I'm thinking of building a new system and need some help. I've built one other computer before but I still need help. Especially since it's been 5 years(it was a 478 system). I'm thinking of getting a budget system based on one of the above proccessors. I want it to last a while and i need help picking out components.

I have two 250GB SATA 8MB drives to carry over and two DVD burners. I have the case and other things like floppy drive. I also have a pci sound blaster audigy2 platinum pro card I can transfer over if it would even be useful in a new system. My case if a nice big tower that supports ATX and probly mini atx and several other things. I beleive it is called something like Super or Spider AlienX case. I'm not quite sure. And I have the OS and all the software I need.

I know I need the CPU, MOBO, Video card, Ram, and I'm pretty sure a new PSU. I was starting by trying to get a nice cheap system based around that proccessor but that wil still last a bit. I am looking for parts on newegg but am completely stuck about any detail of what I should pick because of how many changes there have been and how many vid cards there are that are so similar.

How do you pick between video cards exactly? I was looking at something like an 8800 nvidia card but i have no idea how to choose one or if it is a good choice. What is the difference between the card models and the specifics on the cards themselves? How do you tell the performance or know what you want based on the specs? There was a nice EVGA 8800 something for about 144 or 133 but I don't know if it is any good cards are better. What is the difference between the GT GS and GTS etc? They all seem to have around the same speeds on ram so what do you look for to pick out a good card?Edit: (the video card was the 8800GTS 320mb that is no longer available on newegg.) I'm not sure how most newer cards perform. So I'm not sure what is really a good idea to sacrifice. I've been trying to look at bit lenght to help with performance. If you compare the bit lenght and the ram volume in a ratio together the 256bit 9600gt is about the same performance as the 320bit 6400b 8800GTS but that is weird because the 9600GT is the price of the 8800GTS 320MB and not the 640MB version. But I don't know if this is correct.

I was looking at mobos at around 65-90 dollars. I'm not sure how cheap I can get safely. And I can't find a good motherboard for the price that support raid. Unless I can software emulate raid? I currently have a setup in it and would love to be able to port the raid but I'm guessing that isn't possible.

I've seen ram about 70-80 dollars for 4 gigs is there anything to look for in this? There was a nice set of OCZ 800mhz ram with 5-5-5-15 for about 67 dollars but the prices went up,

And I don't know what to look at for PSU. I've seen one at xoxide for about 70 that looked pretty good. But I don't really know what to get. I really don't know what I need out the newer stuff either.

I have current prices of about 570 but I'm not sure what of that is neccesary or what I can get perfomance wise for less. I think I hit about as cheap as I can Unless I have to or can radically change the video card or drop the ram and still be ok. I just wish I understood performance on video cards better. What would the lower end 8X00s do? some of those are around 50 dollars.

http://www.xoxide.com/logisys-650w-uv-sps-120.html PSU. I don't really know how to tell if a power supply is good enough for a system. And is it bad it doesn't have a rear fan. Or would it even fit? How do you tell how a power supply fit in? The fan looks like it would be totally in the case. But my case does have 6 fans in it.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16819115037 E8400
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16819115017 Q6600


I'm a computer science major too. I wish I knew this stuff, but I just started the degree. Hopefully, if I don't change degrees, I will.

I remember what else I needed to figure out. What do I have to worry about with ram speeds to processor fsb speeds in newer system? What are you looking for t find the right video card? And what do you need for a PSU and how do you tell how much power you need? I've seen stuff about single rail vs miltirail, but they of course never cover any detail so you can learn anything about it.

And hi this is my first time to these forums. Just registered.

This post has been edited by AnonPC: May 18 2008, 11:23 PM

Hi there,

Welcome to What the Tech!

I'm sorry it's taken so long to post, I don't check here very often. I notice this was posted on the 19th - 6 days ago. (So I'm assuming you're still after some help?)

First up, you haven't mentioned a specific budget (other than the parts' total), or what your uses for this computer are.

You are talking about some higher end video cards, so do you game? What are some specific titles you play - or wish to play? For some interesting information on graphics cards, read this article (particularly the chart on the back page).

The difference between the $50 GeForce 8 series card and the much more expensive ones is a lot! Generally speaking for Nvidia, GS --> GT --> GTS --> GTX. There are variations in this, of course. A prime example is the 8800 series, where the 320MB and 640MB 8800GTS cards are built on an older design - the 8800GT beats them both! A later release of the 8800GTS (512MB version) was based on the G92 core, and is still one of the fastest cards out there. One of the 8800GTS (512MB) cards will pretty much play the latest games reasonably well.

Of course, if you are looking at an 8800 series card, they are very power hungry - and you need clean, stable power - and lots of it! I wouldn't trust that funky green-looking thing you posted a link for... Something with a high-efficiency rating is going to help here. Either this or this would be what I would choose. Just for some more reading / information on PSU's for you - they are a little outdated now, but the information is still extremely helpful:

PSU Calculator
Overclock PSU Guide
Hardware Secrets PSU Guide

For your hard drives, you will lose your RAID when you change it over. Unless you have a hardware-based solution currently, that is. Even then it will still be quite the hassle, and is why I don't recommend running a RAID solution at all unless you completely understand everything about it (i.e. how to recover from failure etc...), and even then, generally only in a large business environment. If you are running RAID 0, then if one hard drive fails, you will lose all your data. This is unrecoverable. The hassle of this is not worth it, in my opinion.

However, for your motherboard options, the Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3L is an excellent choice if you are using an Intel processor. This is my favourite "bang-for-buck" motherboard at the moment, and will support either of the Q6600 or E8400.

And onto the processor, of course. Are you going to overclock? I personally would get the E8400 as it has the higher GHz speed, but if you do lots of multi-tasking (such as multimedia editing - video and the like), then the Q6600 would become an advantage as it has an additional two cores.

And lastly, RAM. The board I mentioned supports DDR2, and the sweet spot right now is PC2-6400 (800MHz). There are performance gains to be had above this, of course, but the price starts getting much more expensive. A 2x 2GB kit of that OCZ you were talking about would be a good choice.

I think that's all for now, feel free to ask any further questions or point out if I've forgotten anything.

Cheers

Troy

I bought the parts already. I ended up buying a corsair 650W one rail things off of newegg for what will be 70 or 80 dollars after rebates. I also bought the Q6600, G.Skill 4GB(2x2GB) DDR21000, GA-EP-DS3R, gigabytes 8800GT 512MB for $150, And another 250GB harddrive on the side I can use for backups and linux. I've had a raid for sometime so I'm hopeing it won't be a problem. I think I used to know more about it than I do now. If theres anything wrong with the system though I wouldn't mind hearing it. The ram was also only 84 dollars.

RAM $84 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16820231145
PSU $70 or $80 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16817139005 I had another 10 dollars taken off from a promo code.
Q6600 $220 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16819115017
GA-EP-DS3R $130 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16813128086
Vid $150 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16814125088
Thumb drive $60 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16820233042
HDD $60 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16822148262

And that Green harddrive is 80+ certified. From what I've read that means it is certified it has 80% plus efficiency in some aspect. I think it is in regards to it's true power or something. I don't know if 80+ is any good to bo guy though. The corsair one I bought is also 80+ certified, but it has one rail where the green has two, and the corsair has 55A on the 12v instead of the 22A per rail on the green logisys. So I ended up going with the corsair over the Logisys PSU. I don't really know anything about the specifics of power supplies though. I can only go by what I can manage to find to read on them. I don't completely know what all of those things mean either.

This post has been edited by AnonPC: May 25 2008, 07:57 PM

Hi there,

Well I have to admit it looks like a pretty good system you've got there. I'm glad you chose that Corsair - they make excellent PSU's. The single rail is better as it doesn't need to balance the requirements over a number of rails, as described in one of the links I posted above.

Nonetheless, it looks like a great build, and I'm sure you'll be very happy with it.

Cheers

Troy

Thanks.

This post has been edited by AnonPC: May 26 2008, 05:32 PM