Building a computer
 

So I've made up my mind.. I'm building a killer gaming machine, I just don't understand how it works:(

Someone needs to walk me through this

so far as I see it

Buy a case, ask for help?
Once I have a case (most come with fans I see) I have to add a motherboard right? Powersupply..HD..CD roms..graphix..sound..etc etc.. How does that all work?

Edit - whats a barebones computer?

I would like to suggest using mwave.com, and selecting their catalog from the top left of the website. I have ordered thousands of dollars worth of hardware here to build computers.

To compare computer parts to see what is the best part for you to buy, check out www.anandtech.com. There on the top of their page, click the tab pertaining to the type of part you're currently considering buying, and there tests are ran and lots of high-end computer parts and you'll find what you need to buy according to anandtech's benchmarks.


You will need:

-Case with power supply. I would sugggest an Antec case, because of the high quality power supply that is also very quiet, but any will do at least 350W+.

-Motherboard/CPU Bundle (easier this way so you know the processor and memory you get fits your motherboard). Just about all motherboards now will come with onboard LAN and onboard sound, so that takes care of buying a network card and a sound card. Epox is one of my favorite brands for gaming motherboards; but Abit, Asus, and Gigabyte make wonderful boards as well.

-Memory. For a high quality gaming machine, go ahead and invest in 1GB of RAM, maybe more depending on how much money you're wanting to spend. Also, from just my experience, the mwave brand memory from the site I directed you to is great memory.

-Video Card. Once again for a gaming machine, it seems like the Radeon 9800 Pro has been the way to go in the past couple months, but I haven't done any research lately.

-Hard Drive. Get an IDE hard drive that will suit your own needs as far as space. I would suggest western digital, seagate or maxtor; but any will do.

-CD Writer/ROM. I would suggest going on and getting a CD-R/CD-RW, because they are so cheap now. Sony I believe makes one of the cheapest and that's a great brand for CD Drives.

-Floppy. May as well go ahead and get a Sony floppy as well for the 12? bucks they cost. Never hurts to have a floppy for that small price, even if you don't ever use it anymore.

-Speakers

-Monitor

-Keyboard/Mouse

-Operating System


At http://www.mwave.com/mwave/barespec.hmx? you will find information about barebone systems from mwave.com. I have never ordered a barebone before, because I've always built my own, but I'm sure they'll treat you well.


There is honestly nothing to building a computer, but if something goes wrong that's where old experience comes into play. Although, there's nothing you can't figure out using www.google.com. Good luck friend :)

Scott

Barebones usually means case, power supply, motherboard, and processor. Check though, it should tell you whats coming in it.

Its probably easier and cheaper to just do it completely from scratch though, unless you find a crazy deal on a barebones like that.

www.newegg.com is also a wonderful computer part buying site, and their customer service policy is legendary. They will usually take back an item, unless the cause of its malfunctioning is a baseball bat or the like, and their prices are quite low.

I check out Ebay and can pickup a nice barebones for around 300..after doing some research on newegg (they have a lot of awesome stuff), I figure it'll be about 900-1,000$. Does that price seem right?

If you're building a "killer gaming rig" aka something that will run Doom 3 and HL2 with decent settings at great framerates (>60 FPS), then yeah, I'd say $900-1000 is just about right.

But ofcourse, a year from now i'll be updating the ram (more more more) and graphics cards.. Ongoing expense, but it will be worth it. Now do I dare ask? AMD or Intel?

I'm usually an Intel fanboy, but I've lately been changing my tune. I just can't argue with benchmark scores. It really all depends on what you plan on doing. If you were to say "lots of multimedia work" then I would prescribe the Intel route. Since you've expressed that you'll be playing shittons of games, I'm gonna have to opt out and say "go AMD." Don't concern yourself with the heat issues, they are nearly non-existant now, when compared with the latest Intel chips (Prescott-based). AMD consistently delivers better gaming performance over Intel. I used to think otherwise, and say that Intel was better, mostly because of heat issues, and recommended them far above AMD, but I've since changed my tune after seeing consistent performance increases in gaming, due to the use of AMD-based solutions. Plus, it's cheaper. AMD solutions are traditionally much less expensive than Intel. It's the damn truth.

RESSURECTION! I'm looking to build a PC rig to compliment my future Mac Mini, so I have but one query:

Is it feasible to buy a somewhat old gaming rig and update it? New graphics card, maybe some more RAM and a decent CPU, I'm thinking it'd work good.