Looking to make a PC

[Cadois]

Did you get AIM yet??? I would say go with the ATI over the Asus. I just found out from Pai Pai Master that ATI is usually better quality. It also if it's a recent card you can sometimes get good rebates on it. I also found out that ATI has a trade in deal. You can trade in one of their older cards and get credit for a newer model.

[Ponoiko]

o ya if i were to over clock the cpu would an aero cool be good

[Cadois]

I don't know!

Maybe if anyone else decides to post on this thread they can answer that one.

[Ponoiko]

Originally posted by Devryn
If your going to use this computer primarily for gaming do yourself a favor and avoid the LCD monitors. Yeah they're flat...Yeah they're cool, but even a cheap CRT is going to give you better picture quality. My 2cents. Also the the A7N8X is a motherboard not a processor. I would recommend the Athlon 2500+ Barton (333 mhz FSB) because it's VERY easy to overclock with very little extra cooling needed. It will stomp any Celeron in the dirt...Not that that's all that hard, and will give the Pentium equivilant a run for the money. If you're looking at the Radeon 9800 Pro see if you can find a powercolor 9800 NP. The reason being is you can flash the bios of the card and make it a pro with no overheating for about 100 bucks less. I would also go with New Egg. Don't forget your Chassis (ATX, Mid tower) A good power Supply (about 400W Antec should do) CD Drive, OS, RAM, Modem (if you need to dialup) and a soundcard...Although the built in sound on that board is really quite nice. For n00bs always buy a boxed processor or "retail" version. No OEM. Video card can be OEM because you just stick the sucker in the AGP port anyways. ALWAYS buy good RAM. I like Corsica, Kingston, and Crucial. It's worth the investment to pay for the right RAM. Another n00b mistake is to not mount the Mobo properly. REMEBER TO READ THE INSTRUCTIONS.

i have been looking at the powercolor and reading good reviews but i cannot find a Radeon 9800 NP i only find SE where caould i get an NP or what is the difference

[Devryn]

The difference is Pixel Pipelines. The 9800 NP and Pro have 8 Pixel pipelines, where as the SE has 4. Now to the overclocking. If you have an unlocked Athlon 2500+ Barton CPU then cooling really won't be too much of an issue unless you REALLY overclock. If you want addition cooling almost anything will do. But seriously, the 2500+ is MORE than sufficient to run this game. Keep in mind this game has a 30 FPS limiter anyways so it's not going to matter. Keep a look out for the Powercolor Radeons, and Hercules too. You can buy an ATI (I did) but if it has Infineon RAM it can't be overclocked...Well...The CPU on the card can with Rage3d but you can't overclock the RAM on the card. If it has the Samsung overclock away. If you don't know that much about it I would suggest staying away from it until this computer becomes old and decrepit and you're going to probably scrap it anyways...Then you can exp all you want.

[Devryn]

Oh and if you're buying a whole new comp anyways just upgrade your monitor. KDS makes a pretty decent monitor. If you ask me 17" is more than enough. I purchased their Xtreme Flat from Wal-Mart for 118.

[Ponoiko]

how is this

Case

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=11-144-045&catalog=7&manufactory=BROWSE&depa=1

Drive

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?DEPA=&sumit=Go&description=27%2D109%2D205&searchdepa=0

Paste

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?DEPA=&sumit=Go&description=35%2D100%2D009&searchdepa=0

HDD

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?DEPA=&sumit=Go&description=22%2D144%2D122&searchdepa=0

Keybord

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?DEPA=&sumit=Go&description=23%2D165%2D004&searchdepa=0

Ram

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?DEPA=&sumit=Go&description=20%2D145%2D432&searchdepa=0

Mobo

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?DEPA=&sumit=Go&description=13%2D131%2D478&searchdepa=0

CPU

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?DEPA=&sumit=Go&description=19%2D103%2D379&searchdepa=0

OS

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?DEPA=&sumit=Go&description=37%2D102%2D141&searchdepa=0

Video card

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?DEPA=&sumit=Go&description=14%2D102%2D286&searchdepa=0

it comes out to be 1025.47 w/ s&h

[Katsuchiyo]

I just ordered a custom computer It is a AMD ATHLON64 3,000+ ASUS K8V DELUXE The king of all motherboards the best out, 512mb memory with Corsair XMS High performance memory & heatsink, Seagate 120GB 7200RPM 150 8MB cache,nVidia GeForceFx 5900 128 mb, Windows XP professional with some other nice upgrades and equipment for all under $1,200.

[Katsuchiyo]

I would suggest The nVidia GeforceFx 5950 Ultra 256 mb video card Over the ATI RADEON 9800 PRO and XT. The 5950 is an upgrade from a 5900, which was made for the purpose of beating the clock speed and making a better card than the ATI RADEON 9800 Pro/XT. (I seen the test sites which tested the cards from various games and benchmarks The 5950 Ultra is around the same price. Also get a Seagate and make sure it has 150 8mb Cache. The Corsair high performance XMS was a good choice thats what I have it is award winning. AMD processors in my mind are the best to go with towards gaming. AMD has the *QuantiSpeed ArchitectureTM which boots your performance. Upgrade to AMD 2600+ atleast. Windows Xp home is good but for $46 more you can get Pro which gives you more features like, goback space and Anti-Hacker software, Also you can encrypt your files which can protect your valuable information. (Like your FFXI password).As far as motherboards go I would suggest the ASUS A7N8X nVidia nForce-2 Ultra wich goes good with AMD 2600+ My monitor is an E-machine, I didn't turn my attention to monitors much, since I was focusing on a good computer. Good luck!

[Cadois]

Ponoiko, don't buy everything from New Egg. I would actually reccomend you to look around for them at Best Buy, Circuit City, Comp USA, etc. and find some really good rebates on them. There a lot of things you need to get from New Egg and will actually save money that way. I highly reccomend buying the hard drive at a retail store though for the great rebates.

I got my hard drive for about $50 after I saved about $40 on it. Don't just buy everything from them, you can save some money.

[Devryn]

Looks good. But you don't need the arctic silver if you're buying a Retail CPU. And despite what Katsuchiyo says the Radeion 9800s are still the best card out there. Don't believe me? Check out http://www.tomshardware.com Don't forget a 3.5 floppy...Only if you need one. It does come in handy when you need to boot up since WinXP is NTFS...Well you can make it FAT32 but there's no point.

[Devryn]

Why won't it let me wright D.O.S.? dos dos dos.

[Teriana]

I would certainly go with the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro over the Geforce 5900+. I bought a 9800 Pro back in May and about a month or so later a friend of mine got the 5900 GF card. GeForce gives slightly better FPS. (not much though.) while Radeon produces higher quality graphics. A big turn off to the 5900 for me was how loud it ran compared to my 9800.
Go with what you'd like though, both cards are extremely powerful and wont be used to their full potential in any game thats out right now.

[Katsuchiyo]

Sorry but you both are wrong. The 5950 Ultra is better.

[Ponoiko]

im gonna go with what i have but i dont ned to worry about the video card any more cause my dumb friend is gonna sell me his ATI AIW Radeon 9700 Pro for $80 he thinks he need to upgrade his vid card already and is getting the 9800 AIW (pointless if you ask me) anyways its a perfectly fine card and now i will begin the real search for the products to get good prices and thanks alot Devryn and Cadois you really helped me out and i will up date when i get all my stuff