Newbie inside ! Need advice...


Hi all, I'm a newbie, I have some friends who have built their PCs themselves ; and I'd like to do the same. I'm good at building things, and I already worked on PCs (change parts of it : mother-card, misc cards, HDD, etc.), but I never built one entirely. Can someone give me general information or advices ? Thanx a lot in advance.

Asked By: justeblanc
On: Jun 29, 2004 6:10:46 AM

Comments(4)



I am frm india....Yeah, we too have places like that where all this h/w stuff is found. yeah, self built comp is the best always(both price + performance). Brand ones always have some specific problematic things which we come to know later. Like too compact cpu which wont allow u to remove hard disk easily!! Also, these "brand" comps have not so good quality peripherals many a time!!! either keyboard is not easy to type on or the mouse is jerky..or monitor might not look so cool...i personally picked up all the peripherals myself when i assembled. ;-)) Do u think u can find a 20GB hard disk these days??? i doubt it. anyway, nothing wrong in giving it a try. best of luck...game on.. I too used to game a lot, but now i am no more a student and dont find that much time to game!!! :-((
I meant the power supply to the fan above ur proc, which comes from the mbd. first dont put the proc, power up ur fan, see that it works.Then only, put ur proc + mbd and power up. Thats what i meant. u get a small power cable from fan..look around ur mbd near ur proc setting place...there will be a socket for it. run the fan first to check it works. That glue aint glue..its thermal paste for smooth heat conduction btw ur proc and heat sink etc. athlon proc have an exposed core, pentium core is not exposed(a steel colored layer exists over which u can apply the thermal paste). so, pentium procs u can apply thermal paste without any fear. i donno abt athlon processors. u can even go for 180Gb hard disk from Maxtor ..but better stick to seagate itself. if u can get a 7200rpm harddisk its good..5400rpm disks are too slow when a 100gb disk is considered. if u wanna run good memory intensive apps, better try 7200rpm or 10000rpm(donno if this exists, but i just faintly remember). u r from US i guess...i donno the price range over there reg graphics card. so cant comment much. even proc prices vary a lot btw pentium series and athlon series....but as i told, its ur preference reg price range(in US..), ur budget and ur expectations from the comp. donno abt star wars galaxy..but mostly wont be a problem running them. also, the faster the FSB the better. 133MHz was the trend untl a few years back i guess..i donno much abt this, but nowadays u can get around 200MHz - 300 MHz FSB..check up on this. this is reg the transfer speeds btw ur RAM and proc.
Thanks a lot for your answers. I began study this, but there is one question more. What do you mean by fedding the proc from the mbd ? you mean to put it firmly on the mbd ? I already saw people put some kind of glue between them, is it a good idea ? I've not yet visited any shop to know how much it will cost to me, but I guess there will be something like proc: 2Gh, 120 Mo for the HDD, 512 DDR or more (that's what will be the more expensive, so i'm not sure, yet), a kind of good graphic card. I hope i'll be able to run as well Star Wars Galaxy than UT2k4, either 3DsMax 6 or Photoshop on it... Maybe I'm too much ambitious, but I want to be able to do almost anything with it, as i just love to discover things i don't know. Thank you again for your answer. Could you detail a little bit far away the way to correctly fed the proc fan power unit from the mbd ? Thanks in advance.
I too have assembled a PC on my own. first thing u make sure before doing anything is that ur processor fan power input is correctly fed from the mbd!!!! if u r going to use an Athlon proc, it will burn out within 3/4 seconds if ur fan line is not fed properly. beware.. better get the processor loaded with experienced hands..its easy, but for first timers the prospect sounds scary sometimes ;-)) if u r not a great gamer, u can go for inbuilt graphics card ones and avoid buying ATI Radeon series/Geforce series graphics cards separately. actually, lots of ASUS motherboards come with Geforce2 card inbuilt(worth trying out ). If u game a lot, no need to ask for inbuilt one(although these days u r bound to get one, whether u like it or not). check that u get ample number of USB ports for ur cabinet. take the smps with the maximum wattage as possible...it doesnt mean it will burnout the max rating given out there all the time!!! it only means u r ready for bigger power usage if necessary. inbuilt LAN card is a great addon if u can get in the mbd. and if u buy a LAN card outside, hopefully the vendor doesnt hand u a ISA slot one...that kind of slot is outdated...get a PCI card. avoid floppy drive....its been shelved..if u see closely, nobody buys them on laptops these days!!!!no use. reg which processor + mbd combi u need to go, depends on ur requirements.. there are lots of reviews. u check and see what suits ur needs and profile. 2 gig comp is enough for most purposes right now...gaming asks u to buy the best, but be prepared to shell out...ex: UT 2004 game itself needs 5/6GB harddisk space!!!! and needs a good graphics card too.. If u r buying anything around Geforce4 series cards, be ready with good quality exhaust fans for ur cpu... if anymore questions, shoot...i will surely try to answer. or atleast search and tell u..;-))
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