Building your own, Part #1: Picking all the right parts.
Jul 15 '03
The Bottom Line Just do it. Take the plunge and build your own system!
I previously wrote about the two choices that you can make when it comes to getting a new computer. One of those choices, deciding to build your own system, is similar to a leap of faith. It is much easier to call up Gateway, tell them to send you the latest and greatest system (or the cheapest), and then wait until the UPS man shows up with the big boxes containing your newest system. You’ll have about five cables to connect the computer and get everything up and running. Building your own will not be so easy. No, when you decide to build your own system, there will be countless hours of frustration, desperation, and finally satisfaction.
Why buy a Corvette when you’re a pizza delivery boy?
Before building your system, you need to define you computing needs. If you want a gaming machine to run Doom III, you’ll need to definitely go top of the line on just about everything. If you want to do serious digital photo/video editing or you want to hone your graphic artist skills, you’ll want a system that has lots of memory and storage space. If your computer tasks consist of email and web-surfing, with the occasional word processing task, you can safely go with hardware that is considered “budget”. While I didn’t need to have the fastest machine for gaming I still wanted to be able to play the occasional 3D game as well as due my fair share of photo editing, so I went with some components that aren’t top of the line but I didn’t skimp, either. While I wouldn’t consider my new system a “budget” system, I didn’t go all out and spend a lot of money. So with budget and computing needs in mind, let’s get to making the decisions of what to get.
Choosing sides: AMD or Intel
Like it or not, this is the first decision you make and it’s all about choosing sides. Neither choice is better than the other, to be sure. Performance-wise, AMD has held its own until recently against Intel. Right now, with Hyper-Threading at 3GHz+ speeds, Intel is currently King of the performance hill. That may change with AMD’s new Opteron Processors, but that remains to be seen.
For the budget conscience, AMD is the easy choice. The Athlon XP and Duron lines both provide sufficient power for reasonable prices. I went with the Athlon XP 2600+, which isn’t top of the line but is up there with good performance. Budget minded builders that don’t need huge power can get a Duron that runs at 1GHz at an affordable price. Performance minded builders can still look to AMD for top notch performance, usually at a fraction of the cost of Intel.
For every AMD acolyte there is an equally zealous Intelophyte. For the best performance right now, Intel’s Pentium 4 is definitely the way to go. With an insanely fast FSB (both 800 and 533 MHz are available) the P4 will not disappoint. Of course, that comes at a price. Top of the line Intel’s are going to be hundreds of dollars more than AMD’s front runners. Add on top of that extra moolah if you are planning on using RDRAM and you’ll be looking to spend some serious scratch. But at the end of the day, Intel earns its keep. They are workhorses and are worth what you pay for them.
I unapologetically profess my loyalty to AMD. It also helps that I own stock in the company, but I still haven’t been disappointed yet in there product, and I have always rooted for the underdog, so I recommend AMD to all those that ask. The heart and soul of my system is definitely AMD.
More important choices
Choosing a processor makes the next couple of choices a little bit easier. After you decided on your CPU the next choice is to couple the processor with a motherboard and memory. Again, your computing needs will determine your motherboard and memory needs. A high-performance gaming machine will want support for top FSB speeds as well as quality memory. My system uses an Asus A7N8X which supports the best AMD processors and memory with an FSB up to 400 MHz. With a fast AMD processor, this motherboard will fly. If speed is not a priority, I used a Gigabyte GA-7VRXP in my system at school, with an AMD 1800+ and PC2100 memory, and that was a great system, as well.
Since you’ve already defined your main uses for your system, choosing a hard drive is really a matter of finding a good price. Now that you can find hard drives for less than a gigabyte a dollar, I would suggest going no smaller than 40 GB, and if you can spring for a bit more, I would go for 100 GB or more. Unless you really want to squeeze out every bit of performance, you can’t go wrong with either the 8MB or 2MB buffers. As far as overall performance, you can get solid performance out of both Western Digital and Seagate and on the cheaper end of the spectrum, Maxtor does just fine as well. I found a tremendous price on my Western Digital hard drive, and each week I see better deals in the Sunday circulars, so keep your eyes open and you’ll find a great deal.
Unless you are planning on building a system capable of handling the new crop of FPS games coming out (Doom III, Half Life 2, Duke Nukem Forever (yeah right)) that will be utilizing Direct X 9, you don’t need an expensive video card. If you are going to do basic tasks, a card with 32 MB of memory will be more than enough. Video and photo editing call for a more powerful card, something in the 100-150 dollar range. If you’re a serious multimedia buff, I’d spring a couple hundred dollars and get an older video card with 128 MB of memory and possibly a TV I/O port. As I alluded to in my review of my video card, Asus AGP-V 9280/TD, there are really only two choices when it comes to most video cards. Both nVidia and Radeon make different classes of cost/performance cards, so a video card made from either chipset will do just fine.
These are the major choices you’ll have to make when it comes to putting together your system. Don’t just rely on this guide, though, to make your choices. There are many resources online, so I suggest checking some of the websites like tomshardware.com and anand.com to compare performance and other reviews so an informed decision should be made. There are other choices that will have to be made, but I don’t think they’re quite as important as the ones already discussed.
Of all the “secondary” components, I would put a lot of emphasis on getting a good case. It’s imperative that you get a decent case to house all your components. The main factors that make up a “decent” case include solid construction, good airflow, and a good power supply. There are plenty of quality case manufactures out there, I entrust my machine to Antec cases (and power supplies) because they are sturdy cases and the power supplies have a really cool blue-LED thing going on. Secondary considerations for your case include ample space for your drives and hard drives.
If you are building everything from scratch, don’t forget all the other essential peripherals like keyboard, mouse, monitor, and printer. I could do a whole piece just on those topics, so I’ll leave it up to you to make those decisions. But don’t forget the adage “You get what you pay for.” It really is true, and more so with computer components and peripheral. With such low markup on computer products, companies cut corners wherever they can, which corresponds to shoddy parts.
We’re getting closer!
Now that the decisions are being made about what parts to get, we be going over, step by step, the installation. Things will get going now that we will be covering all the important facets of putting everything together. This is where things get exciting but equally perilous and frustrating. It should be a lot of fun.
(Unfortunately, Epinions is no longer accepting "How To" guides, which is where this would fit better, but "Choosing a Computer for Beginners" seems appropriate, too)
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Member: Tony Rice
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Resident Evil 4 will own your soul. Do not resist.
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