Building My PC

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GTP_event / kevinr6287 (farming account)
This summer, I will build my PC so I will have it for next summer when I go to college. With some help, I believe I can do this. My friend is also building a PC, but since he is away right now, I'm depending on you guys to help me check to make sure I have all the right parts. Here is a list of the parts I will be ordering from newegg.com hopefully by the end of July. Currently, these parts cost $691 +S/H. This cost does not include the keyboard/mouse, which I will get from Circuit City. Please make sure that these parts will work together, epecially the Processor and MB. The MB is ATX 12x9.6 and the Case says it supports ATX 9.6x9.6 and P4 12x9.6, but I don't know what P4 is for, I hope the AMD MB will fit.

Motherboard
AMD XP 2600+
512 MB RAM
Samsung 80 GB HDD -----> New Western Digital HDD w/ 8MB Buffer instead of 2MB
16X DVD/CD-RW
case
Radeon 9600XT -----> Different Model of R9600XT
My lovely 7 dollar speakers
17' CRT monitor (A little pricey, I Might try to find a different Refurbished one)
 
If you're buying an Athlon XP at that speed, I'd STRONGLY reccomend that you buy the Athlon XP Mobile 2500+. A small multiplier adjustment will get you up to the equivilant of an athlonxp 2800+ without any really major heat fluctuations. I've seen people bring this ship up to the basic equivilant of an AthlonXP 3500+ without too much effort. For the cost, it's the best AMD chip you can get withougt getting into their 64 bit lines.

Don't get the combo drive - get a cdrw and dvdrom both separately. It's more convenient when you're ripping cds. Plus with the costs as low as they are now, I'm sure you can get both for roughly the came amount.

aside from that, it seems like an excellent computer.

Oh and don't bother with a refurbished monitor. Warranties are usually bad plus I doubt you'll find a really good one for a lot cheaper than $90USD anyways
 
Ooooh, I love these kinds of threads!

Alright, I'm going to start off with a recommondation on your video card selection. 9600XT is a great card, but I've never heard of the people you're talking about buying it from. I have a 9600XT, a Gigabyte 9600XT to be exact, and I'm simply in love with it. Here's the cool thing, name brand, looks nice, the fan glows with a nice blue, and it's like $5 more! Strongly recommend getting this 9600XT over the one you've picked. Here's a link: Gigabyte 9600XT.

Alright now, CPU. Get the 2500+ Barton, not 2600+. Now, not that there's a world of difference in price, the 2500+ Barton Retail being $80 and the 2600+ Barton being $90, but the thing is, they're the same exact chip[/url]. Here's the thing, the board you've picked out is an excelent choice, and a great overclocker. Basically, you could get the 2600+ by changing one number a little bit, with no risk at all of harming your components. Now, like I said, since they're the same chip, and if you feel more confortable not overclocking, go ahead and get the 2600+ as it should OC fine if you ever decide to do so.

motherboard, like I said above, excelent choice. 👍

Memory. Crucial is an excelent choice, highly compatible, and very stable. 👍

Hard drive...I would look for an drive with an 8MB cache rather than a 2MB one. I don't forsee you buying another HD for a while, so you might as well get a decent one now. You should be able to find a comprable HD with an 8MB cache for not too much more.

Everything else looks great, you'll enjoy it. And yes, the motherboard will fit.

:)
 
Burnout
Alright now, CPU. Get the 2500+ Barton, not 2600+. Now, not that there's a world of difference in price, the 2500+ Barton Retail being $80 and the 2600+ Barton being $90, but the thing is, they're the same exact chip[/url]. Here's the thing, the board you've picked out is an excelent choice, and a great overclocker. Basically, you could get the 2600+ by changing one number a little bit, with no risk at all of harming your components. Now, like I said, since they're the same chip, and if you feel more confortable not overclocking, go ahead and get the 2600+ as it should OC fine if you ever decide to do so.


The Athlon XP Mobility is a slightly better choice if you want to overclock. The reason being is that it's an underclocked Athlon XP 2800+ Barton. It costs almost the same and offers the same performance but because it's underclocked, the chip is very eager to go faster :)

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=19-103-401&depa=0
 
emad
The Athlon XP Mobility is a slightly better choice if you want to overclock. The reason being is that it's an underclocked Athlon XP 2800+ Barton. It costs almost the same and offers the same performance but because it's underclocked, the chip is very eager to go faster :)

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=19-103-401&depa=0
I would agree with you, and for more experienced people looking to overclock I would go ahead with the Mobile. As a matter of fact, when I buy a new chip it'll deffinitely be a Mobile, but for someone who's at first not planning on overclocking, but incase he ever decides that he wants to OC, then the 2500+ Barton is, in my opinion, a batter choice.

See, I'm not 100% sure that when everyone buys a new computer they're planning on how fast it'll be by overclocking, but how fast it is when they turn it on. The Barton 2500+ comes stock with a 333MHz FSB and a decent core speed, without overclocking, then if he decides to overclock, the 2500+ Barton isn't exactly bad at it...It'll easily go 3200+ without anything but a FSB adjustment, no vcore or anything, or higher if he feels like starting to mess with vcore and stuff.

:)
 
I Don't feel comfortable with overclocking. I've looked into it once or twice, and it looks too complicated. I don't want my PC to sound like a vacuum cleaner when it runs with a buch of extra fans in there to cool off the over clocked parts.

Burnout
Alright, I'm going to start off with a recommondation on your video card selection. 9600XT is a great card, but I've never heard of the people you're talking about buying it from. I have a 9600XT, a Gigabyte 9600XT to be exact, and I'm simply in love with it. Here's the cool thing, name brand, looks nice, the fan glows with a nice blue, and it's like $5 more! Strongly recommend getting this 9600XT over the one you've picked. Here's a link: Gigabyte 9600XT.
Excellent suggestion, Are there really LED's in the Fan? If there are, that would be great, for I already acve blue LEDs in the case. Maybe I can swith the LED's in the case for some red and/or white ones for a patriotic PC! I wish they were still selling the Radeon 9500 Pro, GREAT card, It's what I have in my Dell right now and it runs beautifully.
 
Yep, it looks nice. Not a ricey blue, a dark, nice, smooth blue.

The 9600XT goes about as fast as the 9500 Pro.

Here's my Gigabye 9600XT:
 
2ez2KiLL
Dont listen to Burnout! On ebay, there are 5900 xt's for only 150 bucks! And yes it is true that the 5900 beat the 9600xt on benchmarks.

http://search.ebay.com/5900_Video-C...ZtQQsbrsrtZlQQsosortorderZ2QQsosortpropertyZ3

Its cheaper on Ebay! :-p
Somebody doesn't like ATI!

Quite honestly, there are a few things I wouldn't buy from ebay for over $25; CPUs, Video Cards, and a few more that I'm not going to mention.

The 9600XT'll do anything you need it to do, from a reputible dealer and good company, and it looks cool.
 
Burnout
Somebody doesn't like ATI!

Quite honestly, there are a few things I wouldn't buy from ebay for over $25; CPUs, Video Cards, and a few more that I'm not going to mention.

The 9600XT'll do anything you need it to do, from a reputible dealer and good company, and it looks cool.

Haha, ok if thats how you wanna play. Fx5900 on NEWEGG for 25 bucks more than what u wanted. The 128 mb 5900 is guaranteed to beat the 9600xt and even beat the 128 mb 9800 in benchmarks. Up to you now :sly:

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=14-145-072&depa=0

Also, if you read the reviews, there are no reviews that have anything other than a 5 star on it. 👍
 
Benchmarks are no longer enough dude. It's all about the card's ability to handle filters to and AA. That's where the ATI cards have always been superior. The frame rates are lower yes, but whose eye is going to notice a 5 to 10 fps difference? Frankly, anything over 30 or so is almost impossible to notice with the human eye.
 
If you do get a 9600xt, it won't last you as long as the 5900. Upcoming games are getting more and more advanced in graphics. Both the 9600xt and 5900 will be able to handle upcoming games like Doom 3 and Half Life 2. After that the games will most likely be more tougher to run on lower cards like the 9600xt. In 2 years, you are going to be running a 800x600 resolution in the new games that are focused way on graphics. The Fx5900 will do better because it is faster. I also wouldn't really worry about using filters and AA because in 1 year that will be useless to you since you will lag like mad if you do run those on more advanced games with either the 5900 or 9600xt. Also, it is not true that the ATI is more superior than the Nvidia at Filters and AA.

http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030512/geforce_fx_5900-11.html
 
2ez2KiLL
If you do get a 9600xt, it won't last you as long as the 5900. Upcoming games are getting more and more advanced in graphics. Both the 9600xt and 5900 will be able to handle upcoming games like Doom 3 and Half Life 2. After that the games will most likely be more tougher to run on lower cards like the 9600xt. In 2 years, you are going to be running a 800x600 resolution in the new games that are focused way on graphics. The Fx5900 will do better because it is faster. I also wouldn't really worry about using filters and AA because in 1 year that will be useless to you since you will lag like mad if you do run those on more advanced games with either the 5900 or 9600xt. Also, it is not true that the ATI is more superior than the Nvidia at Filters and AA.

http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030512/geforce_fx_5900-11.html
Rule one: Never quite from Tom's, it makes you sound like an idiot.

ATIs image quality is not only superior, but both the FX5900 and 9600XT will handle next generation games most likely about the same. You know why? They're both DX9 cards. That means, right now, they both run DX9 and pre-DX9 games nicely, one perhaps a little more than the other, but next generation games will be DX10, so on so forth. Take a ti4200, what used to be an awesome card, during the DX8 years, and play something like Halo with it. There you go.

Like I said, ATI's image quality is better, as is their anti-aliasing quality and anistrophic filtering quality. Round them out, with the things more important to you, and you'll find that they end up oh either equal ground or one being better. Initial assumption would be that he prefers ATI as he had originally picked out an ATI card, which is why I suggested the Gigabyte 9600XT.

I'd stick with ATI. 👍
 
I Like ATI more than NVidia. My current R9500 pro beat my friend's GF4 ti 4800+ in benchmarks. What I might do, after running a few benchmark tests, is take the 9500p out of my Dell and replace it with the 9600XT, since when I go to college, my parents won't need a 128 MB card in there. I might put the old ATI Rage 128 Ultra 32MB back in, they won't notice. Then I'd have another video card for future PCs. The R9500pro runs beautifully, I can run Battlefield Vietnam with all of the settings to max with anti-aliasing and ani-isotropic filtering on max with about 15fps. I usually run it with 4x AA and 2x ani-isotropic filtering and it runs at 30fps. Plus, It supports DX9, one of the first Radeon cards to do so. Plus, If I want to upgrade my Video card down the line, I will go for a Radeon 9800 Pro. When I do upgrade the card once the next-generation (post-Doom III and Half-Life 2) games come out, the 9800 pro will be less than $200. I'd also like the PC to be less than $750, not including S/H, so I won't be looking for a serious upgrade in the Card. Every time the cost of the is PC goes up, I'll have to wait longer for the parts.
 
Quite honestly, the 9600XT should out preform the 9500 Pro, specifically in newer games. But, I'm curios as to how they'll add up. Be sure to plop up the test results in comparison so I can check'em out.
 
Joel, is it possible for me to hook up a GigaByte 9600XT to my computer? Is there no point because of my Celeron?
 
I'm going to jump in here.....

YOU CAN NEVER HAVE ENOUGH GRAPHIC COMPUTING POWER!

Sorry for yelling, but it's something I'm very passionate about. More and more processing is being done at the graphic card level. With a good card, I can bring life back into even an old PIII 600mhz. It might take a while for a level to load, but once it does, game play can silky smooth.

My advise is to get as much graphical computing power that your budget will allow.
 
i was gonna build my own cause i can get out cheaper. but i dont feel like shoping around for every part. im just gonna buy a pre built one and just get a video card for it and probably some ram. then up-grade it as i go along.
 
SS69
i was gonna build my own cause i can get out cheaper. but i dont feel like shoping around for every part. im just gonna buy a pre built one and just get a video card for it and probably some ram. then up-grade it as i go along.
Well, That defeats the purpose of building you own PC, doesn't it?
 
SS69
i was gonna build my own cause i can get out cheaper. but i dont feel like shoping around for every part. im just gonna buy a pre built one and just get a video card for it and probably some ram. then up-grade it as i go along.

That doesn't always work out well in the end. Most branded computers don't even come with agp slots because the graphics card is onboard. To top that, they sometimes have a tendency to make it very very difficult to add upgrades. That's how it is now, I'm not sure with the other components though.

My old compaq desktop had no AGP slots, no additional ram slots plus it had weird chips that were hard to find. To top that, for some odd reason, none of the parts was of a standard shape or size - except for the zip drive and the dvd drive. We had one hell of a hard time getting a new floppy drive to fit into that case after the first one died.
 
Let's get back to the issue of the $149.99 Gigabyte ATI Radeon 9600XT vs. the $149.99 XFX Nvidia Geforce FX 5900XT.

The 9600XT has a core speed of 500MHz. The 5900XT has a core speed of 390MHz. Now, which card will process the Information faster? In the benchmarks you speak of, they don't say which brand they're using. The XFX card is considerably worse than the ASUS card, which is $270. I'm not dishing out $270 for a card. If it was that exact card for $150, then I would consider it, but I've never heard of XFX, whose to say it won't break down after a week? I've heard of gigabyte. Another thing about these is that the GF only supports OpenGL 1.4 while radeon supports OpenGL 2.0. Which card will be obsolete sooner?
 
Event Horizon
Let's get back to the issue of the $149.99 Gigabyte ATI Radeon 9600XT vs. the $149.99 XFX Nvidia Geforce FX 5900XT.

The 9600XT has a core speed of 500MHz. The 5900XT has a core speed of 390MHz. Now, which card will process the Information faster? In the benchmarks you speak of, they don't say which brand they're using. The XFX card is considerably worse than the ASUS card, which is $270. I'm not dishing out $270 for a card. If it was that exact card for $150, then I would consider it, but I've never heard of XFX, whose to say it won't break down after a week? I've heard of gigabyte. Another thing about these is that the GF only supports OpenGL 1.4 while radeon supports OpenGL 2.0. Which card will be obsolete sooner?


Hmm, even if the 9600xt has a higher clock speed the 5900xt still has higher performance because of the GPU. If you do think it processes information faster why does the 5900 run higher fps? Also, there are other brands that are around that price range like the Gainward Fx5900 that has a red glow on it. Btw, with the OpenGL 1.4 and 2.0, the 9600xt will probably be obsolete sooner because of its slower speed than the 5900.


And yeah, what Joel said.
 
2ez2KiLL
If you do think it processes information faster why does the 5900 run higher fps?

Because the 5900 isn't offering the same level of anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering and such to give you the better picture quality. Set the 5900's driver further settings towards quality and you'll see why and how the ATI card processes information faster.

Also take this into consideration - my Direct X 8 optimized radeon 8500LE with 128 megs of ram is doing better than the current entry level nvidia cards. I'm comparing it with entry level because the Radeon 9200 is structurally the same card as the 8500 but with directx 9 optimizations in the software. The 8500 and 9200 benchmark roughly the same but my card wins out by a small margin in directx 8 benches and loses by a small margin in dx9 tests
 
2ez2KiLL
Hmm, even if the 9600xt has a higher clock speed the 5900xt still has higher performance because of the GPU. If you do think it processes information faster why does the 5900 run higher fps? Also, there are other brands that are around that price range like the Gainward Fx5900 that has a red glow on it. Btw, with the OpenGL 1.4 and 2.0, the 9600xt will probably be obsolete sooner because of its slower speed than the 5900.


And yeah, what Joel said.

In graphics card processors there are rendering pipelines. The 9600XT has 4, while the 5900 has 8. That's the difference.

Most likely, the 5900XT will whoop the 9600XT in any test, with any quality or anti-aliasing settings, and stuff. But, here's the thing, 5900XTs in the same class as the 9800 Pro, not the 9600XT. My money says you could find a new 9800 Pro for $150 off eBay. I think I'll look.
💡

[edit]Couldn't find one for $150, but I could find one for $195. Linkage.

Here's the thing, you could probably find a 9600XT for ~$100 or so, on eBay. The reason I recommended NewEgg is obvious, and like I said, on certain things, I just wouldn't buy them from eBay. However, chances are good that it'd all end up okay and fine, but you never know.

[edit][again]About your first post on this page Event, both cards will last just as long in that respect. Considering that they are both DX9 cards, and in that case, whenever DX10 or something comes out, they'll both have to run at 800x600, so on so forth.

XFX is a name I personally know as my motherboard is made by them. They generally make decent Nvidia products, or atleast from what I've heard. I do know, however, that I personally prefer Gigabyte.

Preference(ATI - Nvidia), and trust in eBay and warrenties that come along with it and the such. Think about those things, then make up your mind.
 
Well let's put the Video Card argument aside, i've pulled an overhaul of them most crucial parts, which may make me go for the 5900. I've decided to go to a tried and true mobo, the ASUS A7N8X-E Delux nForce Ultra 400 Chipset Motherboard. I've heard great things about ASUS and the A7N8X series of motherboards, so I'm going with that. I've also upgraded the CPU to the AMD Athlon XP 2800+ " Barton", 333MHz FSB, 512K Cache Processor. Now it's 2.08 GHz instead of 1.8 GHz. I've also decided to buy the monitor form some other place where it doesn't have to be shipped. I will save $40 on s/h by not buyuing the monitor from there. I've also decided to got with a Serial ATA/100 HDD, the WD 7200RPM 80GB SATA. I've heard SATA is better than IDE becasue IDE is very old technology. Finally, I am probably going to change the RAM. I will try to get a 1GB stick, if I can find one from Kingston, PNY, and Crucial, preferably one that operates at 400MHz. Hopefully, I will be able to upgrade this system down the line and I will go with a higher AMD processor. I've heard it's good to have your processor and RAM operating at the same speed. comments?

EDIT: I found 512MG corsair RAM operating at 400MHz and I was wondering if I need to buy two sticks of it? In the mobo, two of the ram slots are Dual-channel, so do I need to fill them both? There is another slot that is independent from the rest, ca I just fill that one? here is a pic of the mobo, the ram slots are in the upper left.
13-131-478-06.JPG
 
The motherboard you chose is quite easily one of the best available and it's also one of the best for overclocking. That said, if you intend to overclock, the barton 2500+ will save you some cash and can be boosted really really high.

Upgrading the cpu later down the line won't really be possible since AMD is releasing a new socket soon (not sure if the new socket will affect the athlonxp's though). Either way, any future upgrades will most likely be to a 64 bit athlon or it's intel counterpart since AMD is very slowly trying to phase out the Athlon XP's. However, since the cpu you're getting is using the barton core, you can just spend extra cash later down the line on good cooling equipment and overclock the hell out of it :D.

everything you chose seems great though 👍. The only real suggestion I can come up with is for you to get a 120 gig drive rather than 80. You'll find that 80 gigs fills up really quickly these days.
 
emad
everything you chose seems great though 👍. The only real suggestion I can come up with is for you to get a 120 gig drive rather than 80. You'll find that 80 gigs fills up really quickly these days.

Heh heh heh.

After two years of having a 20GB HD, and still having nearly half of it free, I have to disagree. :D

My brother has 120GB, it's got like 13GB full. He cleans it out all the freaking time, and 5GB of that junk is my stuff, like games and trash.

If you get a CD burner, you shouldn't have a problem. Of course, since HDs are one of those things you just add too with anoher, if you ran out you'd be okay.
 
haha, I've had my 160 gig drive for 4 months and I'm down to 70 gigs free...and I clean it out all the time...
 
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