Computer advice

[Deleted User 1]

thanks again everyone... I guess I owe you all some money... I manage to build the computer... and then sold it an kept my old one... I can tell you the profit I made but then you'll have to work out just how much I owe you... for those who for some reason don't want to know as some anger emotions may arise for some reason or for some other reason... I'll put the text in the shadow form...

profit made = £1200 - around $2250

well then thanks again to all those who helped post here... :wink:

[Sualtam Lugh]

Hehe....k, that much storage is technically useless, as of now. In the future, when files take up a few gigs, then it's fine. So 120 to 160 gigs of storage is fine.

RAM: DDR is crucial, but it can sometimes depend on the motherboard. My problem is, I have no clue about motherboards, only the components you put on em. DDR RAM, I would say about a gig. Don't really need much more, seeing as 512 seems to be the norm, but so you don't have to upgrade later.

Sound Card: No clue, but that's not very difficult. Try and get one that supports every type of sound, and if you're running XP, which you probably will, see if you can get a sound card for surround, that excels in it, and pick your bad self up some nice speakers.

k, Everyone so far is smart in saying AMD, and Schala even smarter for telling you why. AMD, like previously said, is manual friendly. And since you're willing to blow a lot of money on a box you wanna make, it's the best choice. This also will help when you have/want to upgrade. Pick yourself up the best Processor. (Not sure about AMD processors. I've always used Intel, out of cheapness.

Video Card: Ok, this is just me, but I would say go the route of Radeon 9800. Again, I've had a good past with Radeon, especially this card. Do what you want otherwise.

What have I missed.....Hmm, I guess the case/source is important. Just make sure it's ventilated. Over even moreso, a clear side panel, that can open. Allows for easy access, and everyone can see your sexy parts.


The last thing to say, I guess, is play safe, and have fun.
(This is needless to say, but A Writer, and a DVD writer (Don't even bother with roms....) wouldn't be a bad idea either.

[Arcana]

Wow, so many facts in this thread are so wrong that it's not even funny. :( I'm not sure if anyone cares anymore, since the thread is kind of old... but I would point out a few things...

1. A 64-bit processor does NOT double the speed of your computer. It does things like allow you to compute bigger numbers, access more memory and RAM, and other things. The main advantages come when you use programs with a very large address space or those that compute huge numbers.

Your programs have to be RECOMPILED for a 64-bit architecture to take advantage of the increase in performance.

However, in general, going 64-bit is a good idea. It's architecture is newer and will allow you more upgrade possibilities in the future, and the performance is better (not only because it's 64-bit, but because the processor is faster).

2. A 2000 gig hard drive does not exist. You can, however, buy 10 200 gig hard drives to get 2000 gigs in total. :)

3. Running drives in parallel to allow either (a) faster disc access or (b) disc mirroring is called RAID, which stands for "Redundant Array of Independent Discs". Nowadays, most motherboards come with RAID controllers on board so you can take two hard drives and use RAID on them. Beacuse the hard drive is usually the slowest part of your computer, the idea with RAID is to coordinate the drives so that if you're reading a 5 megabyte file, you might read the first 2 megabytes from disc one at the same time as you read the next 2 megabytes from disc 2, and the last megabyte from disc 3. THese are done in parallel so you can get your file in less than half the time. This is an utterly vast oversimplification of RAID.

Most people don't need RAID. It's not going to help you with your games, for example, and unless you're running huge database applications or processing gigs and gigs of data, don't bother. Servers and high-performance systems use RAID the most; the desktop user typically doesn't need it.

Windows does do RAID, but it's reserved mostly for the Server market. Linux can do it as well. Most modern OSes support it.

4. Western Digital does have a line of drives called the "Raptor". They're expensive (maybe the same price as a disc with three times its capacity) but are the fastest SATA drives you can get your hands on, with 10000 RPM platters. In addition, they have a 5-year warranty (most only give you 1 or 2 years) and are measured for always-on performance with less mean-time-to-failure. Raptor drives are enterprise-level drives. They're meant for mission critical systems, which your desktop isn't. :)

5. You can get sound cards WAY better than the Creative Sound Blaster Audigy. There are professional cards by Turtle Beach, Yamaha, and M-Audio that can set you back a few hundred dollars, but they're meant for people who run home recording studios and use their workstation for extensive audio production. Unless you are doing this kind of stuff, your Soundblaster will probably do just fine.

6. AMD has not used Socket A for all this time. Their Athlon 64 has already gone through 3 different sockets (939, 961, and 764, if I recall correctly). There's absolutely no case to argue AMD versus Intel on this point. Most people use AMD because you can get a higher price-performance ratio from them, but Intel has some interesting technology at their disposal, such as hyperthreading, which increases performance.

7. There is no evidence that the PCI-Express interface has any noticeable performance effect compared to AGP 8x. However, it was mentioned that many mid-range cards are available only in PCI-Express such as the Radeon X300 and some of the GeForce 6000 series cards. If you're buying a new motherboard, do yourself a favour and get PCI-Express because it is the way of the future. You will probably see a performance difference between AGP and PCI-E in three or four years when the cards start to max out the bandwidth through the AGP bus.

Good sites to learn more about consumer hardware are anandtech.com and tomshardware.com (tomshardware is more performance oriented and assumes more technical knowledge from the reader). Hope that helps.
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Woo, 2000 posts as of Tuesday, 2007 August 28.

[Deleted User 1]

first of all... your right a 2 thousand gig hard drive does not exist... but My friend has one that is square on 200, using several HDs with one of them begin 1000 gig big, don't believe I will try to get some proof.

second of all you will afint when you hear that another mate has over 3000 gigs to spare on his computer... they are computer freaks and experts on the subject...

[Arcana]

Oh, big drives and people with huge amounts of space definitely are out there. Netapps are used commonly for reliable data backup and store a few terabytes of data, usually in RAID.

Then again, Netapps also cost as much as a full-sized SUV.

The fact of the matter is that while you can eventually end up using 1 TB of space, most people won't realistically use more than 300-400 GB at this point in time unless they try really, really hard.
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Woo, 2000 posts as of Tuesday, 2007 August 28.

[Deleted User 1]

Or unless your like me and my mates... gaining an extra 10 gigs everyday... getting new animes and all (mind you that damn Naruto takes up space! ya get me...) also I am training with Maya and save my 3D models in my computer... that too takes up space... and I have over 200 designs to fill lol...

[Trevoke]

[Deleted User 1]

well... umm... thanks for the advice Trevoke... but it is a bit too late, as I have already spent it... made profit and got something out of it... lol al lot out of it! well, that can be a brief advice for people trying to build a new computer... enjoy it