Building My First PC

sam_rocks · August 15th, 2004, 04:55 AM

Hi guys. I joined this forum because it looks like you guys really know your stuff (a heck of a lot more than me!). I am building my own PC for the first time and, frankly, it's a bit daunting.

I am a undergrad student ..

My pc is BAsically for.....

1) Surfing ( alot , approx 10-15 windows at a time )
2) A little bit og Gaming
3) For EDUCATION ...networking ;; workin in UNIX based environments
4) Playin movies & having fun.

I thought that ... INTEL PENTIUM 2.8 Ghz HT would be suitable ..

But there is a mix of opinions here ... some say P4 2.4 is enough while some say AMD is enough..

So a lot of confusion .....

PLEASE HELP .......P4 2.8 HT / P4 2.4 / AMD 2400+..........

Also ....help me with the correct combination of MOTHERBOARD & RAM......................................

HeadBand · August 15th, 2004, 05:07 AM

how much are you looking to spend?

Bizkitkid2001 · August 15th, 2004, 05:09 AM

What HeadBand said, what is your budjet?

bombledmonk · August 15th, 2004, 05:12 AM

lol, what do you mean by AMD is "enough"..... I personally would never build with anything else than AMD, but that is a personal preference.

But seriously, the only thing that you would need alot of power there for is gaming. So it really hinges on what games you would want to play. The 2400+ isn't really in the same league as a P4 2.4c with 800FSB. You'd be looking in more of the 2800+ catagory which is still quite a bit cheaper than a P4 2.4c(or e).

If you're looking for plenty of power in the P4 2.8 price range I'd suggest going with this
AMD Athlon 64 3000+, 512KB L2 Cache 64-bit Processor - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproduc...103-486&DEPA=0
EPoX "EP-8KDA3J" nForce3-250Gb Chipset Motherboard for AMD Socket 754 CPU -RETAIL
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...123-219&depa=0

That will give you power equal to or greater than a P4 2.8.

If you don't think you need that much power you can get a nice Athlon 2500+ and mobo combo for under $180 (which is the price of the CPUs only mentioned above).
EPoX "EP-8RDA3+" nForce2 Ultra 400 Chipset Motherboard for AMD Socket A CPU -RETAIL
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...123-198&depa=0
AMD Athlon XP 2500+ "Barton", 333 FSB, 512K Cache Processor - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...103-379&depa=0
(I'm just giving you the AMD side of it, I'm sure plenty more out there will have suggestions for Intel)

LeftCoast · August 15th, 2004, 05:12 AM

Like HeadBand and Bizkitkid said, what's your budget?

Bizkitkid2001 · August 15th, 2004, 05:16 AM

bombledmonk, i recommend a KT800 chipset based motherboard instead of the nforce3.

bombledmonk · August 15th, 2004, 05:24 AM

yup there are many other good Motherboards, That's why he's asking more than one person.

sam_rocks · August 15th, 2004, 05:26 AM

BASICALLY ....Budget isn't the problem ....

Anything whih would serve MY PURPOSE mentiond above..... ( in a better way )

POINTS 1,2,3,4 .....in a better way...

I really don't know how much power is these 4 ( above mentioned 4 points ) process

going to take ........

The advice I got near by is ...this ( 4 things I use ) will not take much of process

so why go for high Configuration ... P4 2.4 / AMD is enough to serve these process

But the answer I am looking for is ...Does " P4 2.8 HT ( hyper threading ) " any way

Serve my PURPOSE better ...

eg: If I open 10 windos of iEXPLORER ....can I find a difference between non HT & HT

bombledmonk · August 15th, 2004, 05:47 AM

Like i said before. They will all serve your purpose just fine. It all depends on the games as that is the only thing that you will be doing that is CPU intensive. Higher is always better in that respect

By the way if you're surfing with 10-15 windows at a time you might find the "Tabbed Browsing" feature of FireFox or Opera a useful addition to your daily life. And as far as IE and noticing the difference between HT and non HT..... you'd be hard pressed to find a noticable difference if any at all.

MadMan2k · August 15th, 2004, 02:08 PM

http://jonbuder.us/files/1000_pc2.html

There's a complete system for you. You might want to add or remove some components, but that'll do pretty well for almost anything you want to do. It'll be plenty powerful for graphic editing, and some vid editing, and it'll probably run some of the more resource-intensive games pretty well.