Buying or building a new PC 1

[danno74]

Greetings!

I'm an old-school PC guy who up until this point had always put together my own PC. It was fun and at the time, slightly cheaper (and more reliable) than a prefab PC. Plus you could overclock.

Last time I made one was 2001, and that PC is getting alittle old and slow for my needs and upgrades. I want to do some serious DVD burning (I have Tivo, and with their software can record shows from TV).

My techie friends have differing views, but the one I trust the most says go prefab since they can get parts cheaper, that will usually win out price wise. I'm the network engineer at work, and we've had great luck the 3+ yrs here with the Dells we buy, so I was leaning towards that route. $799 for a Dimension 5100, P4 531, 3GHZ, 1MB cache, 800 mhz fsb, 512 RAM, 160 GB HD, 128 MB ATI Radeon X300SE. CD Burner (I have a DVD burner). No monitor.

I have a copy of WinXP Pro, and I'm not sure if I could buy a prefab PC w/o the OS.

I know I could go investigate and probably come to a conclusion, but thought I'd gather some opinions.

Thanks.

 

[tazuk]

Been following this thread with interest and thought I'd put my 2 cents in. Being a programmer by trade I tend to get a bit twitchy round hardware assembly, and have in the past broken components when building PCs from scratch. However I'd never buy from a major retailer, having been burnt badly when buying my first pc way back when.

So over time I've reached a compromise: I have my pcs built by a local specialist shop that I've been a long time customer of. I specify all components and how the internals are to be laid out, discussing the details with the tech who's going to do the build. Once it's assembled and ready for OS installation I do the rest.

For me this strikes a happy medium - I get the exact kit I want without my usual why isn't it posting moments.

TazUk

Blue-screening PCs since 1998

 

[carpetbelly]

Well, I'm gonna jump in here to.

I have the following system I built myself

Athlon64 3200+
lol forgotten which gigabyte mobo I went for
1.5gig DDR
2 x 160Raptors )
2 x 80 ATA133
DVD burner
GForce6800

Not a top end spec but suits me. Now, if I had bought that off the shelf you'd pay through the nose for some of the quality parts. Prefabs are cheap as they generally use some cheap parts that you wouldnt normally touch.

Building yourself lets you spec it out to run how you wanna. I mainly use mine for Premiere Vid editing work as I do visuals in clubs. And yes, AMDs are meant to be a touch slower for this but with a similar P4 setup my machine wipes the floor with my mates and some of his parts are defo better than mine!

Build your own, plus it's far more satisfying and it's geeky! And geeky is cool, it's geek chíc!!!

 

[paparazi]

160gig Raptors, I want some! when WD start making them lol.

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=65&Language=en

Martin

We like members to GIVE and not just TAKE.
Participate and help others.

 

[carpetbelly]

doh, long day... i had two 160 WD SATAs in there, now I got the raptors (and exceptionally skint hehe).

Need a new SATA controller card so I can refit my 2*160gigs as well or is that too much space?! lol

 

[cdogg]

Don't you have more than 4 SATA connectors on the motherboard? I wouldn't think you would need a seperate SATA controller card...

~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884

 

[brettsinger]

With building PCs, I think the main question is time and ability. If you have the time and the skills, go for it. Dell sometimes uses cheap parts, especially on the lower end machine. After struggling with a couple of mass-produced PCs, I started buying from a small builder in Colorado called Outside Loop (

http://www.outsideloop.com/).

I got to pick exactly which components I wanted, and the machine was very skillfully put together, with clean wiring and lots of air flow. Much better than I would have done myself (if I even had the time). Here's their Reseller Ratings page:

http://www.resellerratings.com/seller_info.pl?seller_id=1906

Not to push you onto them or anyone else, this is just my experience. I like the idea of knowing exactly what's in my box, and knowing exactly who put it all together.

 

[shannanl]

I build my own computers at home and work. Of the 4 servers we use, I have built 3 of them. Of the 60 workstations we use, I built about 1/2 of them. If you are comfortable with building one, I would recommend it. Don't purchase cheap components. It may seem like it will save you money, but it wont. I run AMD at home but I like Intel better. I think they are better processors. If money is no object, go for Intel. Get a GOOD motherboard, plenty of NAME BRAND ram and a GOOD power supply. I can't stress enough to get good components.

Shannan

 

[norty303]

I run AMD at home but I like Intel better. I think they are better processors. If money is no object, go for Intel.

Be aware that this opinion is subjective and not borne out by testing.

The only verified part is the 'money no object' bit

 

[carpetbelly]

Don't you have more than 4 SATA connectors on the motherboard? I wouldn't think you would need a seperate SATA controller card...

actually my mobo only has 2 SATA connectors... I bought it a while ago when SATA was pricey and most people were still sticking with IDE.

Dont want a new mobo yet otherwise I'd be tempted to go to the duel opteron route and that's a lot of money to spend on upgrading RAM, mobo, chips etc when I have got other toys I need to purchase. Like screen for my projector (pref electric one), bigger graphics tablet, video mixer, better quality scanner to replace old one, newer digital camera... etc etc... Especially when I just spunked £300 on a Dell 20" Widescreen TFT

 

[cdogg]

Yeah, that's my bad. It should have read "more than 2", not "more than 4".

Point taken about being an early adopter when it was more expensive. The problem, however, is when you decide to add a PCI SATA controller. PCI is limited to 133MB/s less than the 150MB/s of SATA. This may sound like no big deal, since hard drives rarely peak over 80MB/s. But remember that the PCI bus is probably being shared with other devices (depending on your configuration). Also realize that RAID arrays allow for burst speeds to easily reach over 100MB/s. Now you start running close to that 133MB/s upper limit if you think about it that way.

~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884

 

[carpetbelly]

Good point about the PCI being a limiting factor. To be honest though I actually spent £50 on a 200gig samsung ATA133 drive yesterday (mate had one spare) that takes me up to 600gig. Means when I do upgrade mobo & chips to just a RAID SATA setup I can use the IDE Drives in a linux file server in my flat )

This is the fun of building over buying... You get to be extra geeky and totally customising your pc how you want it to be with quality parts and even up probably leaving yourself enough quality parts to either build a second pc as a file server or sell it on to people who dont know much for a good price and you're helping others out.

 

[Beholder2]

hello i've been reading this thread and it makes me want to build my own system again. I used to be a technician around the time p-60's were hot but I stopped doing computers for a few years actually several years and alot has changed since then. I've noticed the motherboards of today have the sound capabilities built in, and what happened to having only 4 com ports to use? now there are usb ports, firewire, and even the controller cards aren't used. well my question is, is what do I look for nowadays? How do I know which chassis to buy to accomidate the motherboard i choose? whats the fastest cpu these days? what kind of ram is now best? (i stopped around the time simms' were used any information to help catch up would be great and any advice on building a system today. thanks...

 

[carpetbelly]

all depends on what you want to use your machine for and what you want out of it. If you have a CPU preference of AMD or Intel. I prefer AMDs other people prefer Intel.

Most PCs also slot together and dont need fiddling with on the board as most items can be controlled in the bios. So there's not that much to learn.

Also depends on how much money you want to spend (main thing!!!).

Personally £800 would get you a lovely spec machine with DVD burners, min of a gig of ram, a half decent gfx card, cheapish but good tft screen, and everything else you need. But as I said before, it really depends on what you plan to do with it.