Bulid it or buy it?

[Raydeus]

Re: Bulid it or buy it?

Nothing like the thrill of being up till 8 AM (having to go to work in 30 mins without any sleep) trying to figure out why your computer:

Doesn't boot/reboots on its own/crashes on you all the time/just turns off and decides to take leave for a few hours/smells funny/etc. etc.


Good times, I kinda miss em, it's been years since I had a problem beyond an IRQ overlap.

[Feba]

Re: Bulid it or buy it?

I've been building a computer myself for the past few weeks. Everything seems great, except ASUS has RMA'd me two DOA Motherboards now. Starting to make me wish I'd bought a preassembled system, not out of frustration so much as depression

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: Bulid it or buy it?

Building a computer is actually a very fun excerise, both for the research and the actual putting components together.

For someone never done it before, it's well worth the experience to do research on your own, consult friends (or forums) for advice, make your decisions, then go buy the parts, then put them together. (I recommend getting a friend who knows what s/he is doing to watch over you during the assembly process.)

I won't lie, though: Yes, you can mess up.

When I was trying to take my first CPU I ever bought out from its packaging to install onto the motherboard, it flew out of my hand, wacked the table edge on the side with pins, and fell to the floor.

I unbend its pins and attempted to stick it in the motherboard--didn't fit. Took a closer look, found two pins more bent than I liked, and did my best to straighten them out. Pressed it in the socket again--hurray, it fit! So, I clumsily proceeded to assemble the rest of the computer, pretending nothing had happened.

Years later, I'm typing this post on that very computer, still running on the same CPU with somewhat bent pins. d^_^;

Soooo.... Not every mistake is fatal. Honest.

[Murphie]

Re: Bulid it or buy it?

If I ever make a friend locally who is willing to walk me through the process, I might just give it a try.

[Feba]

Re: Bulid it or buy it?

Computer's aren't really that hard to put together, murph. Basically, you get parts that are compatible, which is really easy, it's basically a slightly slightly more complex version of Tab A into Socket B, anyone who can dress themselves without looking like a clown should be able to do it. Then you screw the motherboard into the case, instaall the CPU and thermal solution, install the RAM, install the drives and PCI cards, install the power supply, plug everything in, and go.

Unless you want something more fancy, like neon tubes, or water cooling.

[Minimee]

Re: Bulid it or buy it?

i build computers all the time for myself and for friends and family. let me start with some relevent ideas before you make your decision. 1st build it yourself unless your rich and want to pay 2k for the name alienware on your pc. 2nd. Intel Core 2 Duo. there is nothing wrong with amd, but core 2 duos are the best there is. they are reletivity inexpensive and very overclockable. intel has always been best for video editing they were behind on gaming for a few years but are back on top in that area as well. i have no idea how much money you have to spend but from what you mentioned i hope its aleast 2k.
my recommendations:
cpu: intel core 2 duo e4300 $139 or Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield $532
mb: ASUS P5B LGA 775 Intel P965 $116 or
ASUS Striker Extreme LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI ATX The Ultimate Gaming Motherboard $309 really Asus mb's something in between these 2 to suit your needs.
power supply: ENERMAX Liberty ELT500AWT ATX12V 500W $109
any enermax 600+ watt powersupply or other high end powersupplies $150 + power supplies are one of the most important parts for a quality pc build dont cheap out on powersupply.
ram: Corsair or Mushkin ram eithers top of the line 2 x 1gb+ 2gb minimum. 2 x 2gb recommended
soundcard: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer Fatal1ty $139
case: aluminium full tower one that has and or excepts 120mm fans.
newegg.com is where i recommend buying parts. want a more detailed list of everything pm me. research is advised also a good guide for pc building its how i learned.

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: Bulid it or buy it?

I like these guides:
Ars System Guide: March 2007
Ars System Guide: May's Ultimate Budget Box

(Check updates to the guides here: http://arstechnica.com/guides.ars )

[Murphie]

Re: Bulid it or buy it?

The parts that worry me the most are the processor (and installing the fan and heatsink over that). I have installed cards and RAM before, so that doesn't worry me, but the idea of working with something like thermal paste (I don't even know what that is), worries my clumsy, not-good-at-detail-work self.

[Mhurron]

Re: Bulid it or buy it?

The parts that worry me the most are the processor (and installing the fan and heatsink over that). I have installed cards and RAM before, so that doesn't worry me, but the idea of working with something like thermal paste (I don't even know what that is), worries my clumsy, not-good-at-detail-work self.

Actually, putting on a heat sink is the only part that requires force and elbow grease. Everything only goes in or on one way so you don't have to worry about mixing that up and they've even simplified the most irritating part about putting your own together by making all those little LED's and buttons at the front of the case one thing that only plugs into the motherboard one way.

I do cut myself every time I'm in a computer, but thats happened so much it's like a tradition now. Thankfully, I don't do much work in a computer case any more.

[Amele]

Re: Bulid it or buy it?

Intel Core 2 Duo. there is nothing wrong with amd, but core 2 duos are the best there is. they are reletivity inexpensive and very overclockable. intel has always been best for video editing they were behind on gaming for a few years but are back on top in that area as well.

unless you're planning to actually overclock it, socket AM2(and AM2+) compares very favorably to the Core2Duo (assuming you get a multicore AM2) - they are slightly more expensive, but are also, generally speaking, more stable, even overvolted (I've gotten an AM2 as high as 1.66V before, never gotten a core2duo to be stable past ~1.5V - although I suspect I could get both higher if I went with vapor cooling instead of water cooling.) although overvolting is immaterial if you're not overclocking.

as far as gaming goes, it's pretty close to a wash unless you get the very top end core2duo's. intel is more widely available and has a better selection of boards though.

[Arctic Wolf]

Re: Bulid it or buy it?

Things don't last as long as they use to. Even still, I'd rather get a LCD over a CRT. 200 bucks isn't too much to spend on getting a LCD monitor. I just bought a 226BW from Samsung, and it's working beautifully. I mean seriously, when you do get a high end video card, is it really going to work with your 10 year old monitor that doesn't even support DVI?

Well, generally, CRT's have a (much) higher quality as LCD. There's an explanation for it I write somewhere before, and right now am too lazy to write it down or look it up. Ofcourse, by now, 10 year old CRT monitors hardly can be compared to nowadays LCD monitors. I have a 7 year old CRT monitor, it can display resolutions up to 2000 x ?, something like that, and has a good quality.

[Celeal]

Re: Bulid it or buy it?

I am not sure about others~ I prefer LCD over CRT because my eyes gets tired much faster when I am using CRT.

[Omniblast]

Re: Bulid it or buy it?

unless you're planning to actually overclock it, socket AM2(and AM2+) compares very favorably to the Core2Duo (assuming you get a multicore AM2) - they are slightly more expensive, but are also, generally speaking, more stable, even overvolted (I've gotten an AM2 as high as 1.66V before, never gotten a core2duo to be stable past ~1.5V - although I suspect I could get both higher if I went with vapor cooling instead of water cooling.) although overvolting is immaterial if you're not overclocking.

as far as gaming goes, it's pretty close to a wash unless you get the very top end core2duo's. intel is more widely available and has a better selection of boards though.

If you overclock your system, you risk the chance of getting BANNED from ffxi for having a overclocked system.

Yes I know that's stupid. I read it somewhere that someone got banned because the system they were using was overclocked. (Speedhack?)

I never found out whether or not they had their account returned to them or not.

[Mhurron]

Re: Bulid it or buy it?

I read it somewhere that someone got banned because the system they were using was overclocked. (Speedhack?)

Have you ever seen what FFXI does when the GPU and/or CPU are over clocked?

Nothing.

They were banned for using speedhacks, but because everyone believes the frame rate of the game is tied to either the clock speed of the GPU or the CPU they were able to confess their innocence.

[Raydeus]

Re: Bulid it or buy it?

About CRT vs LCD.

Unless you have space problems at smaller screen sizes (up to 20") CRT is the way to go, you wont get better colors, black levels and others from an LCD, specially for such small displays.

However if you wanna double your PC as an entertainment center (and like me use the same display for PC, PS3 etc.) then an LCD 32" and above HDTV with HDMI support is the way to go.

You may not get the color quality you get from CRT (unless you spend quite a bit of money), but HDTV quality nowadays is improving and you wont notice that much of a difference (and the sheer screen real state increase is worth it by itself).