[OT] Building my dream computer >:)

[shadowlight]

Well, I'm turning 30 in about 2 weeks, and like every male having a midlife crisis, I decided I need an expensive toy!

I'm plunking down a bunch of cash and building my dream system, and in honor of RangerWickett's DIY EN-World computer, I thought I'd chronicle my escapades here.

 

[Aeolius]

Well, I'm turning 30 in about 2 weeks, and like every male having a midlife crisis, I decided I need an expensive toy!

here ya go... http://www.apple.com/powermac/

 

[shadowlight]

My first step here was picking out a motherboard. I currently have an AMD system, so I thought I'd try for an Intel this time. For me, the important features of the motherboard are:
* Chipset
* Front Side Bus (FSB) speed (this is how fast all the peripherals, memory and processor talk to each other and also helps determine overclocking ability)
* Integrated Extras (like sound, ethernet, USB, etc)

 

[shadowlight]

here ya go... http://www.apple.com/powermac/

YARGH!!

I like the Macs, I do... but I need something I can tweak and tune myself... and also play Half Life 2, Halo, NWN, and Dungeon Siege on...

 

[shadowlight]

I decided to go with an Asus P4P800 Deluxe motherboard for a couple of reasons. The first is the chipset.

The chipset is basically the device that helps the motherbord components (like the RAM and the processor) talk to each other. Intel currently puts out two chipsets for P4 processors:
* Springdale (865PE) and
* Canterwood (875)

The 875 is more expensive because it has Intel's Performance Acceleration Technology (PAT) that make's the system faster. Well, doing some investigative reporting, Tom's Hardware Guide found that the chipsets were actually the same thing, but in the 865, Intel had basically disabled the PAT. Asus, however, found a way to enable PAT on an 865 chipset. So their motherbords are the fastest Springdales out there ... because they're pretty much Canterwoods with a Springdale price. How cool is that?!

The other reason I went with this board is because it has an 800MHz Front Side Bus, DDR400 RAM support (more on that later) integrated 6.1 audio, gigabit ethernet, firewire, USB 2.0 and some SWEET overclocking features.

Here's the web page for the P4P800.

 

[shadowlight]

The P4P800 Deluxe:

drooooooll...

 

[shadowlight]

Ram

Next I picked my RAM. There's a lot of different types of RAM out there right now, but the main important factors for me were:
* Size (I want a Gig of RAM)
* Speed
* Double Data Rate (DDR) ability

"So what's the deal with Double Data Rate?!" you must be asking yourself. Well, here's the deal. RAM generally isn't as fast as the motherboard (FSB) in terms of frequency. For example, the Asus board has an 800MHz bus but only takes DDR400 (400MHz) RAM. In order to be able to move data to and from memory every bus clock cycle, DDR motherboards will use pairs of RAM slots and talk to each one every other clock cycle. (In the motherboard picture you might notice that there are 2 blue RAM slots and two black slots.)

With DDR, two 512MB modules are faster than one 1GB module. Also, two 512MB modules cost less than one 1GB module.

I checked the website of the motherboard to see which brands of RAM would work best and went with two Apacer 512MB DDR 400MHz (this speed is also called PC3200 if you're looking) modules.

 

[shadowlight]

Ram

My Apacer RAM!!

The important things to notice are the size (512MB) and the PC3200 (meaning it's 400MHz)

 

[shadowlight]

Processor

To finish off the motherboard, I need a processor. I already decided on a Pentium 4, so really I just needed to pick the clock speed. To do this, I checked the prices on www.pricewatch.com (making sure to only look at the 800MHz FSB choices).

The speeds I had to choose from were 2.4GHz, 2.6GHz, 2.8GHz, 3.0GHz and 3.2GHz.

I used Excel to calculate the speed and dollar cost increase going from 2.4 to 2.6, 2.6 to 2.8, and so on.

I chose the 2.8 GHz processor, because going to the 3.0GHz costs $160 more for a 7% speed improvement... I'd rather overclock my system a bit, and spend that $160 on like two Stargate SG-1 RPG books!

 

[shadowlight]

Processor

One thing to keep in mind when you're buying a processor (and other components for that matter) online. A lot of times you'll see OEM versions and Retail versions, with the OEM versions being a lot cheaper.

The difference with processors is that the OEM versions don't have heatsinks/fans and don't have as much of a warrenty.

If you're building your own system, I'd recommend getting the retail version of most of you hardware components because you'll get:
* all the software (important for things like video cards and DVD drives)
* longer warrenty (generally)
* access to the company's tech support
* Printed versions of the manual rather than PDFs (generally)

For software (like your WinXP) I'd recommend the OEM versions... Who needs manuals for software?!!