Motherboards and CPUs

Both actually, Michael

TBH, I would imagine the A64 3500 ought to be plenty of performance for a home PC. I wouldn't say it's worth paying nearly twice as much for what would be a marginal performance increase.

You might do well to buy a 939-based board with PCI Express if you are going for a new graphics card as well. This should give you a decent amount of head-room and future-proofing for now.

Until the next new toy/technology comes along....

 

Personally Michael, I would not pay more than the £241 or whatever that cheaper Athlon 64 costs, and thats at the absolute maximum! The best thing to do with CPU's is maybe find one that isnt too expensive, and leave yourself open with the chance of a significant upgrade for not too much money without replacing the mobo a couple of years down the line. This is what I did with my machine and am currently maxing my mobo out with its 2600+ CPU (originally an 1800+) and this gave me a significant improvement for not much money (about £75 IIRC).

 

I got an AMD 64 3200+ they pretty damn fast I can tell you that, but I allways seem to find the ability to push it to its limits.

as for an Operating system there are beta version of Windows XP64 that is freely downloadable from microsofts site but you will need 64bit drivers to get most things to work.

I personally use Linux quite a bit and amongst the array of distrobutions there are a handfull with AMD 64bit support, these being Gentoo (my fav), Fedora, suse, Mandrake, and Debian(Beta) they may be others but these are the ones i seen/used.

There is a goof forum on the net called planetamd64 aswell that can help you out with drivers and stuff.

The socket 747 model is not I good option tbh only for the fact they have already stopped using it and the upgrade potenctial would be lacking.

 

OK, it's starting to come together. I've downgraded my CPU choice to the AMD Athlon64 3500+ (sock 939) and will be sticking with the Asus A8V Deluxe mobo, which is one of the few socket 939 mobo's around and looks pretty fully featured. Also, I like the look of the Antec "Sonata" quiet case which has been reviewed quite well, not least by Enscape.net . It comes with a 380W PSU which should be enough shouldn't it? That makes a fair saving when you're getting a very nice case and a decent PSU for around £80.

Those are the basics, I'll sort out HDDs and optical drives later when I decide what to do with my existing ones. Also might consider a more powerful graphics card but will see how things go with the ATI 9600XT first.

One thing I don't quite understand though is, the mobo has all those I/O sockets already on it - how do they fit in the right holes in the back of the case, or don't they? Or do you get a plate with the correct holes of a standard size that will fit in any case?

Assuming I keep my existing drives ang gfx card the total is only about £425 inc. VAT from overclockers.co.uk (not inc. delivery), and they will deliver to Portugal

Oh yeah, one more thing: does the mobo come with all the necessary wires etc to connect front panel FireWire ports, HDD LEDs etc or is that left up to you?

Michael.

 

Oops...forgot about memory :shame: That's roughly an extra £200 for 1Gb of DDR400 memory. Not bad though. So about £650 all in probably. I might be ordering sooner than I thought - and to think I was going to spend over £500 on a CPU alone!

Michael.

 

Michael, most cases come with the connectors for things like the HDD Leds wired into them and then it's a case of hooking them up to the correct pins on the motherboard. As for the other wires, it depends on the manufacturer, I know my father's ASUS motherboard came with the appropriate cables, including a rather nice rounded HDD cable. Your best bet would be to check the manufacturer's website to see what they list as the contents of the mobo retail package. As for your query regarding the back panel on the case. Most motherboard manufacturer's stick the I/O ports in the same location, I think it might actually be defined by the ATX standard, so in most cases the backplate is a defined shape which will accept any config of I/O ports, in fact with most cases it's just a suitable gap that encopmasses the area required rather than a series of individually defined holes. Hope that helps.

 

And just think PCWORLD sell that £650 PC for a mere £1000 including a 60 day demo of MS Office

 

you wont get the appropriate sata cables with the motherboard, if that's what u're thinking of using. i've built pc's for customers with asus mobos - my preference - and they don't come in the box.
u'll need the power adapter, plus the signal cable.

plus with the mobo u'll get the matching backplate in the box. you pop the current one out of the case, and fit the new one.

hdd front panel lights etc. there will be a dozen or so spindly little wires attached to the front panel, just hanging loose inside the case, with jumpers telling you what they all are. you have to work out which way round they go - it's all in the mobo manual - and plug them one by one onto the appropriate pins on the mobo. fiddly job, this, cos the pins are really close together. u'll need some long nosed pliers.

 

you might also want DDR2 memory. expensive, though.

 

I just built a PC for my mate, and his mobo came with SATA cables.

 

I was investigating building a 'cutting edge' PC last year. It actually worked out cheaper to buy one ready made. It might be worth looking around for a barebones system as they can be cheaper.

Rod

 

Michael, this is lifted straight from ASUS's site under the specifictaion for the A8V Deluxe, so it does come with all the cables you'll need to get it up and running. Hope this helps.

 

Cheers guys. Robert, I don't think the Asus mobo I'm looking at supports DDR2 memory.

Michael.

 

my new pc will be one of these.

 

I am considering buying one of those when I graduate. I would want one of the silent ones though, they are not cheap. It would look nice next to my 17" TFT though.

 

Michael, unless you are really keen on the idea of DIY, might be worth checking out the Dell outlet site - £500 off the latest 8400 Dimension - if you look for a while (just past the half hour they add new systems &/or systems people have put in their basket & not purchased), they regularly change their offers (when they do free shipping it helps)...don't know if you'll get them to ship to Portugal though..
certainly worked out a lot cheaper than buying the bits when I got mine a couple of months ago, & full warranty included (which I think you can upgrade to international?)

 

If you get the right parts I have from the right places I have found building your own PC works out far cheaper and there is no nasty surprises then you open up your case and you know every exact detail of it.

For example my sisters PC, AMD Althlon 2200XP, 80GB HD, 52X CDRW, legal version of WIN XP, 256MB 400Mhz Geil memory with head spreader, round IDE cables, fancy well built case all for £235. I don't think anybody could possibly sell a base unit with that specification so cheap.

 

P4 3Ghz (800Mhz), 512Mb 3200 RAM, 2 x 80GB HD, 128Mb FX5200 graphics, 8x DVDR, floppy(!), Win XP (+CD), 1 yr warranty + keyboard, mouse, speakesr & some software (DVD, Works 7 etc)= £460 delivered (back in June). I thought it was pretty good - certainly cheaper than the bits.....back then ;-))

 

I know that Dell and others have some pretty good prices but this time I really fancy building my own PC. I think it will work out cheaper and then I can spec it exactly how I want and also get the fun of building it.

Michael.

 

Go for it, Michael - you know it makes sense! It's great fun, TBH. I've been building and upgrading my own PCs for about 7 years or so and found the knowledge I've gained on hardware - speccing, installing and troubleshooting has definately been useful and there's always a sense of achievement when you've got it working nicely.