Ryandor.com

Any info/sites/advice?...

I know I want AMD... That is about it.

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Blog: http://www.sydius.org
Web: http://www.sydius.net

While I've never bought from them, a couple of people at work swear by http://www.newegg.com

-Ryandor

I have been looking there, in fact...

I am thinking AMD Athlon 64... maybe duel-core, but not sure if I need that.

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Blog: http://www.sydius.org
Web: http://www.sydius.net

Duel core??? SISSY! You need a quad!

No less than 16 gigs of memory, twin 256 PCI-Ex video cards and 1.5 terra hard drives!

I have a large 52U rack and a 38U sitting in my room...course I only have 2 racks filled

Dev

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"So...if crazy people don't know their crazy...does that mean your only sane if your know your crazy?"

AMD? Stick with Intel. That is my professional opinion.

To be honest, unless you are a serious gamer you are better off buying a cheap consumer pc and throwing it out in 2 years for another one. The prices are coming down so much, there is always something newer and better out the week after you buy the latest and greatest, and the lack of a warranty can be a pain in the ass. Even for a highend Alienware is worth a look. This is coming from someone who has been building computers for over a decade.

If you are still going to build your own, I have bought a lot of parts through Newegg.com , their prices are very competitive, shipping is reasonable (usually fedex supersaver for what others charge for ground), and their RMA process doesn't put you through a lot of pain if you happen to get damaged goods.

Others are: xtremegear.com , zipzoomfly.com (used to be googlegear.com) , Abysstek, and ecost.com (can pick up good specials from them).

Use pricewatch.com (where I've found all of the above to be very competitive and reliable) once you figure out the parts you want, but be careful you know what you are getting. Avoid OEM (you'll get fucked on the warranty, and for some reason the OEM parts tend to blow long before the normal warranty period, especially harddrives and anything else that retail has a 5year warranty, but OEM has 90 days) Avoid resellers with low ratings even if they have the best prices (they tend to be pulling a fast one).

Load up on RAM. SATA HD are fast and cheap. GB LAN on MB and SATA controller is common these days. Compare prices on CPU and video cards closely; often last months latest and greatest is half the price of this months and the performance is not all that far behind. Cooling is very important; doubly so if you go with AMD over Intel (again I can't recommend Intel enough). I tend to spend under 1000 (no software of course, and not including monitor, etc- just the box and what goes in it) when I build a new computer and I am happy with it for 2-3 years (then it goes to my wife- she's no gamer).

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This space for rent.

Well, I am a gamer, and I hate Intel. AMD does not seem any more expensive for the performance, anyway (sure, Intel has higher clock rates for less, but the performance is actually less in many cases, too, according to 90% of the reviews I?ve been reading and my own experience).

I do not buy pre-built boxes? at least not from Dell or any of the other big names, although I am considering Alienware (they have been e-mailing me some deals lately).

I have built every PC I have ever owned, though, and they have always out-performed supposedly better pre-built PCs my friends and family have.

I usually buy the low-end of the market, my last being a 1Ghz I picked up 3 or 4 years ago (for like $60 or so, if I remember correctly)? time for an upgrade, I think.

I want to spoil myself, though, and I think I am willing to spend perhaps $200 for a good processor (maybe a bit more, even) ? definitely something 64-bit, so that I can toy with programming for a 64-bit environment. I am not convinced I need duel-core, but it sounds appealing.

Eh? so many decisions, though. Really all I NEED is a new motherboard, RAM, and a CPU/cooling system, along with a new case. The rest I can transplant until I have more money?

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Blog: http://www.sydius.org
Web: http://www.sydius.net

Cases are cheap, even racks for my system are cheap running about $250 for a duel board rack with 600watt powersupplies. Normal computer cases can be bought for $25-$400+ with a pretty nice one for about $50.

You can do a comparison shopping here;

http://att.shopping.com/xCH-computers

Here is a nice one:

http://att.shopping.com/xPC-Antec_Performance_Plus_AMG_PlusView1000AMG_PLUSVIEW1000AMG

Some PC stores sell used cases and systems, they can sometimes be more expensive than newer versions but once in a while you catch a really good deal. Both of my rack systems were "Free", I got them from people who owned businesses and were upgrading their systems.

ZDNet is another good place to get reviews and comparison shop:

http://reviews-zdnet.com.com/

Normally I got one item under the current leader (wallet bleeder) so I never buy "Top of the line" because in a couple of months it wont be the leader anymore anyway and it will save hundreds and a lot of heartache.

I do however like to get the most bang for the longest period of time so I would buy something industrial over a normal user item such as an AMD Opteron 64 processor over a normal AMD 64, this will give me an extra year to two years of service life from the increased performance with just a little more expense.

Consider a duel motherboard for what ever you get, start with one chip and later when it gets a little slower compared to your neighbors you can buy the second chip for next to nothing and give you that CPU boost to get you by for another couple of years as well.

Make sure it has slots for 3 gigs of onboard memory or better since most PC's sold now come stock with 1gig and some of the better units come with 2-4gigs.

Of course I'm sure you already knew all of this since your a computer geek like me.

Look for salvage electronics stores in your area, thats where I get all my rack parts for half the normal cost. Whats the difference between a new and used "blank"? About $50 a panel...

I love racks since you can always expand them and they really never go out of date since you just drop in a new rack. I do prefer to buy the empty racks and fill them myself though since the HP's and others use that fudge packing method to shoe horn a lot of crap in a 1U which would mean you couldnt not service it yourself and performance is normally lower than what you could do for less money.

Dev

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"So...if crazy people don't know their crazy...does that mean your only sane if your know your crazy?"

I built a new comp in January, AMD, and it's been wonderful. Unfortunately, I have to go against the grain and recommend avoiding newegg. I bought a lot of stuff through them, and most of it was fine. When my RAM went bad in six months, I returned it for a replacement, no fuss. When the new set got in, I tested it, and it was also bad (Mushkin, for the record). I asked for a current market value refund so I could purchase a different brand and was refused. The head of their RMA department said I should just take a replacement and put it on eBay... That was their wonderful solution. "Buy a new brand from us, put the replacement on eBay and hope you get your money's worth." When I tried to leave a review for the RAM, they wouldn't let me because it was DOA. Strangely enough, other people who hadn't noticed that their ratings default to 5 stars and talked about their DOA products got their reviews posted.

Another friend of mine ordered a MB from newegg for his new machine. It was DOA, so he contacted newegg. They suggested he go through Asus' tech support first. After trying that, he contacted newegg to try for a current market value refund (several months have now passed because Asus has a slow turn-around, a fact newegg knows, I'm sure) and they tell him if he wants to return it, there will be a 15% restock fee, plus he has to purchase a new board through them of equal or greater value before they'll process the return.

I'd steer clear of newegg. I had no trouble with zipzoomfly.com, and pricewatch has always served me well.

Well, I did not read that message in time ? I bought everything from NewEgg, because they have the best prices I could find and they seem to be popular amongst everyone I spoke to (except you)? I hope everything shows up fine! Everything I bought is under at least a 1-year warranty, though.

Anyway, specs:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 (duel-core, 64-bit) 3800+ -- This seemed to be very well-liked, and a few rungs below top-of-the-line, to where the prices start converging. I read a million reviews on different sites, and people seem to like this processor a lot. This was around $300 (a bit more than I wanted to pay).

The motherboard was the best I could find for around $100 ? not multi-processor, but it supports higher speeds than my processor and RAM will be, so it will at least cover me for now, for deh cheap. It also got many good reviews.

I got a set of two 1GB DDR400 RAM? pretty standard stuff, I went with the best-reviewed/rated, and made sure it had a heat dissipater (I have never seen that before? but it sounds good, anyhow). $100? maybe a bit much, but I wanted reliable stuff.

I bought a neat looking ATX server case (racks sound awesome-groovy, but I do not have the room for it). It is plenty big, and came chalk-full of fans ? 8 in total, I think? It was about $100. They are all LED-lit, and it has several hundred good reviews and a 550W PS ? I might replace the PS with something better later, but I do not plan to OC my system for quite a while. I do not care about the LED lights and fancy stuff, but it was the best combination of cooling power, PS, reviews, and price I could find. I know it is a bit expensive for a case, but I compared to buying the case + fans + PS separately, and it would come out to the same, so I figured I might as well have pretty LED fans, if it will cost me that much anyway ? oh, and the PS is even see-through, which is a first to me. Oh yeah, and the other feature I love is all the ports in front ? something a lot of the cheaper large cases did not even have, and the lit temp display.

I bought a 250GB SATA HD with 16MB cache for $100ish. I do not need that much space, but it was the fastest HD I could find that was not overkill, and I remember spending much more for much slower HDs years ago? I guess they have really gone down in price. Western Digital, I believe? I?ve heard of them, and, again, it got a lot of good reviews. Has all kinds of fancy features I don?t remember and probably don?t care about.

I also bought the best-reviewed reasonably-priced video card I could find on the net? at least as far as I could tell. It is an eVGA GF 6800+ ? 256MB RAM. Supposed to be good, with a company that has great support. This was $250 or so?

I don?t remember all the prices, but it came out to just over a $1,200 by the time I bought a bunch of other miscellaneous crap, add tax (I?m in CA ) + shipping, and it came to $1,270. By far, the most I have spent on anything in my life, save for my car (which was $1,300).

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Blog: http://www.sydius.org
Web: http://www.sydius.net

Oh, and I have buyer?s remorse for the next week or two, so don?t mention any better deals or how I went too close to new technology. Might get a second job to pay for it, heh.

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Blog: http://www.sydius.org
Web: http://www.sydius.net

Well there was this site I was going.....J/K!

Sounds like you got a killer system for the money. I like my ATI All in Wonder card, lots of toys come with it. But sounds like you did good!

The shitty part is figuring out how much a computer cost you every month to actually own. That will send you into manic depression real quick.....

What ever you do, don't figure the cost per month including your ISP service and Site hosting. That over the service life of a computer which is less than 4 years on average now taking the total cost of everything divided out over than 4 year period by month is really freaking depressing! Hehehe

Dev

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"So...if crazy people don't know their crazy...does that mean your only sane if your know your crazy?"

Internet $30...
#1300/4/12 = $27...
Hosting... *dies*

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Blog: http://www.sydius.org
Web: http://www.sydius.net

I wouldn't worry too terribly much about newegg. I ordered a hell of a lot from them, and only my RAM turned out badly. My friend also ordered a lot and only the MB is causing trouble. Both of our problems are being caused by the fact that after about 30 days, newegg will only offer replacements (exact same item), not refunds, no matter what warranty is offered.

My suggestion, if something doesn't work, get a refund immediately and order a new part. If anyone tells you you can return a replacement for a refund, get their name, and get it in writing. When I returned the first set of RAM, I was told if the second set didn't work I could get a current value refund, but I didn't get the person's name, and I didn't get it in writing. Once the system is running, test and benchmark for a few days straight just to be absolutely sure everything is working correctly.

Go to my site at http:serpentsmoon.com and click the link on the bottom right side, yeah its an ad for hosting but you'd be shocked at how cheap it is for a lot more than what your getting now it sounds like.

They are very reliable and tech support has been there to help all three times I've needed them. For $13.00 a month I get 40gigs of bandwidth with a gig of disk space with all the plug-ins I have any use for and then some. Been with them for 2.5 years and they've been great.

Yeah of course I get a few bucks if you go through my site for hosting but if you did then I would have a few bucks to donate towards yours!

Dev

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"So...if crazy people don't know their crazy...does that mean your only sane if your know your crazy?"

I will definitely look into it, thanks.

We are paying a bit more, but we have not really come close to our limits yet, either -- the percentages I posted are percentages of what we are using, not percentages of what we are given (just FYI). I will bookmark that site and give you the refer if we decide to switch.

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Blog: http://www.sydius.org
Web: http://www.sydius.net

Stormcrow wrote:

" Cooling is very important; doubly so if you go with AMD over Intel"

LOL

Sorry guy, but you know NOTHING about what you are talking about. Maybe you have been building computers for decade, but you lack basic knowledge, What you are saying was true 10 years ago, but not today.
Intel has far more higher power input (due to higher frequency), so it has much higher heat radiation. For eg 150w (intel) vs 80w (amd) for cpus with similiar performance.
Today AMD cpus are much cooler, than intel?s. If you dont believe me, try to read some datasheets about cpus.

Anyway today is AMD best choice (especialy amd 64, very good choice is socket 949 opteron, it is very cheap amd fantastically overclockable (+50-70% frequency, with no special cooling requiered!!!). If someone says, that intel is better, he should read something about that or visit shrink, becase it is no longer true. Maybe intel will present some good new cpu and will be king again, but now king is amd.

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Endor Team leader, visit our web site:
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DAMN YOU SYD! You cursed me!

My main system out of the four I have died, the mother board got smoked after a fan burned out.

So...I went out and bought a new system

AMD 4200 Dual core! 250 gig hard drive 1 gig of ram and a PCI express video slot which I am still debating on how to fill.

Oh yeah its fast!!!

Dev

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"So...if crazy people don't know their crazy...does that mean your only sane if your know your crazy?"

Nice

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Blog: http://www.sydius.org
Web: http://www.sydius.net