Need a PC build guide

[Hair|Trigger]

I'm doing some research on PC-building in general, it's not happening anytime soon so I'm not concerned with specific parts/prices at this point in time. (I know how quickly the technology evolves)  Hopefully i'll end up with a rig in a matter of months (depending how fast I can get my hands on ~$500)

I just need a solid guide that covers all of the basics of choosing parts, and how to ensure the parts are all compatible etc.

kthx 

[N. Escalona]

I would love to see something like this as well. Building a PC has been on my list for somet ime though I don't have the money right now.

[Dascoo]

I'm conflicted over buying a PC for $400 or getting driving lessons (will lower my insurance).

I need to know if DDR works in DDR2 slots...

[N. Escalona]

Go for the driving lessons.

[a-4-year-old]

Most of the time you can't even buy incompatible hardware unless you make a conscious effort to find the old stuff.

make sure your motherboard matches your ram/hard drive/processor and such and it will all be fine, there isn't much we can tell you unless we get into specifics.

Don't spend a lot on a processor, you might fuck it up when you go to install it.

DDR does not work in DDR2 DDR2 is cheaper anyway.
If you weren't so stupid your grades would give you the same discount.

[Hair|Trigger]

Most of the time you can't even buy incompatible hardware unless you make a conscious effort to find the old stuff.

make sure your motherboard matches your ram/hard drive/processor and such and it will all be fine, there isn't much we can tell you unless we get into specifics.

Don't spend a lot on a processor, you might fuck it up when you go to install it.

DDR does not work in DDR2 DDR2 is cheaper anyway.
If you weren't so stupid your grades would give you the same discount.

so can I just waltz onto Newegg and buy any case/psu/mobo and it'll work?

[a-4-year-old]

any case will work with any Mobo and unless you're going for an uber graphics card or a million USB ports the PSU that comes with the case will be sufficient.

Just buy the motherboard for the processor (intel vs AMD) that you're going to want.

[chutem]

Most of the time you can't even buy incompatible hardware unless you make a conscious effort to find the old stuff.

make sure your motherboard matches your ram/hard drive/processor and such and it will all be fine, there isn't much we can tell you unless we get into specifics.

Don't spend a lot on a processor, you might fuck it up when you go to install it.

DDR does not work in DDR2 DDR2 is cheaper anyway.
If you weren't so stupid your grades would give you the same discount.

so can I just waltz onto Newegg and buy any case/psu/mobo and it'll work?

Mobo?

Anyway, no, you can't. It depends on what you are looking to buy, tell us and we can see if they are compatible, for instance if you get a PCI-e graphics card, you will need a motherboard with a PCI-e slot (although most come with them).

You will need a PSU with sufficient wattage to power your system, so you chose that last, with the aid of a PSU calculator.

[Dascoo]

If you weren't so stupid your grades would give you the same discount.

your grades would give you the same discount.

wut

Also I'm salvaging 2 gigs of DDR from an older computer. I'm willing to save a few moneys.

[bja888]

I need to know if DDR works in DDR2 slots...

NO!!!!

[N. Escalona]

[Hair|Trigger]

any case will work with any Mobo and unless you're going for an uber graphics card or a million USB ports the PSU that comes with the case will be sufficient.

Most cases don't come with psu's -__-  would 530W be enough to power, say, any Intel Quad core and a 9800GT?  Plus 8 usb ports

[N. Escalona]

Most cases come with motherboard, PSU, CPU, etc.
Just saying.

[Wormdundee]

Most cases come with motherboard, PSU, CPU, etc.
Just saying.

Mweh? Not from what I've seen. Generally all they come with is a crappy PSU (usually in the 400-600 W range).

I'll just do a short little writeup here.

First the parts:
Motherboard (mobo)
CPU
Sound Card
Video Card (GPU)
Hard Drive
RAM
some sort of disk drive
some sort of networking device (a card, or external usb wireless, etc.)

Generally, you won't need to get a sound card or network card because mobos usually come with them. You'll want to make sure of that of course. And these components will be crappy.

Pretty much the only compatibility issue to worry about is between mobo->CPU and mobo->GPU.
CPUs have what is called a socket type. So for that, all you have to worry about is if the socket type of the CPU you decide to buy is supported by the mobo you buy. For instance, my CPU is an AMD dualcore with an AMD2+ socket type. My mobo supports AMD2/AMD2+ so I'm good to go there. The basics of this is if you have an Intel CPU, get a mobo with Intel socket types, and of course the same for AMD.

GPU is somewhat more complicated because of the multiple types of PCI-e slots. PCI-e (the e is for Express) slots have x1, x2, x4, x8, x16, and I believe x32 variants. The number is how many data channels the slot has. So a PCI-e x16 slot will be physically much longer than an x4 slot. Pretty much any video card worth getting will use an x16, although I believe there are cards available all the way down to x1.

The other slots, x8 and such, will be more used as spots for sound cards and such things.

Other stuff is pretty straightforward, make sure the RAM type matches the RAM slot. You can use any hard drive you want. And all the other stuff is pretty much pick what you want. Also, like chutem said, you choose the power supply last, after calculating the power draw of all your other parts. The PSU that comes with the case should be able to handle it.

As for general tips, don't mix  and match high and low end stuff for CPU/GPU/RAM. You will create a bottleneck at whatever the slowest component is. So if you buy some 300$ graphics card and set it up with a 30$ CPU, you're just wasting money.

At this point in time, I would go for an Intel CPU, unless you are going for a sub-70 or 80$ CPU. I find that AMDs low end stuff offers a better value than Intels.
I imagine the overwhelming choice for video cards would be nVidia. But, find something with specs you like, and check out some reviews of them. Just like any other product you would buy.

Stuff to look for
---------------------
Mobo - socket type, number and type of slots, what onboard components does it have?
CPU - how many cores? what are the clock speeds? L2 cache size? 64bit or 32bit?
Sound Card - do you need one? necessary slot type, what ports does it have? (surround sound capability, microphone input, etc.)
GPU - necessary slot type, how many slots? (yes, there are double-wide cards), video memory, analog or DVI output, or both? dual monitor output? SLI/Crossfire supported? directx10 support? clock speeds (core and memory)
Hard Drive - capacity, RPM, data transfer speed, SCSI or SATA connection?
RAM - DDR_ (2,3?), capacity, timings (I'm not going to get into timings here since its fairly complicated, also I wouldnt recommend DDR3 RAM right now, yes its faster, but the price point on it is still too high in my opinion)

Disk drive and network I will leave up to you, disk drive will pretty much what you want it to be able to read/write (cd, dvd, bluray) and im sure you wont need to worry too much about the network device

Theres probably some things listed above that you won't need to pay all that much attention to, but theyre worth looking into

[Clawbug]

Wormdundee summed it up quite well.

Rip your current rig apart and re-assemble it. Try to overclock it. Get into overclocking and the knowledge and experience comes from there.

[a-4-year-old]

Overclocking is just about the dumbest thing you can do to your computer and I guarantee you will ruin your computer.

[jrgp]

Overclocking is just about the dumbest thing you can do to your computer and I guarantee you will ruin your computer.

Yeah, it's only for impressive youtube videos. It doesn't give that much of a noticeable result.

Don't spend a lot on a processor, you might fuck it up when you go to install it.

That depends on the type of socket the processor uses. The socket LGA775, which modern Intels use has this thing where the pins are extremely fragile, flat and lay on eachother. You can only remove and insert/remove a processor into the motherboard's socket a finite (~20) number of times before it breaks, it even says that somewhere in the manual.

Whereas with AMD processors and their current socket AM2 and related successors, it uses the normal male/female style pin connectors so you don't need to worry about the above. When I built my system from bare parts (AMD Athlon 64 3800+ x2, socket 939), the only thing I needed to worry about with the processor was carefully sticking the fan/heatsink over the processor and locking it into the motherboard's rivets. You can kinda see that in this pic. (look at the underside of the processor.)

[Hair|Trigger]

How loud are 10000RPM hard drives exactly?  is it worth some noise for the performance? (I dont take up much storage space, I dunno if i'll really go beyond 100-175GB, (so I think a high speed, low capacity drive would suit me)


@Clawbug, thanks, i'll do that beforehand, just to be safe.  on the topic of assembly however, is everything just a matter of plugging in?  Or will I need some thermal paste or something for certain parts (CPU, PSU etc)

[koingnegsegg]

http://www.ultimatecomputers.net/forum/download/file.php?id=28
pdf guise to the building process.
If you need help building, make an account on the forums at Ultimatecomputers.net. people there are alot of help. This is where i turned when i was building my computer.

The only computability you need to worry about is the ram frequencies and whether it is ddr2 or 3 etc. with the frequencies, you need to look on the motherboard you choose for the range of frequencies it uses. The rest is pretty simple.
only other thing that comes to mind is the psu and graphics card. the 9800 uses a 6 pin and an 8 pin for power, so look for a psu with these, or look for some adapters.
good luck.

about the rpm of the drive. it is quite unlikely you would hear it over the fans or the case and psu.
its a good idea going for high speed low capacity drives for system and programs, then you can just get a slower larger capacity drive. If you have the money maybe a solid state disk would be a good idea. they are very expensive but very fast.. The only noise issues you may come across are of the case you choose.

[Hair|Trigger]

Well I want to do what I can to keep it from turning my room into a wind tunnel (that's what my current PSU sounds like)