Best computer parts to get.

[Chieftess]

Usually, I build my own computer (there's monthly computer shows in my area), and I want to see from everyone here, which name brands do you recommend? Best price, (video card, sournd card, harddrive, CD/DVD ROM etc.? I usually get high-end computers, since I do a lot of gaming, programming, etc.. (I might even upgrade an old computer and run a file server). Any websites to look at too?

BTW, I still use floppies. And, multiple expansion bays are a must. I still have an HP Scanjet that uses the old SCSI port.

 

[col]

I just rebuilt mine CT.

Athlon Barton 2500 xp+ processor - best bang for buck
Asus A7N8X board - although I like Abit too.

I like Maxtor and Hitachi hard drives.
Video cards are a bit flavour on the month. Whatever is just behind the wave is best value.
Excellent sound comes onboard so sound cards are pretty unnecessary these days for most folks.

Sharky extreme is a great hardware site. They have several specs for machines there.

 

[Jeratain]

I personally prefer Western Digital hard drives. IMPO, they surpass Maxtor and others in quality and reliability.

Asus and MSI both make some good motherboards, and there are other companies out there. Many people will tell you to go with Intel and many will tell you to go with AMD - ultimately the choice is yours. Though I agree that AMD gives you good prices for good performance, I personally prefer to fork over the extra bucks for an Intel for better performance. Now I don't want to get into the age old AMD v Intel debate here - this is just my personal taste - everyone is different and will give you their opinion.

When it comes to video cards right now, though Nvidia FX cards are great, I would recommend the ATI 9800 - best all around video card available.

Sound card wise I would recommend a Creative Audigy 2 Platinum card. CD and DVD roms are all the same to me, so I get the cheapest generic brands because I don't really care - BUT normally the cheaper kinds perform at lower speeds than they claim to, so be careful on that.

If you don't have to upgrade right now, I suggest waiting for a few months until all the new gen hardware is released. Motherboards with new and faster PCI slots will be out and AGP may soon be a thing of the past. Intel will be releasing their new processors soon which will bring another battle between the big chip makers and flash memory will get big as well. There will be new types of RAM that will essentially be twice as fast as the current DDR RAM and so much more.

I'm going to be buying an update in a few months (December). I'm going to buy a P4 2.8C processor (hyperthreading, 800mhz FSB, etc). DDR 3700 (500) ram 2 x 512 from Giel. MSI 865 mobo or Asus, haven't decided yet. WD JB series HDD. And for now that's it, I'll stick with the rest of my junk until I need to upgrade further.

 

[bobgote]

I went for the same Asus m/b as col did. no complaints thus far.

I did a bit of research for hard drives and Western Digital had the best reputation so that's what i got

umm yeah, an ATI card - mine was 9200 but i hear the newer ones are better than their competition.

and i went Lite-on for DVD and CD ROM. I heard they were a re-badged brand and they've done me pretty well so far.

 

[Wolfe Tone]

I have an Abit NF7-S motherboard, 2 Western digital Hard drives, A Radeon 9700pro graphics card and Samsung RAM. While their has been a few technical problems it hasn't been the hardwares fault.

 

[Comraddict]

I would go with intel motherboard, intel CPU and built by ATi graphic card.
LITE-ON makes CD-ROMs for many other manufact. Easy to recognize- they all are loud
Hard drive, I agree with above- WD makes some decent and fast ones.

 

[Centrifuge]

The WD Raptor 36 gig (10,000 rpm) serial drives are quite nice. I've got two of them in a RAID 0

 

[greyghost]

Don't forget about housing. If you're buying all the best, might as well have a high end case and window to show it all off. Maybe a Thermaltake Xaser III or an Antec case (which btw comes with a great power supply).

 

[GrandAdmiral]

ASUS motherboards are more stable than MSI in my experiences and according to most of the tests I have read. HDs are pretty comparable. I prefer Maxtor or Western Digital. For the low end I would go for Athlon XP 2600. Don't use AMD Duron or Intel Celeron. For high end I would go for a Pentium 4 3.2 Ghz. I prefer Intel so I just pay more for them. I would pick ATI Radeon over Nvidia GForce.

 

[Moonsinger]

I recommend the Abit IC7-Max III motherboard and Petinum IV @2.8 GHz CPU. Of course, PC4000 or PC4200 DDR for the memory. I just upgraded my system with the above settings and quite please with it. The Abit IC7-MaxIII also come with 2 Serial ATA SATA ports and one Serial ATA adapter and good quality onboard sound too. Also 6 USB-2 ports, 3 Firewire, Ethernet port, etc. And best of all, you can easily overlock your 2.8 GHz processor at 3.4 GHz without generating any extra heat.

Currently I'm overlocking my 2.8 GHz system @ 3.4 GHz by using just the standard CPU cooling kit that came with the retail CPU without any problem. The average temperate at the core of my CPU is about 44 degree C during extensive home video encoding session. As for playing Civ3, my CPU is at the constant 40 degree C which is the same as no-extra heat.

PS: Although, I have heard many success story about overlocking the 2.8 GHz CPU @ 3.7 GHz, but I wouldn't recommend that. If you do that, you may have to install extra cooling solution which may cost a lot of money. Beside, I think 3.4 GHz is fast enough.

 

[Moonsinger]

Originally posted by Jeratain
I'm going to be buying an update in a few months (December). I'm going to buy a P4 2.8C processor (hyperthreading, 800mhz FSB, etc). DDR 3700 (500) ram 2 x 512 from Giel.

DDR 4000 or DDR 4200 is much better. And yes, the P4 2.8C processor is the way to go. I see no need for paying an extra $200 for the 3.2 processor when we can easily overlock the 2.8 processor at 3.4 or higher. However, with the 3.2 processor, I think you can try to break the 4.0 GHz barrier.

 

[TedJackson]

I also have the Abit IC7-MAX 3 and would recommend it to anyone who wants to build a high-end system.

As Moonsinger said above, it's really easy to overclock & there's a handy reset to defualts option if you go too far

It's not been a good year for hard disks as far I'm concerned. I've had 2 WD and 1 Maxtor crap out on me recently. But I replaced them all with Maxtors - hard to find anything better.

Add ATI for video and Creative for sound and you won't go far wrong. Stick iit all in a nice Lian Li case with a couple of CC lights behind the front panel and it'll look and perform great


Ted

 

[Moonsinger]

I forgot to mention that the IC7-Max III mb also has a fail-safe temperature control. Basically, you can set in the Bios to automatically power down your system if it get above a certain degree. Like TedJackson said, you can't go wrong with the Abit IC7-Max III. Also I'm using the Matrix MX-01BD mid-tower case with 4 generic case fans (cost $1.99 for each fan). My video card was an old ATI 9000 Pro.

 

[Speedo]

AMD processors all the way!
MSI motherboards (not the best for "uber-1337" performance, but extremely stable)
Crucial or Corsair RAM
I prefer nVidia for video cards, mainly because of very crappy experiences with ATI in the past. They may be better now, but I'm not ready to give 'em another chance. Yet.
Thermaltake or CoolerMaster cooling stuff (the Xaser III case looks awesome, to bad I don't have $300 to drop on it)
Maxtor HDDs - only had 2 problems with them in about 8 yrs use (one HDD died of age, the other had a problem that was fixed with their diagnostic software and a low level format)
Linksys for network cards
I have Sony OEM CD-RW and DVD drives, no complaints.
APC for surge protectors/UPSs - a must have!

IMO newegg.com is the best place if you buy online. Their prices are usually good and they have excellent service. Most of the stuff in my last 2 PCs was purchased there.

I would wait to upgrade now. The next waves of vid cards will probably be out by Christmas. Athlon 64s are just coming out, so their prices will be coming down. (I don't think it'd be worth moving to 64 bit yet though) Dunno what Intel has planned for release, don't pay much attention to them.

 

[GrandAdmiral]

I wouldn't recommend you overclock unless you really know what you are doing. And don't buy the fastest processor available, you never get a good deal for them. Go for the mid grade ones 2.4 to 2.8ghz .

 

[Mark Young]

I haven't really had any probs with my system, Athlon XP 2600, MSI mobo, but then I only use it for civ and trolling here so I have no need to o/c it.