Building a PC

[DJilla]

Originally Posted by SirMoby

It's about time to replace my current business PC and I'm thinking about just building one from scratch. It seems that you can save about $500 by spending 4 hours putting it together yourself.

In my career I've built about 1000 (no joke) PC's starting way back with the original 8086/8088's. I highly recommend it as a project for anybody interested in the stuff... its fun and educational and you can save a few bucks. BUT, unless you are very, very, lucky forget 4 hours (more like 24 hours because shit will drive you nuts and you can't go to bed without fxing it right) .

When buying generic components, the stuff usually comes with no usuable documentation ("all your bases are belong to us"), almost never works the first time out together with the other components you've bought, has conflicting drivers and abstract jumpers that need to be configured no one tells you about, and you should already have all kinds of documentation, drivers, and diagnostic tools to figure out just what the hell is going on.

If its a learning experience, go for it. If its money, the typical thing I recommend is to buy a used, high end, name brand model, from the classifieds. You'll often end up saving much more than $500, get a bunch of free software, and have the support and reliability of a proven brand.

Personally, I gave up a desktop long time ago in favor of a high end laptop that I just keep upgrading models as they come along. Presently, I use a 3 ghz HP and could never imagine having to be tied to a desktop.

If you are going to build one anyway, then I DO recommend building one that is configured for gaming. Why? Because gaming systems are designed to be the best, fastest, most out there PC's and a system that won't as quickly become obsolete. There are tons of good magazines, plans, projects, and boards to get very reliable advice, guidance, and instruction, and product recommendations from tons and tons of really smart kids that are rabid about this sort stuff and don't easily settle for bullshit

Good Luck!.

[SirMoby]

Originally Posted by DJilla

In my career I've built about 1000 (no joke) PC's starting way back with the original 8086/8088's.

You're showing your age here. I too remember when the Kaypro 10 was launched and no one could figure out what you could possibly do with a lugable 10 Meg Drive.

I agree that I could end up wasting a bunch of time and since I'll be ordering everything on-line if I buy a combination that doesn't play well I could end up spending a huge amount of time here.

Originally Posted by DJilla

Because gaming systems are designed to be the best, fastest, most out there PC's and a system that won't as quickly become obsolete.

That's not what I'm seeing from bench test results and that's why I mentioned my needs above.

While I see that the Athlon FX-57 and Pentium EE 840 gaming chips rock when doing a single process that doesn't require buffering such as running Half Life these chips don't perform even close to the dual core business chips when doing video compression or multitasking. If I built a gaming PC I'll need to replace it much sooner then if I build it to meet my business needs.

In fact in every benchmark I've seen the gaming chips are 10% to 15% faster at games but 20% slower at multitasking and video compression.