What system to buy?

[underwurlde]

Hello y'all,

OK, grab onto ya butts...

If you had £1000 to spend on a system, what mobo (chipset) / processor would you start with? Use: hell if I say games all other bases are covered anyway.... ATX form format though & preferrably onboard firewire / sound.

I am an Intel boy but many ppl have suggested AMD is the route to go.
With this in mind the nForce Ultra 400 c/s seems the cream of the crop.

I think I the best rated mobo is therefore the Gigabyte GA-7N400Pro2
but not sure of which uP to use.

Just for completeness what is the best Intel uP / mobo combo?

BTW, the last time I built a system was when Win95 JUST came out! :rolleyes: Ha!

Regards,

Andy.

P.S.
Any other system suggestions are welcome. e.g. HDD (SATA or what??), vid card, case, upgradeabilty issues (Socket A = dead?). etc. etc.

[Abbadon]

For hard drives, I would recommend one (smaller) sata drive (for your os, programs, games) and a larger drive (could be sata as well, but ide will do just fine) for data storage.

Opticals: IDE. Sata for opticals just isn't "there" yet last I heard.


On the case & psu front, I'd advice Antec because, well, they're the best :) Xaser cases are better looking though, if that's important to you, but they don't come with a psu so that will raise your costs.


Most good mobo's nowadays have decent lan, sound, usb, firewire onboard, so you're realy only looking for a vidcard in the expansion-card-dept. Ati seems to have the upper hand in this, although the latest one by nvidia is rumoured to remedy that (at a cost of course)

[classicsoftware]

I have machines built for me, so I like to use intel motherboards. If sound and supersonic NIC performance are nor that important then go with the on-board variety with 10/100 support. Skip the bigabit ethernet.

Go with sata for the hard drive.

400 watt power supply

6 USB ports

on board firewire

The newer boards make you use two RAM chips to take full advantage of the 800 mhz FSB i forget the terminolgy I weant to say hyperthreading, but I just got up anf the cob-webs are not all loose yet.

GET THE BEST VIDEO CARD YOU CAN AFFORD!!!!

[Abbadon]

Originally posted by classicsoftware
The newer boards make you use two RAM chips to take full advantage of the 800 mhz FSB i forget the terminolgy I weant to say hyperthreading, but I just got up anf the cob-webs are not all loose yet.

Dual channel is what you're looking for I think.

[underwurlde]

Thanks so far...

The info I am looking for is actual named devices such as

"....the best motherboard I can recommend is a GigaByte GA-7N400Pro2"

I am getting a bit confused with all the different types of processors out there esp. when concidering future upgradeablitiy! (I think many AMD slots will soon become obsolete bar budget Socket 754?)

Christ-on-a-bike why can't they just keep things SIMPLE.
KISS.
Everything PC has always been obfusicated & overly complicated that is compounded by wierd naming conventions / date stamping / T-L-bloody-A's.

At the end of the day it's not bloody rocket science! I can work it out by doing all the groundwork myself but I hate having to reinvent the wheel hence my posting. Unfortunately Tom's hardware guide, although excellent for individual reviews does not seem to provide the info I need: All latest devices (such as mobos) COMPARED & rated.

I'll stop ranting now!

If any of you out there can help me out please post!

Regards,

Andy.

[Abbadon]

Well, when building/buying yourself, you're gonna have to do some research, but I understand your initial confusion. It is often very confusing out there! I handle it by focussing on my own system. When I built it I did some heavy researching so it was optimised for my needs, with the help of this site of course ;) , now I just keep an eye on new technologies and ask myself: "Is this for me?". If not, then I don't follow it closely, leaving time for those that do apply to me.


Additional to toms hardware, I very much recommend these sites:

http://www.overclockers.com/ -> stop by here regulary, they provide some nice insight in where technology is heading. What sockets will persist and which ones will go down the chute before long.

http://www.motherboards.org/ -> my first stopping place for mobo-info. From here, there are most of the time numerous links to other review/comparisons.



At the moment, I would recommend AMD for a processor, since intell has some serious heat issues with their latest ones. So what you'd be looking at is a mobo that supports:

- the amd-proc of your choice (hard choice, I know)
- sata (for primary hdd)
- AGP8 (for your vidcard)
- ide (for secondairy hdd and optical drives)
- as much ram as you can cram in :)

As for mobo-manufacturers: I'm very happy with msi myself, and I hear asus and abit getting good remarkd here as well. Any of those should fit you nicely.

Upgradeability: remember that btx is around the corner! At the moment I advice people to buy the best system they can, and not worry about upgrades to much. In a year or two, when you'll actually need an upgrade (apart from the occasional ram or vidcard), the way pcs are put together will be quiete different...

Hope this helps you on the way a bit :)

Whenever you have a configuration in mind that might work for you, feel free to post it here for us to take a look at. We'll be able to spot easy ways to improve on it should you have overlooked anything.

[pave_spectre]

The 7N400 series of boards are decent. I have the 7N400 Pro and a friend of mine has the Pro2, and apart from some issues I had with the BIOS temperature monitoring its excellent with plenty of features.

While I don't think its a top of the line board (which definition really depends upon ones needs I suppose) I haven't heard a bad thing about it.

Combined with the 2500 XP processor (or any better Barton core if you prefer) it's not a system to be sneezed at.

[Abbadon]

I took a peek at the GA-7N400 Pro2 (Rev 2.0), seems like a nice board indeed. Combine it with a case (Antec is nice) with front usb to make use of the extra usb-header. It has onboard sound and lan, which is nice as well.

Put in two ddr400 ram chips of 512mb or 1gb (to us the dual channel)

Barton core is very nice indeed.



And voila! Just add hdd's and opticals to your needs & you have a nice system. :) For the hdd's, I'd go with Western Digital. Opticals depend on what you need.