Building my first desktop PC, need help and advice

[ddragon625]

Hi everyone,

I am planning on building my first desktop PC from scratch because I felt that this way I would get exactly the system that I want and also makes for easier upgrading in the future (instead of buying a new store PC every few years).

I know enough about PC hardware and specs to know what I want but after checking newegg (a friend recommended it as the best place to buy PC parts) I am quite intimidated by all the options. The main problem I want to avoid is buying parts that do not work together optimally and that's why I'm posting here to see if people can help me pick out the exact parts I need.

Budget: Up to $1000 (somewhat flexible)

Purpose: Entertainment/Gaming (doesn't need to be top of the line gaming, just enough to play most games smoothly on moderate settings).
Some sample games: Empires at War, Battlefield 1942, World of Warcraft.

Specs:
1) AMD 64X2 dual core 4200+ or higher (I know that AMD will be slashing prices at the end of July so I will be waiting until then to buy it). Also, am I right in choosing AMD instead of Pentium?

2) 2 GB DDR ram 400 MHz or higher (I'm having trouble deciding between DDR and DDR2 ram because even DDR2 provides higher potential speed, it is of lower quality than DDR)

3) 250 GB or bigger hard drive, 7200 rpm.

4) Video card (I am completely clueless when it comes to video cards, I just know that I will need at least a 256 MB card from what I have read online and that it would best if it had a dvi output).

5) Sound: what's a decent sound card/speak system that I should get for my system. I read that you can get a decent one for pretty cheap and with much better performance than the ones built into the motherboard.

6) Motherboard: again, clueless, any help would be appreciated. I want a motherboard that I can easily upgrade with (one with a decent amount of PCI slots, preferably the X1 and X16 ones).

7) Chassis: ATX seems to be the standard case, any better choices? 450 Watt power supply (this is above the average 250-350 Watts but I want to be sure my system will be supplied with enough power, am I being paranoid?).

8) Operating system: where do I buy the OS from and how do I install it into a blank PC? Up until now, all that has being pre-installed/comes in a cd in all the system I have bought.

9) Cooling system: I assume this is probably built into the case, but do I have any need to purchase a seperate cooling system for what I want to build?

10) I may have missed something in my description above, please let me know if there is any other parts I need to consider?

Additional info: I am going to buy a LCD flat panel HDTV to hook my PC to (most likely it will only have a VGA input and no DVI.)

Thanks for any help you can provide!

[blue60007]

1)Yes, that is a good choice. A 3800+ X2 I think would be more in your budget (but then with the price drops, that might get adjusted)

2)I would do a socket 939 (check your CPU) build with DDR. DDR2 is for AM2, but it's very new. Some Corsair value select is good. With AM2, however, you need to use at least DDR2-800 to keep performance the same as 939. More so with the higher end CPUs (like the 4200+). DDR2-800 is expensive right now so a 939 build might be a better option. Also, AM2 is VERY picky about the RAM...it is a new platform so the bugs are still being worked out.

3)Western Digital SE16 250GB. what do you mean USB compatible? - you can't use an external drive as a main drive (well you could, but it'd be slow as snails)

4)A minimum of a 7600GT I would say, a eVGA 7900GT would be the best bang for the buck (all depends on your budget)

5)Try the onboard sound first, it might be enough. Sorry, I can't recommend a speaker system...maybe someone else can

6)An ASUS A8N5X would be a good choice for a Socket 939 build

7)I would recommend the Antec Sonata II, its a nice case and it has a quality 450W power supply. Careful, most bundled power suppliess are junk. Antec is an exception.

8)You can get Win XP Home OEM from Newegg for around $90. You'll boot from the Windows CD and install from there...it's a pretty easy process.

9)Yeah, for the most part, fans and things come with the case. Retail CPUs come with a heastink/fan

10)Don't forget an optical drive. You can get a LITE-ON or NEC DVD-RW for $35 or less.

[jayb1234]

You might want to take a look at the Intel Core 2 Duo (Conroe) CPU's that are coming out this month.

They are beating the AMD's by large margins in the benchmarks in all the reviews.

A floppy drive might be needed during the setup or later on and they are handy to have for troubleshooting.

450W should be good, a lot of the newer video cards require 350W minimum and that leaves you some overhead.The Sonata 2 that blue reccommended is about the best buy going for a case with a decent power supply.

Grab yourself an antistatic wrist strap too.

Liteon drives come with cd and dvd burning software, not sure if NEC does or not.

Go with 16Mb cache on the hard drive for a little better performance than the 8Mb models.

Stick with a non-sli motherboard.

[blue60007]

NEC RETAIL drives come with buring software if I recall...OEM's do not. Both Retail and OEM LITE-ON's come with software...that's a good point, you might want to check on that, unless you already have software...

[786ARS]

if you want to have a look at the new intel chips, the E6600 is worth a look. Its a match for the FX-60 and costs $310.

[kilgoretrout]

Now is not a good time to be buying AMD X2 chips. Intel is just starting to roll out its Conroe line and, as noted in the above posts, it seems to be beating the pants off of the X2 line in benchmarks, it's cheaper for comparable performance and it runs much cooler temp wise. I believe today is the first day that Intel has allowed hardware review sites to disclose the results of their tests on Conroe. Intel had provided Conroes earlier but everyone had been under nondisclosure agreements which expired today.
I don't often tell people to wait, but this is an exception. Even if you decide to go AMD X2, you can expect to see some major price cuts from them in the next month or two. Talk from AMD of price cuts on the X2 in July is already being reported.

[ddragon625]

Thanks for the advice so far everyone, they're extremely helpful.

After reading all the advice here, I've done some more research and here are some questions I have:

1) What's the difference between OEM and retail parts? Which one is better?

2) My friend claims that since practically all current and forseeable future games only uses a single core, the dual core processor will be a waste for what I intend to use my PC for. Basically a 2.2 GHz dual core processor should act like a 4.4 GHz single core one if both cores are utilized, but since most games are only using one core then the effective speed of my process is only 2.2 GHz. He suggested buying a single core processor instead. If this is true, which single processor would you recommend (including the new and upcoming ones from Intel)?

3) Is processor support for the 939 motherboard being withdrawn by AMD? If so, then the DDR2 ram seems to be the only choice left.

[minsonngo]

1.) OEM = original equipment manufacturer, OEM parts are usually cheaper by 30% or more because they don't come retailed boxed or with extras. For example: OEM hard drives are purchased in a simple plastic bag without the additional cables or bulky box found in the more expensive retail package.

2.) Many people commonly assume that the multithreading benefits of a dual-core processor will translate into a better user experience while multitasking. This is not generally true, as many user applications (such as word processing applications) spend most of their time in an idle state; a person can't switch contexts faster than a computer. The improvements in computer responsiveness are generally a function of the operating system and the application code; many applications are not pervasively multithreaded since coding multithreaded applications is generally considered to be very difficult.

Complete optimization for the dual-core processor requires both the operating system and applications running on the computer to support a technology called thread-level parallelism, or TLP. Thread-level parallelism is the part of the OS or application that runs multiple threads simultaneously, where threads refer to the part of a program that can execute independently of other parts.

Even without a multithread-enabled application, you will still see benefits of dual-core processors if you are running an OS that supports TLP. For example, if you have Microsoft Windows XP (which supports multithreading), you could have your Internet browser open along with a virus scanner running in the background, while using Windows Media Player to stream your favorite radio station and the dual-core processor will handle the multiple threads of these programs running simultaneously with an increase in performance and efficiency.

Today Windows XP and hundreds of applications already support multithread technology, especially applications that are used for editing and creating music files, videos and graphics because types of programs need to perform operations in parallel. As dual-core technology becomes more common in homes and the workplace, you can expect to see more applications support thread-level parallelism.

3.) Socket 939 is not being withdrawn by AMD, its going to be around for quite some time I can tell you that.