1st PC - wisdom appreciated

voObo0

Hello lads,

I'm fairly dimwitted when it comes down to deciphering the real-deal tech stuff regarding PCs - can you blame me after being a mac user for 3 years. I've decided to ditch the aul mac in favour of a pc but need some serious advice.....

What I'm looking for exactly, is predominantly a gaming PC, genetically engineered to play all the latest and graphically intense games for the next two to three years, at least. I'll also probably use it for normal stuff like surfing and showing my bum off over the net, mp3s etc. but thats about it.

I dont require a megalithic HD for storing mammoth pr0n movies, gfx apps and other such tertiary space hoggers. I just want the baby to hold 7-8 games, on a decent monitor, sound isnt very important, gfx and fps are. Not having to upgrade for a few years is important.

What do you dudes recommend? My budget is anywhere between e800 - e1500. I was thinking bout a dell 4400 [a14] i think, for e1499. I would definitly be prepared to attempt to buy parts online and build it myself but how much could I save over that dell one for example??? Looking around for info it appears a Abit KR7A Main board, some sort of geforce 3-4, FSB AMD Athlon XP1400 - 1900 would do the job??? does RAM matter much in gaming??? Please shout anything out that might prove useful.

Thanks a lot lads, over.

Cake Fiend

It's generally best to spend as much as you can on an initial PC setup to get the fastest, biggest, most modern [insert component here] you can possibly afford. For example - you say you don't need a very big hard drive, but you'll really notice the lack of space in a few years. I used to think a 2G drive was overkill, now I've 68gigs of space and I'm looking for more.

I personally think you're better off building your PC yourself if possible (make sure you know what you're doing first), or at least buying it from a smaller independant retailer rather than Dell or some such. Not only will the likes of Dell package a load of unnecessary and often useless stuff with your PC (and charge you for it), it'll generally work out more expensive than it would be from a smaller dealer.

As for RAM - when it comes to gaming, you can never have too much. You'd want 256MB at a bare minimum if you want it to last a few years; you'd probably be better off getting more if possible. Having said that, 512MB of RAM will be a lot cheaper in about 2 years than it is now, so you might be better off buying what you need now and upgrading (for less money) later.

JustHalf

7-8 games can take around 16 gigs.

MP3's and DivX's can take up a lot of room. Between the two of them, I think I've got about 18gigs

A 40 gig drive should be grand. A 30 gig one might do if pushed.

azezil

RE: ram

I agree with Sico, i have 256mb of ddr, its grand for first person shooters but when it comes to rts its a bit lacking.

Could you give us a price range, twould help with the advise.

Yurmasyurda

Originally posted by voObo0
I was thinking bout a dell 4400 [a14]

I would go with this one, the only not so desirable part is the video card everything else is pretty decent, swap it for a ti200 and away you go. I picked ti200 for reality and price, the ti500 isn't a huge jump in performance from it and it's overpriced.

voObo0

Thanks for the replies lads....you made sense in a non-sensical world. I'd be willing to spend around e1500 perhaps.. I was hoping to get away with spending a little less (e1000) but as Sico was saying it would be better to get the best possible system at the start....so as to avoid upgrading in a year or two.
So your saying upwards of 256 DDR-Ram,40 gig, 17-inch monitor, Geforce 3-4??? whats the story with all the different makes??, would an athlon XP or p4 be a better option in "your" opinion? I hear an abit- KR7A RAID is good??

more questions after the hangover goes away .

Yurmasyurda

Originally posted by voObo0
Thanks for the replies lads....you made sense in a non-sensical world. I'd be willing to spend around e1500 perhaps.. I was hoping to get away with spending a little less (e1000) but as Sico was saying it would be better to get the best possible system at the start....so as to avoid upgrading in a year or two.
So your saying upwards of 256 DDR-Ram,40 gig, 17-inch monitor, Geforce 3-4??? whats the story with all the different makes??, would an athlon XP or p4 be a better option in "your" opinion? I hear an abit- KR7A RAID is good??

more questions after the hangover goes away .

Well I have an AMD setup, the cpu is running at 1600MHz and I'm gonna buy a p4 when I get a job, main reason is noise, p4s are basically quieter due to their temperature tolerance. The video cards are another story, the difference is speed, so gf3 is slower than certain makes of gf4s, the gf3 ti200 is a midway card, vgood for most games the higher model cards are faster but it's not a huge amount noticable unless running games at ridiculous resolutions, they also up in price as they get faster. I reckon you should not bother with building your own pc unless you enjoy it as I do?

voObo0

yeah yurma thats what I was thinking....its got the 40gig HD, nice looking, warranty, the printer and cam would be nice extras, 256 DDR-Ram etc......looks like everything i need with a cherry on top

Yurmasyurda

Originally posted by voObo0
yeah yurma thats what I was thinking....its got the 40gig HD, nice looking, warranty, the printer and cam would be nice extras, 256 DDR-Ram etc......looks like everything i need with a cherry on top

Don't think dell do cherries I'll sell ya one for a fiver and voillah, I'd better stop taking those drugs Anyway good luck with your new system and let us know what one you actually decide to buy, I'm just interested in what the p4s are like.

voObo0

I'm off the drugs/liquer so i can save for this new comp ! Noise is actually something i forgot about, I hate the whine from comps!! I dont know if I enjoy building pcs but i'd give it a go if i knew id save a few quid, as im not too bad when it comes to DIY

Yurmasyurda

Well you can build it but with all the bundles dell will give you and the extended warranty, you won't be saving money. But building them can be fun sometimes, mainly cos of the problems, I'm weird but I like problems, it makes me think

sisob

If you want a good pc dont buy DELL - you wont save much money buy building it yourself but you will have a much better computer

I suggest maplin for cpu fan
peats for mother board and hd
jaguar for ram/cpu

azezil

marx-computers.com have some nice setup's under their special offers. The only whim i have with them is with their cases, they're a bit cheap, and they're monitors cost about 20 euros more than they should, other than that they're great

PPC

Originally posted by sisob
I suggest maplin for cpu fan
peats for mother board and hd
jaguar for ram/cpu

I'd buy the stuff off the net personally cause if you shop around you'll save a bit.

Maplin have a terrible selection of cpu coolers.
I bought a Blue Orb cpu cooler and it cost me £17 and i found out I could have got it cheaper over the net.
Also they tried to charge me £23 for a rounded IDE cable and £13 for a rounded floppy cable. Tis crazy.
Try Komplett or OcUK for the best deals.

Gerry

I suggest itdirect. They charge a fraction of maplin's prices for the same fans, and they have a better range. They have rounded ide cables also.

sisob

Originally posted by PPC


Also they tried to charge me £23 for a rounded IDE cable and £13 for a rounded floppy cable. Tis crazy.

most cables are half the price around the corner in peats

PPC

We've a box of ~100 ide and floppy cables in work so i took some and ordered some spiral wrap off Farnell and rounded my own.
ATA66 are piss easy todo but i destroyed 2 ATA100 before i got a working one.

I had black electrical tape originally for the IDE but i changed em for spiral wrap.

Still got red on my floppy cause i ran out of spiral warp. (i got 10m ffs)

Before
After

I'd recommend it if yer building a PC.
Much easier to work in if ya arrange it properly unlike me :rolleyes:

_CreeD_

You can get quiet Cooling setups for Athlons. The Zalman CU flower being a prime example.

PPC

Get the new Thermaright AX-7
best sink yet
put a papst on it and its silent

Gerry

The alpha pal 8045 is a decent heatsink also.

Yurmasyurda, I'm not sure what you mean. The athlon and p4 have similar maximum temps. Right now, the p4 does dissipate less heat because it is made on a smaller process. But instead of going through all the hassle of swapping your board and cpu, you could just spend the money on more efficient cooling.

voObo0

jasus lads are we still talking about computers?:) I know everyone has their own opinion and all over whats better whats worse etc. but for gaming performance is an athlon better than a p4???
from what ive seen/heard/researched athlons seem to be........
this is what I've come up with so far

CPU - AMD Athlon XP 1900 or P4 1.7
motherboard - KR7 abit for athlon - what would go well with a p4 1.7????
sound - audigy
gfx card - geforce 3 ti200
monitor - 17" hansol from komplett maybe??? ive a sneaking suspicion i could do better....
40 Gb hard drive - 7200rpm at least (i hate the wait) whats the story with all these SCSI IDE and ****?? are they better/ faster etc?
OS - now this im stuck on...i use mac OS 9 currently but have OSX too, apps - games programs etc are either designed for 9 or OSx
- is it the same story for windows XP/98/NT etc or do they offer specific performance boosts in certain areas??

RAM - right there is DDR Rambus SD etc.......intuition ells me DDR-RAM is the most 'affordable' and common?? so 256-512 DDR-RAM

CD-RW - no clue yet

keyboard - anything that types

mouse - have wingman and explorer optical

so thats the plan.....bit of superglue, hamm0r and tacks leave it out in the sun to dry and bobs ur uncle.

anyone have a rough est. what i could put that 2 gether for?

PPC

I use Windows XP and its perfect.
Stay away from ME. 98SE is good aswell but i personally think XP is great.
You can get a 24x memorex CD-RW for ~€200 or less.

Also Gerry the AX-7 out preforms the PAL (I got a PAL and its great) and its Str£10 cheaper.

_CreeD_

Athlons are a lot faster than P4s. For pretty much everything bar applications that are optimised for the P4 (Of which there are extremely few).
I use a 1.64Ghz Athlon at home and a 1.7Ghz P4 in work and even just doing simple things like navigating around the hdd, browsing theinternet and using word etc. are noticably slower on the P4. Anything CPU intensive ( I wont include games as the work PC has a weaker vidcard anyway) and the difference between them is even more obvious - Mp3 encoding I get ~7x on the P4, 8.4x on the Athlon with the latest version of lame at full quality. With Sonar and a song using lots of CPU eating DXI's the P4 hits ~80% cpu usage and starts popping at 17 tracks, the Athlon is holding at ~60% usage and working fine on the same song.

Gerry

Unless you are planning on clocking a 1.6 or 1.8 p4 up to 2.2 or 2.4, the athlon will be faster and cheaper for you. The abit kr7a raid is one of the best boards around, but you won't go far wrong with any of the latest boards based on the via kt266A chipset.

You could do better on the monitor if you looked at the 19" monitor E250 thread. LIDL are selling 19" flat CRT monitors for 250 euro, dunno whether they will have any left at this stage.

SCSI is better for handling loads of transactions at the same time, and it won't put any load on the cpu. You can get really fast 10000 and 15000 rpm scsi drives, but they will cost an awful lot. However for normal 7200 rpm drives, ide is fine, and the ide drives are no longer any slower than their scsi counterparts.

For OS, get win2k or xp. Do not buy win98 or me and then post here whinging about how your new computer won't work.

256 or 512 mb pc2100 ddr will be fine.

Again you won't go far wrong with most cdrw drives. Plextor have an excellent reputation, but the cheaper LG and Aopen work fine also. LiteOn seem to be winning a lot of acclaim at the moment also. I'd go for a 24x drive, above that it really is diminishing improvement, and you'd be better off spending the money on something you will notice, like a decent screen.

I don't have an estimate for you, you are going to have to do the grunt work yourself. Theres a whole thread of suppliers at the top of the forum, but I think komplett is a good place to start.

JustHalf

Originally posted by _CreeD_
Athlons are a lot faster than P4s. For pretty much everything bar applications that are optimised for the P4 (Of which there are extremely few).

!!!

Seriously. Broad sweeping generalisations like this deserve a kicking.

Originally posted by _CreeD_
I use a 1.64Ghz Athlon at home and a 1.7Ghz P4 in work and even just doing simple things like navigating around the hdd, browsing theinternet and using word etc. are noticably slower on the P4.

I wonder, is you're work PC tweaked at all? Is the P4 using SDRAM? Is your Athlon using DDR-SDRAM and an overclocked FSB.

It's not a fair test. And the 2.4GHz P4's (on an RD-RAM board) seem to thrump everything.

Yurmasyurda

Just buy the dell

Gerry: I meant that p4s have less heat issues and have a higher heat tolerance before their cpu throttle kicks in so a less powerful and quieter fan can be used, athlons and xps don't have either, meaning you need a very powerful fan which equals noise!

PPC

Basicly Athlons do more processes per Hz so even though Pentium have a higher clockspeed they cant process as much

Gerry

"less heat issues"? The athlon and p4 are both happy to run at 60c, and do so in every system with bad cooling (compaq, hp, etc). However you don't want your p4 to be running so hot that it is throttling.

There are two figures quoted for p4 power consumption. Typical power, and maximum power. Intel quote typical power for their chips, and there is as much as 30% between the two. Amd do not have such a difference between the two figures, and they only usually publish the maximum power rating.

from sandpile.org

AMD XP 2100+ 72 watts

Intel p4 Northwood 2200mhz 71 watts

You don't need a stupidly noisy fan for an athlon. I've built a 1900+ athlon xp machine with an 80mm fan running at 7 volts, practically silent.

PPC: The p4 has a much HIGHER clockspeed, (2.4 vs 1733) and now has a 512k cache to help further. Its performance in pure number crunching applications still lags slightly, but it seems to be faster in everything else. Go read some benchmarks.