time being.

Just stuck for what PSU I should get because Ive heard that If you dont spend enough on a cheap item it could seriously wreck your chip set or you could end up buying an underpowered, unstable noising PSU. Any ideas?

I've seen positive reviews all around for the Antec TruePower series.

I own 2 Zalman silent power supplies...and they are silent, because the fan is extreme low speed. I've never had a problem with them. Both are a 400 watt (model number ending in "a" - they now have a 400 watt "b" model, which is more expensive, has power connectors for serial ATA drives, and pumps out 3 more amps than the same wattage "a" model.

Only new models of power supplies with have power connectors for serial ATA harddrives, so you should keep that in mind if you're getting a serial ATA drive....or you'll have to buy a $5 adapter.

The basics for buying a power supply, currently:
400 watts or up.

Wattage is misleading.

15 amps on the +12v rail is a minimum (my Zalman 400 watt "a" model has 15 amps on the +12v line; I run 2 harddrives, 4 80mm fans, 2 40mm fans and over clock my video card that takes external power from the power supply, and I have no problems)

Serial ATA power connectors (or shell out more money for adapters, when you get a serial ata drive)

Get a well known brand - Antec, Thermaltake, Zalman are ones I've heard of.



This article is 2 years old (http://www.tomshardware.com/howto/20021021/index.html) , but the technical stuff is still up to date and useful