1st build advice wanted-what do i need?

[tw3]

i want to build my first machine - i don't know a lot yet but i'm learning - primarily from reading this board and asking questions. what i do know is i'm interested in gaming, internet, some graphics and photo (photoshop) and maybe some music processing. i think(?) i want to go with intel mobo & processor and i'm interested in using more than one hard drive. i think i should look at something that i'll be able to upgrade in the future.
now, where do i go from here?
thanks for your time, trouble and patience.
bigguy

[Budfred]

Figure out how much you have to spend and do some checking of vendors to see what prices are like for the kind of equipment you want. Make sure to check out vendors at sites like Resellerratings (http://www.resellerratings.com) . Newegg (http://www.newegg.com) can be a good place to start. Let us know what you are looking to spend and people here will have specific ideas as well...

[saphalline]

The most demanding activity you can do with any computing device is gaming, so that will be the factor that determines how much power you'll need.

Newegg has the P4B 2.4GHz retail for $161, which is really a steal compared to how much the P4's were just 3 months ago. As for a mobo, the 865PE and 875P chipsets are top of the line right now for the P4 platform as both use dual-channel DDR RAM, and they benchmark better than the 850E with RDRAM! ;)

I don't know much about music editing/creation, save for the fact that true non-gaming audiophiles don't have Sound Blaster sound cards. Several people here on the forums use non-SB's so they can offer further help in that area. SB's are good for gaming, but not necessary!

SATA is the up-and-coming successor to IDE hard drives, and has finally gotten out of the starting gate with actual SATA drives and mobo support. It is a bit more expensive and still a new tech, but if you like that sort of thing then by all means. I'm waiting, but my friend has a 120GB SATA drive now. Otherwise, IDE storage is dirt cheap at $1 per GB so multiple hard drives are well within most people's budget.

RAM is also cheap these days at about 12-18 cents per MB! :eek: Wow, I love technology sometimes. Anyway, if you have the budget for a P4 system, then you can have a full GB of RAM for about $130 or so (2 x 512MB sticks).

This is a basic run-down here, so there's a lot more info to get through before you'll be sitting in front of your new rig, but this is a start...

[tw3]

i want to keep the price under 1000.00
what do i need to look for in the following to do what i want to do?
a) motherboard
b) processor
c) memory
in other words, how do i decide which to get. i know that when i decide on a motherboard, for example, it'll dictate some of the rest - but, where to start?
thanks

[YODA74]

what do i need to look for in the following to do what i want to do? a) motherboard
b) processor
c) memory


Well what do *you* want Intel or AMD ??? this is not something someone else can decide for you..

[Reid]

I recommend checking some of the online guides. This pc build guide (http://www.google.com/search?q=pc+build+guide&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&start=0&sa=N) search lists a lot of resources. Get a feel for what it involves.

[videobruce]

Wintel= semi monopoly

AMD= overclocking

Go here for more:

http://www.amdforums.com/index.php?s=

http://www.nforcershq.com/forum/index.php

[killercow]

my first computer building thread (http://pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=19436)
AMD athalon XP's are less expensive and I have found ot be good at overclocking. With your mobo Nforce 2 chipset will work on supporting your graphice cards; especially well with the GeForce FX 5800's and 5900's or any card with directx 9 support. Get a good amount of ram. 512mb or higher should do the trick. A good hard drive 60 gigs or higher with 8 megs of cache. I personally like to have 2 optical drives. One dvd and another cd-rw. Power supply should be around 400 watts. 350 would work. I personally would get a processor >2 ghz even though I could only get 1.5 in mine I was short on funds. Hope that answers your questions.

[tw3]

thanks for all of your time - o.k. guys, this is what i'm thinking about:
cpu: intel p4/2.66 GHz/533 FSB
mobo: intel D845PESVL
mem: kingston or samsung 256(x2)
video: ?

let me know what you think
thanks, again,
tw3

[killercow]

Video ..... you could go with a geforce fx 5900 or radeon 9800 pro if you have the money or want for the excelled video. If not try a GF4 Ti 4600/4800. If still not that try a radeon 9000 or gf3 ti200/500. try and get 64 megs of ram with the gf3 and 256 megs with the 5900/9800 pro.