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lac29

New member
Is building your own computer less expensive than buying one from let's say Dell or Gateway?

Assuming you answered 'yes' to the above question, I was wondering if you guys could help me build a computer. I have no idea all the parts I have to get, and I have a budget of probably $700 or $800. I'm excluding the monitor in the budget. This computer will be for college so I don't really care much about the gfx card (my gaming life has gone down the drain since entering college). Also ignore software and OS, and stick to lower performance sound and gfx cards (exclude speakers in budget).

So can anyone help me put together a list of parts I need to buy, how much they would cost roughly, and maybe where I could get them?
 
fivefeet8

fivefeet8

-= Clark Kent -X- =-
Yes, it's cheaper, but it takes a lot more effort on your part to keep your computer stable and running what/when you want. But it gets easier as you start to tinker and tweak it over time.

You could look at www.pricewatch.com . They list parts by price. With $800, you could probably build a very nice Oc'ed athlon system. ;)
 
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lac29

New member
fivefeet8 said:
Yes, it's cheaper, but it takes a lot more effort on your part to keep your computer stable and running what/when you want. But it gets easier as you start to tinker and tweak it over time.

You could look at www.pricewatch.com . They list parts by price. With $800, you could probably build a very nice Oc'ed athlon system. ;)
Click to expand...

Am I missing anything in this list?

motherboard
memory
processor
tower/case
hard drive
gfx card
sound card
CD-RW ROM / DVD

What's the deal with a fan? Does it come with one of the parts above or do I have to buy it seperately?

Also does my NIC come with one of the parts above?
 
fivefeet8

fivefeet8

-= Clark Kent -X- =-
lac29 said:
Am I missing anything in this list?

motherboard
memory
processor
tower/case
hard drive
gfx card
sound card
CD-RW ROM / DVD

What's the deal with a fan? Does it come with one of the parts above or do I have to buy it seperately?

Also does my NIC come with one of the parts above?
Click to expand...

That looks about right. All retail CPU's come with a HSF(heatsink Fan). But OEM cpus come with just the cpu. It's better to buy a higher quality HSF anyways. As for the NIC card, it depends on the motherboard you buy. Some have great onboard NIC's like NForce2 motherboards.
 
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mainframe19

Guest
me i tell you from my past pc s i have built, pentium3 is way better than amd, when running in winxp vs running with a amd duron cpu. when i run winxp on my 2ed pc with winxp it every time restarts when i am on the web, every time in till 8:00pm at night.and besides if you get pentium3 mainboard that can use rdram which is 400mhz by my asus p3c-e rambus manual.

it way out beats amds new ddr ram!

i have abook at home that come pairs every cpu out there, and comeing out samething with hds gfx cards and memory.so i know what i am talking about.

at first amds cpus sounded good but if you look on ebay for your parts you will save alot of cash.and get more for your $!

i chould build you areal fast pc for under $800.00

there easy.

i have only put $300.00 into mine and i love it.

besides winxp was built for pentium3 cpus.
 
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lac29

New member
I think I'm most confused about the motherboard and finding compatible memory and processor. Can someone give me an example of a inexpensive, but decent motherboard with compatible intel processor (I guess I'd rather go w/mainstream cpu) and 512 megs? How much for these 3 parts?

Also, in general, will any hard drive, gfx card, sound card, and CD-RW ROM / DVD be compatible with whatever motherboard I get?

Do tower/cases (I'm planning on getting a minitower to save space) have to be compatible with the motherboard or any other component?
 
Malcolm

Malcolm

Not a Moderator
the asus A7V8X-X (which i have) is cheap, $90 CND (~$65USD)

I build this computer for $770CND including monitor:
A7V8X-X Motherboard
512mb RAM (DDR 2700)
80 GB Maxtor HDD (8mb cache)
LG 16xDVD + 48x24x48 Combo drive
AMD 2400+ CPU (2ghz)
GeForce 2 MX (from my other computer)
SamSung SyncMaster 753DF
comes with onboard sound & lan
3 piece speaker system
 
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lac29

New member
I still need to figure out if I'm goin with Intel or Athlon ... which one is better in the long run, and which is cheaper?

Also, are there any components that I can decide now that will be compatible with both Intel and Athlon?

I also don't know exactly how the tower fits in with all the other components, are certain towers/cases compatible with only certain components?

And could you guys post up some of your specs (like Malc did above) and how much your system cost total? That actually helped me a bit in shopping around.
 
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fivefeet8

fivefeet8

-= Clark Kent -X- =-
lac29 said:
I still need to figure out if I'm goin with Intel or Athlon ... which one is better in the long run, and which is cheaper?

Also, are there any components that I can decide now that will be compatible with both Intel and Athlon?

I also don't know exactly how the tower fits in with all the other components, are certain towers/cases compatible with only certain components?

And could you guys post up some of your specs (like Malc did above) and how much your system cost total? That actually helped me a bit in shopping around.
Click to expand...

That's a lot of questions. ;)

1. Amd or Intel? Which is better is rather subjective. Amd cpu's are cheaper though.

2. All components should be compatible with either an Intel or Amd cpu and their motherboards. A voodoo 5 agp doesn't fit in P4 motherboards though, but I doubt you'll be getting that.

3. Make sure the case your getting is a standard ATX case. Most if not all standard ATX cases will be compatible with all motherboards and components. The only Cases that have problems are from computer manucaturers like Compaq, Dell, Gateway, ect. They sometimes use proprietary cases that will not be compatible with all motherboards and components.

4. Look at my sig. I can't really say how much it costs since I've upgraded it so many times.
 
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EdgeBlade

EdgeBlade

Brandonn
Your motherboard decides what CPU, and RAM type and limitation you can use. If you want a mini-tower then you'll need the smaller sized motherboard, thare are only 2 sizes that I know of.

You can probly find a cheap mother board with onboard sound (onboard = built on to the motherboard).

You still really need to decide exactly what you want to use it for. This can tell you how much ram you'll need and how big a hard drive you should get.

Do you want to just surf the net, one page at a time? Or do you want to play mp3s, have multiple web sites open and write a paper is MS Word without worring about it crashing? How do you want to use it?
 
Hexidecimal

Hexidecimal

Emutalk Bounty Hunter.
http://www.hardwareguys.com/

Here, is a great website, these guys continually test hardware, they've actually written a book about it, they'll tell you the best part for 3 different kinds of systems, a low end, a standard PC, and a performance system, hope that helps.
 
ScottJC

ScottJC

At your service, dood!
Yes it is cheaper, but its also more dangerous, especially if you are timid about touching computer components, one mistake and you could severely damage a piece of hardware.
 
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lac29

New member
Sayargh said:
Yes it is cheaper, but its also more dangerous, especially if you are timid about touching computer components, one mistake and you could severely damage a piece of hardware.
Click to expand...

I'm assuming you mean that Athlon is cheaper, but more dangerous/easily breakable than Intel?

It looks like I can get basically everything I need at my local BestBuy electronics store ... except for the processor, so where can I get one?

Also I'm checking out some hard drives and which is the one I need to intall a normal internal hard drive? I keep on seeing different types like Parallel ATA, Serial ATA, and SCSI.
 
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Hexidecimal

Hexidecimal

Emutalk Bounty Hunter.
I will also say, www.pricewatch.com will sell you a good mobo/processor combo, at a good price, as far as intel vs amd, intels dont have the heating problems of AMD, amd run at a higher wattage, but are also speedier.
 
mesman00

mesman00

What's that...?
J

joel_029

Lead Guitarist
I would highly recommend that you use www.pricewatch.com, it finds the cheapest price for just about any computer part. But I would use a different site like listed above when looking for cases, just because the ease of browsing that one site.

As far as motherboards and chips...
If you want to go for mainstream, get an AMD Athlon XP or an Intel Celeron. Those two run prices comparatively the same, but an Athlon is much better than a Celeron. So that brings up the point of a motherboard.

AMD you would want to go with probably an nForce 2 board, there are some pretty cheap ones, but look at a good resource site such as www.tomshardware.com before you make a split decision. As far as Intel goes, the lowest I would go would be the 845 series, but if you want to be able to upgrade to early Pentium 5s, then the 875 series would be your best bet, though I'm not sure if 875 supports Celeron. Could anyone clarify that?

But make sure you do research and price shopping before just building a system. Because if you buy everything from Best Buy, it might be just as much as a Dell or Compaq, etc.

Good Luck
 
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lac29

New member
Thanks for all the info so far ... I'm actually learning more about the components from these posts and other sites, and I'll prob be checking out the prices for a bit.

Anyone know anything about the flatscreen monitor market? (or is willing to make a prediction?) The main purchase I might be making will actually not be a computer with all its components, but a 17 in flatscreen that I hope will last me for the rest of my college and grad school time. Is it likely for prices on flatscreens to go down to around $250 2 yrs from now (when I graduate college)? A topoftheline recommended (by some hardware resource site someone posted before) one costs $450 I think. And I believe a cheap 17 in flatscreen runs around the high $200's.
 
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