Building a PC, need some advice.

[punkorange]

I'm going to to be building a PC and was hoping to get some advice from those who know better than me?

I'm wanting to spend between $1,000 and $1,500. I want a mother board capable of dual video cards and dual processors, at least 1GB of memory and a couple high capacity hard drives put on a raid.

 

[ssampier]

I'm not a gamer, but I know who does:

Extremetech 'Bang for the Buck' Build

For those on a budget

Neither are the alpha or omega of builds, but I think they are good starting points.

 

[Rl'Halsinor]

I'm going to to be building a PC and was hoping to get some advice from those who know better than me?

I'm wanting to spend between $1,000 and $1,500. I want a mother board capable of dual video cards and dual processors, at least 1GB of memory and a couple high capacity hard drives put on a raid.

There are number of members here who have more knowledge than me, but the following will help:

1. Whatever you do make sure you have a good power supply. I wish I had a dollar for ever person who spends big $ on hardware and then to save money goes cheap in the power supply unit. BIG MISTAKE. Your psu is your backbone for your entire system.

2. Forget the dual card set-up. It is a waste of money. So is a dual card motherboard. The increase in performance is not that much. You'd be much better off with a good single card.

3. As for the dual core processors: YES! I like AMD but Intel's offerings just can't be beat. If I was going to build now I'd go with an Intel set-up.

4. Why a RAID set-up? If you know what you are doing, then fine, but RAID has been known to fail. A good SATA drive will do you well.

5. A minimum of 2 gigs of memory is the recommendation if you are a gamer.


Personally I would hold off because we are in the first generation of the next generation systems. Let the dust settle. Trying to find XP is very difficult which means you may be forced to take Vista but I would seriously wait until at Service Pack 1 is released. Nvidia has released 2 drivers for their 8800 DX10 cards and Vista and from what I have been reading it has brought much woe to 8800 owners.

 

[ssampier]

Good advice, except, you can still get Windows XP Oem versions (some include an upgrade for Vista, however that works).

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16832116169

 

[TogaMario]

I love AMD's quality and never had a problem with their chips, but a recent benchmark review I read put Intel's dual core processor at a higher mark than AMD's.

I have a nF4 SLI-DR Expert LAN PARTY UT mobo from DFI, and it's spectacular

 

[TwistedBishop]

Some really good advice here so far. I'll echo that SLi/Crossfire is a waste unless you're buying the absolute best card on the market and find you still need more power. Buying two mid-price cards won't equal the performance of one higher range one for the same price.

Unfortunately, I can't offer any advice about RAID. The few times I've looked at it, I never really saw the point for a home user.

 

[schporto]

I usually work from these recommendations:
http://arstechnica.com/guides/buyer/system-guide-200612.ars
The hot rod is around your price range, especially if you lower some components (really I don't see spending $125 on speakers). The god box is good if you ever hit that lottery and want to cash in .
-cpd

 

[drothgery]

Some really good advice here so far. I'll echo that SLi/Crossfire is a waste unless you're buying the absolute best card on the market and find you still need more power. Buying two mid-price cards won't equal the performance of one higher range one for the same price.

Also
- the next generation of high-end cards will typically match or exceed the performance of two current high-end cards in SLI
- ultra high-end cards tend to get discontinued and replaced, rather than being allowed to drift down-market, so the idea of picking up a second card later doesn't work as well as you might think

 

[drothgery]

I usually work from these recommendations:
http://arstechnica.com/guides/buyer/system-guide-200612.ars
The hot rod is around your price range, especially if you lower some components (really I don't see spending $125 on speakers). The god box is good if you ever hit that lottery and want to cash in .
-cpd

Just a few quick notes on what's changed since then...

AMD's continued to slash CPU prices, and has bumped up clock speeds, so now most Athlon 64 X2s are competitive with the Core 2 Duo in the same price range; the ~$225 model is now the 5200+, rather than the 4200+, which gets you another 400 MHz.

The price of their recommend video card -- a GeForce 7950GT -- has dropped slightly, and the 320 MB version of the GeForce 8800 GTS has been released at just under $300.

... and on what's likely to happen soon (in the next 3-6 months) in the consumer desktop space

AMD's ATi division is expected to
- launch their line of DirectX 10 video cards (Radeon 2xxx)

nVidia is expected to
- launch their midrange and low-end DirectX 10 video cards (lower-end GeForce 8xxx)
- possible release a tweaked high-end card, depending on how ATi's new cards stack up to the 8800 series

Intel is expected to
- make some small improvements to its high-end parts (move to 1333 MHz FSB, top-end model goes from 2.93 GHz to 3 GHz and uses less power)
- introduce a low-end, single core Core 2 variant (800 MHz FSB, 1 MB L2 cache) sold as the Celeron 4xx; this will replace the current Pentium 4-derived Celerons
- introduce a low-midrange, dual core Core 2 variant (800 MHz FSB, 1 MB L2 cache) sold as the Pentium E2xxx; this will replace the current Pentium 4 and Pentium D
- make some major price cuts

 

[Rl'Halsinor]

A lot of really good relevent information in these posts. drothgery, are those Athlon X2s for AM2 boards?