Im gonna build my own pc..... advise

Heathen

holá people,

i have found myself in a pretty lucky situation... my girlfriends bro lives in america and has offered to bring me home all i need to build a monster pc cos its a lot cheaper there.. he has just built one for a fraction of the price in ireland, i just have to buy the case and power supply fans etc here and he is getting me

Motherboard & processor
Hardrives (200gb and 80gb)
dvd burner
ram
graphix card

what i need to know is what are the common problems with compatabillity etc when building a pc from scratch... and is there any difference in power, cos america is 110V and were 220V i think that will be ok cos the P/S will bring it to 12v

i want the pc for heavy graphix (photoshop/ 3d studio max) and also for sound editing... (cubase etc...) oh and gaming too hehe

so what are good 3d graphix cards to look out for (with minimal conflicts in software)
and good sound cards....

any other tip much appreciated :D

later
Macker

Nukem

This was asked a while back i think all you have to do is get a PSU from this side of the ocean and check all the componets for compatability(voltages)

Re: the gfx depends again on your preference are you goin AGP or PCI-E
DDR or DDR2 , are you goin to mix and match with a 775 socket and a AGP and DDR mobo.At the mo its a race between the x800xt and the 6800ultra


Bit of a novice just hang on and the lads will fill you in later i'd say.

jessy

Just remember the motherboard is the foundation it will determine the chip and ram. “MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum (Socket 939)” is a very good one.
Graphics cards
1) 6800GT
2) X800 pro
There are higher specs than these. But these are a lot cheaper and can be Overclocked to ultra.

The ultimate sound
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy ZS Platinum Pro 7.1

Don’t get cheap on the PSU either. (Stay away from Q-TEC).;)

Hard drives
Get SATA instead of ATA

quarryman

also get at least a gig (1GB) of RAM considering what you'll be using it for.

BloodBath

If your getting an x800pro, make sure it is the vivo version as the other ones don't soft mod to xt. The 6800gt is probably a safer bet as it has the 16 pipes intact to begin with. It's just a case of overclocking to ultra speeds or flashing to an ultra bios. Get one with good cooling like the galaxy glacier model.

I agree with the sound card. The Creative Sound Blaster Audigy ZS Platinum Pro 7.1 is a great sound card.

The pentiums would be better for graphics and sound editing but the amd's would be better for gaming. It's your choice.

Get a high wattage psu from the likes of Antec, tagan, fortron, enermax, thermaltake. You should be looking at at least 400w-480w. I'd say go 480w or higher.


BloodBath

Ciaran500

Every PSU I've ever seen has a 110V-250V switch on it or and auto switch. The power supplied from the PSU to the components is the same worldwide. So you can buy pc parts from america.

Some thing like an M-audio sound card would be more suited to sound editing.