GameBanshee Forums

Build your own

If it wasn't for the thought I might never get the operating system on a home built computer, I would try to buy the parts separate and put it together myself.

So my next step is to find a company who will build to a certain point, allowing me to install what I want later (and on my own).

What I now need is your opinion on this computer (the components)

Intel Pentium 4 2.8 GHz, 533Mhz FSB (List for 404.04)

MSI 648 Max-L SIS648 Chipset, 533 FSB (List for 110.10)

CS-288 ATX Aluminum with X Window, 350 Watt. (List for 81.82)

Round Cables (List for 24.44)

Mitsumi 3 1/2" Floppy Drive (List for 15.15)

512 MB 400MHz DDR RAM (List for 102.02)

60.0 GB High Speed Hard Drive (7200 rpm) (List for 98.99) Side note "We use top rated Western Digital, IBM, Samsung and Maxtor"

Second 60.0 GB High Speed Hard Drive (7200 rpm) (List for 98.99) Side note "We use top rated Western Digital, IBM, Samsung and Maxtor"

nVidia Geforce 4 TI4800 (4400 8X), 128 MB, 8X AGP. (List for 243.43)

56X High Speed CD ROM Drive (List for 22.22)

48x12x48 CD-RW (List for 57.58)

Creative Sound Blaster Audigy X-Gamer (List for 90.91)

5 Port USB 2.0 Card (List for 25.25)

3 Port IEEE 1394 Fire Wire Card (List for 25.25)

Logitech Cordless Keyboard w/Internet Mouse (List for 55.56)

(Now for the either part..
Windows 98se (List for 116.16
or
Windows XP (listed for 96.97)


No Lemon 2 year Warrenty (49.95)
Shipping (49.95)

With XP the cost is $1652.62

With 98se the cost is $1671.81


Some of this I know I could do without (or install myself later) eg...56X High Speed CD ROM Drive , 48x12x48 CD-RW

So his tyranical one finally gonna grab "the dream machine" ! Anyway sorry for not being on quite often, IRL stuff realy killing my online time.

I'll email some things later regarding the PC thing.

The mainboard looks OK...HLD will prolly pocket another check from MSI Unless he got better specs from MSI to recommend

I can't recommend any soundcard since I got lack of resource for soundcard lately - but I believe Sleepo will recommend a real good one for you if he read this.

One last thing :
1. Consider using Win98SE if you wanna use this for gaming. Some old games got prob with win2k. i wont' recommend Win Me more over XP (XP takes human touch away from computer interface since the OS practically configure itself and you gonna have difficult time configuring stuff with it )

2. Are you sure it is the original nVidia graphic card they sell ? Make sure you got a real one not some clone - anyway Pixelview branded nVidia card got good performa

3. What brand is the CDRW ?

Originally posted by KidD01
So his tyranical one finally gonna grab "the dream machine" ! Anyway sorry for not being on quite often, IRL stuff realy killing my online time.

I'll email some things later regarding the PC thing.

The mainboard looks OK...HLD will prolly pocket another check from MSI Unless he got better specs from MSI to recommend

I can't recommend any soundcard since I got lack of resource for soundcard lately - but I believe Sleepo will recommend a real good one for you if he read this.

One last thing :
1. Consider using Win98SE if you wanna use this for gaming. Some old games got prob with win2k. i wont' recommend Win Me more over XP (XP takes human touch away from computer interface since the OS practically configure itself and you gonna have difficult time configuring stuff with it )

2. Are you sure it is the original nVidia graphic card they sell ? Make sure you got a real one not some clone - anyway Pixelview branded nVidia card got good performa

3. What brand is the CDRW ?

No problem Kid. IRL calls before anything else.

The main thing I'm looking for his an opinion of the components.

Like... Intel Pentium 4 2.8 GHz, 533Mhz FSB? Any good? Worth the cost? Should I move up to a faster one, or move down.

Intel Pentium 4 2.66 GHz, 533MHz FSB is the next one down the chart and the Intel Pentium 4 3.06 GHz, 533 MHz FSB is the next above.

(Willing to change to a Athlon XP2800+, 333MHz FSB )


1. Would rather have the 98se. Just want some opinions. And yes it is only for gaming...and some surfing.

2. Will call and ask beforehand, if it's a clone, I will not get the video card.

3. Unknown This kind of scares me. Thinking about not getting the CD RW from them, instead buy it somewhere else. Figure I can install this on my own.

Looks good. But a couple of thoughts:

1. Unless the price is ridiculously high, have you considered a P4 based on the new canterwood chipset? 800Mhz FSB, Mmmmmmmmmm.....

2. Get a bigger power supply. 350W will run that, but it doesn't really leave much room if you want to add another hard disk or GeForce FX card.

3. I've seen known brand CD-RW drives for that price, but at 52x48x40 speeds.

Otherwise, it would make for a very nice gaming PC.

I would not go GeForce FX.
Either a GeForce 4 TI <something> og a ATI Radeon.

All reviews of G-FX I've seen only shows it marginally better then the newest ATI Radeons (can't remember version number) and not significantly better then GeForce 4.

I doubt that it will be the gfx-card that will be the bottleneck of such a system regardless if you choose G4, G-FX or ATI.
And if needed graphics cards are easy to upgrade in a year or year and a half if needed.

I agree with Mr. F. - get a 400W power - 300-350 will run a lot/most, but when getting new - no need to take the chance.

Also - instead of getting a CD-Rom drive and CD-RW drive - look into getting a CD-RW and DVD/CD-drive - that would be a much better investment in my oppinion.
You might even look into getting a DVD-R/CD-RW(these combo drives aren't all that expensive anymore) and a DVD/CD-drive.

As for harddrives - look into getting 80 or 120GB instead. It isn't really cost effective to go less then 80GB these days. Also note that some harddrives comes with 8MB cache now and go Fluid drives. They generate a little more heat - but the noise reduction is tremendous.

Also - a personal oppinion and experience - round IDE cables suck. It is a gimic - they are noway easier to work with and the "better airflow" is just as easily gotten with a couple of rubber band. - Go ordinary flatcables (remember IDE133 if needed) and place some rubber bands on them - presto got round ide-cables.

Also look into if your needs do include 5 USB ports and Firewire.
All these things seems nice to have, but if you have no need for them - drop them. Personally I only use a USB port for my mp3-portable player.

Also consider if you truly have a need for disk-drive. Seeing as you can boot from a CD-Rom and with CD-RW being cheapish I see no reason for floppy disk drives anymore.

Personally - if I bought new these days - I'd go for Windows XP. I know many that have little to no problems with it for gaming, and I think support/update from Micro$oft would, all things considered, go faster for WinXP - don't even know if they patch Win98SE anymore. (only reason I don't go WinXP is cause I had Win2K)'

Then again - the last 3 CPU-Builds/computers I've built myself, so all my experience is with finding the cheapest vendor for the component I want and bying from there. Thus I usually use 3-4 vendors for building a computer.

A few quick things, since my time is short:

Why do you want a 56X Cd drive when your CDRW is already 48X? The speed difference is not really that noticeable once you get above 40X, and a DVD drive would barely cost more and give you more options as to the discs you can read, while still letting you have two CD drives for real-to-real copying.

I'd go with an AMD chip, if only because it's half the price (unless you're looking at the Barton, which is more expensive for little performance gain over the Thoroughbred) and because the nForce2 chipset is so lurvely

As for the OS thing, I'm an avid gamer, and I am yet to find a game that doesn't work on my Win2k - Service Pack 3 - Application Compatibility Toolkit installed machine - all the way back to Commander Keen and up to Unreal 2. The main problem with 98SE in my opinion is that it's not as stable as 2000/XP. It's very easy to get used to random crashes every so often in 95/98/ME, but you really notice when they're totally gone.

And concerning the hard drives, are you not better getting one 120GB drive than 2 60GB ones? Unless you're having a RAID array of some description, the larger single drive is cheaper, and will leave room for another IDE device should you wish to expand in the future.

On the topic of sound cards, to my knowledge you don't get much better than the Creative Audigy cards, they do however have a few incompatibility problems with certain games. It's been a while since I was in the market for a new sound card, since I got my SB Digital 5.1 I've never really needed anything better.

Unless you are into sound editing and you have really good speakers, getting anything better than a SoundBlaster Live! 5.1 is probably a waste of money. I have a aforementioned card along with Altec Lansing AVS-500 speakers and games and music sound fabulous on my machine.

I also like MSI boards and some guys at work have just bought some of MSI's new KT400 boards. My board is the KT3 Ultra board that uses the KT333 chipset.

I also think rounded cables are a waste of money unless you have a transparent panel letting people look into your machine and you care what the guts look like; they really don't make much difference in terms of airflow or case temperature.

Get more RAM. Buy as much as you can afford. Sell one of your brother's kidney's to buy more. You can never have enough RAM.

I like the GeForce4 Ti chipset, although I've heard lots of good things about ATI's Radeon 9700 card. Buy whichever one you get a better deal on.

I'd also look into an AMD Athlon XP 2800+; they cost a little less and their associated boards do, too.

If you were getting an AMD chip and a motherboard with nForce2, you would hardly need a separate sound card - the onboard on those things is really rather good

Originally posted by HighLordDave
Unless you are into sound editing and you have really good speakers, getting anything better than a SoundBlaster Live! 5.1 is probably a waste of money. I have a aforementioned card along with Altec Lansing AVS-500 speakers and games and music sound fabulous on my machine.

I've been out from soundcard quite a while Is SB Live 5.1 the same as SB Live Platinum ?

Originally posted by HighLordDave
I also like MSI boards and some guys at work have just bought some of MSI's new KT400 boards. My board is the KT3 Ultra board that uses the KT333 chipset.
<SNIP>
I'd also look into an AMD Athlon XP 2800+; they cost a little less and their associated boards do, too.

Which MSI mobo you recommed for my P3 ? Also how about P4 3.06 GHZ system ? I heard several bashing about VIA chipset, care to recommend which chipset is more stable ?

Originally posted by HighLordDave
Get more RAM. Buy as much as you can afford. Sell one of your brother's kidney's to buy more. You can never have enough RAM.

LOL *turn to Weasel* I told you that 1024 MB 400MHz DDR is good enough

Originally posted by KidD01
I've been out from soundcard quite a while Is SB Live 5.1 the same as SB Live Platinum ?

I don't think so, but couldn't tell you the difference.

I know some people of who have Audigy sound cards and none of them get sound that is $150 better than mine. In addition to having a good sound card, get good speakers. It's like having a high end video card and running it thorugh a crappy monitor. If you're willing to spend $200 on a sound card, pony up the cash and get a good set of Logitech, Altec Lansing or Monsoon speakers.

Which MSI mobo you recommed for my P3 ? Also how about P4 3.06 GHZ system ? I heard several bashing about VIA chipset, care to recommend which chipset is more stable ?

Everyone I know who has an MSI board has an Athlon CPU. I've had several boards with VIA chipsets on them and never had any problems with any of them.

AMD all the way with an MSI mobo

Can't tell you much about the onboard sound vs. sound card argument. Personal Preference is to buy a sound card and disable the onboard stuff. Usually leads to some conflicts and problems but they can be solved. Agreed that for a gamer machine a Live! 5.1 is good enough. Find some Klipsch speakers for your computer.

If it's only a gaming/spamming machine, bag the 1394 and USB 2.0 card, odds are the MSI mobo will support USB 2.0 anyway should you need it and might even have a 1394 port.

Get a 400W liquid cooling koolance case! If only because they look kool (holy pallindrome).

Get additional cooling for your HDD's and buy the quiet ones. What is the second HDD for? If it is only for redundancy consider networking and backup/copy data to your old machine.

A tape drive would be cool if only for the geek points

XP over 98SE, all the way, under any circumstance.

Get a DVD-ROM and a DVD-r/rw. They'll usually double up as a cd/rw. This is another solution as opposed to a second HDD for data redundancy.

There is no such thing as a top rated HDD, they're all subject to permanent catastrophe with no notice.

Look at tom's hardware for benchmarking on the newest video cards. Personally, I prefer nvidia over ATI and at this point, I'd opt for an 8X AGP.

Just my two bucks on opinions, most of this has already been said. I'm just supporting others comments.

Well here is mine, and she is well worth the effort it is taking to find my way around Win XP Pro

Processor: AMD Athlon XP (TM) 2700+ with Quantispeed Tech
Motherboard: ASUS A7N8X Latest Technology (USB 2.0 - 8x AGP - DDR400)
Memory: 512Mb PC2700 DDR Memory 333MHz (2x256)
Hard Disk Drive: 120Gb Ultra Fast with 2Mb Buffer (7200rpm)
Graphics: 128Mb ATI Radeon 9700 Pro (8xAGP) TV Out + DVI
Monitor: NEC 1760NX DVi TFT Monitor
DVD-ROM Drive: 16x DVD (40x CD-ROM)
CD Rewriter: CD Re-writable (48x16x48) + Buffer Under Run Technology
Sound: Onboard Dolby Digital 6 Channel with SP/DIF & Soundstorm
Speakers: New Creative Labs Inspire 5300 - 5.1 Surround
NIC: Integrated 10/100 Ethernet Adaptor
Keyboard & Mouse: Logitech Internet Keyboard & Optical Mouse )
Software: Windows XP Pro/ Worksuite 2003 / Pinnacle Studio 8 SE

All in black

I believe Soundstorm is the newest audio std. developed by nVidia. How's it sound ?

Actually, it doesn't sound bad at all. In fact, the pc system sounds better than the hi fi! but that could be to do with the selection of speakers too. I still may invest in a seperate sound card later, but right now I don't see why. That said, some have wider expectations of sound than I do, maybe ask Sleepy when he has had chance to hear my system in a week or so

Originally posted by KidD01
I believe Soundstorm is the newest audio std. developed by nVidia. How's it sound ?

I'll tell you tomorrow or the next day when my EPoX 8RDA+ arrives Overclocker heaven *drools*

Originally posted by Ned Flanders
AMD all the way with an MSI mobo

Boo! Epox all the way!

Originally posted by Ned Flanders
If it's only a gaming/spamming machine, bag the 1394 and USB 2.0 card, odds are the MSI mobo will support USB 2.0 anyway should you need it and might even have a 1394 port.

If the mobo supports firewire and USB 2 why would he need separate cards?

Originally posted by Ned Flanders
Get a 400W liquid cooling koolance case! If only because they look kool (holy pallindrome).

Er, stupidly expensive, not easy to set up, heart attack-inducing ("WTF? My PC isn't making any noise?!") and not that good looking

Originally posted by Ned Flanders
Get additional cooling for your HDD's and buy the quiet ones. What is the second HDD for? If it is only for redundancy consider networking and backup/copy data to your old machine.

Let's just say if I had another matching hard drive I wouldn't keep it on a shelf as backup. Mmm, RAID striping

Originally posted by Ned Flanders
A tape drive would be cool if only for the geek points

And useless!

Originally posted by Ned Flanders
XP over 98SE, all the way, under any circumstance.

2000 r0x0rz their b0x0rz

Originally posted by Ned Flanders
Look at tom's hardware for benchmarking on the newest video cards. Personally, I prefer nvidia over ATI and at this point, I'd opt for an 8X AGP.

Unless you're going for ultimate performance (has to be the Radeon 9800 Pro) I think the best VFM is found in the Radeon 9500 Pro (snap them up quick before they're replaced with the seemingly worse 9600 Pro). Yeah, I like nVidia. No, I don't think any of their cards can stay with ATI at the moment. I'm waiting in hope for the 5600 Ultra in case it lives up to my expectations.

by kam
If the mobo supports firewire and USB 2 why would he need separate cards?

that's why I said "bag" the USB 2 and 1394 cards, as in, don't buy them.

by kam
Er, stupidly expensive, not easy to set up, heart attack-inducing ("WTF? My PC isn't making any noise?!") and not that good looking

worth the price, not difficult to set up, noise reduction is nice, and does it matter if a computer is good looking. It ain't hanging on a wall.

by kam
Let's just say if I had another matching hard drive I wouldn't keep it on a shelf as backup. Mmm, RAID striping

RAID striping is useless without three drives. You could do a disk mirror or disk duplex with two drives but I don't see the point in RAID striping without parity. In a two disk stripe set, if one drive fails the volume is gone.


I suppose a tape drive is semi useless if you only have one computer.

XP is more or less win2k. Actually, I use them both. Perhaps I should have said XP/win2kpro over win98, all the way, under any circumstance.

by Kam Unless you're going for ultimate performance (has to be the Radeon 9800 Pro) I think the best VFM is found in the Radeon 9500 Pro (snap them up quick before they're replaced with the seemingly worse 9600 Pro). Yeah, I like nVidia. No, I don't think any of their cards can stay with ATI at the moment. I'm waiting in hope for the 5600 Ultra in case it lives up to my expectations.

Can't agree or disagree here. Haven't studied the new ATI's enough. Most of my bias comes from past experience with multiple driver problems with ATI hardware in various machines. Perhaps they've cleaned this up, perhaps not. Either way, I switched to nVidia quite a while ago.

Thanks for all the advice people. Please continue if you more to add.

1. Not building for looks If I have to duct tape, I will.

2. Don't want to go thru Gateway, Dell or any company like that.

Originally posted by Ned Flanders
XP is more or less win2k. Actually, I use them both. Perhaps I should have said XP/win2kpro over win98, all the way, under any circumstance.

Boo Boo Boo, XP significantly reduce human touch on PC interface. Sure let Windows do all the job and configuration. When it stuck you will got a terrible migraine trouble shooting it.

Radeon ? tehy sure got better performa on their latst prod. I shall wait for all tech reciew before I decide switching to Radeon. For the mean time nVidia rules the market.

@Weasel : Custom build rulez ! Branded ? what brand ?

Originally posted by Ned Flanders
There is no such thing as a top rated HDD, they're all subject to permanent catastrophe with no notice.

This is quite true, and in all likelyhood, your HDD will be the first thing that fails (it has the most moving parts).

Check with the retailer and make sure you're getting a HDD with a three year warranty and not just a one year warranty. If you need a more reliable HDD, SCSI drives fail with a lower incidence rate but cost more. Or if data recovery is a concern of yours, you might consider buying a board (from MSI, of course) that has on-board RAID or purchasing a RAID expansion card.

: ockets check from MSI::