New Computer, I can't get the ball rolling

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PresidentJFJ

New Member
So I am in the process of getting a new computer, and I am either going to get someone to put it together for me or I will attempt to build it myself. However, I don't want to spend a bunch of money and have problems with the hardware. My budget is $1400 Canadian MAYBE spending 1500-1550 if necessary. Heres the parts I think would be good:

Motherboard-Asus P5N-E SLI NVIDIA Socket 77 ATX
Proccessor-Intel E6600
RAM-4 GB Ultra 1024MB PC4200 DDR2 533MHz Memory
Video Card-8600 gts/gt XXX(don't know which kind is better)
Hard Drive-Seagate / Barracuda 7200.10 / 500GB / 7200 / 16MB / Serial ATA-300 / OEM
Optical Drive-Sony DRU170C Retail DVD Burner

A few of questions i have are: What power supply would be compatible and good for this setup? Are all these parts compatible? Is this a good setup? Is the 8600 a good video card? Can a 500Gb hard drive really only cost $120? How do i choose a case? Should I get a legit copy of windows when i already have a burned copy from my current computer that I have been using for 5-6 years? Should I get Vista?

Thanks for any input, I am stuck right now as I obviously need to get parts to get this computer started whether I build it myself or not. Thanks alot.:)
 
PresidentJFJ said:
So I am in the process of getting a new computer, and I am either going to get someone to put it together for me or I will attempt to build it myself. However, I don't want to spend a bunch of money and have problems with the hardware. My budget is $1400 Canadian MAYBE spending 1500-1550 if necessary. Heres the parts I think would be good:

Motherboard-Asus P5N-E SLI NVIDIA Socket 77 ATX
Proccessor-Intel E6600
RAM-4 GB Ultra 1024MB PC4200 DDR2 533MHz Memory
Video Card-8600 gts/gt XXX(don't know which kind is better)
Hard Drive-Seagate / Barracuda 7200.10 / 500GB / 7200 / 16MB / Serial ATA-300 / OEM
Optical Drive-Sony DRU170C Retail DVD Burner

A few of questions i have are: What power supply would be compatible and good for this setup? Are all these parts compatible? Is this a good setup? Is the 8600 a good video card? Can a 500Gb hard drive really only cost $120? How do i choose a case? Should I get a legit copy of windows when i already have a burned copy from my current computer that I have been using for 5-6 years? Should I get Vista?

Thanks for any input, I am stuck right now as I obviously need to get parts to get this computer started whether I build it myself or not. Thanks alot.:)
Click to expand...
I found a book at the local Barnes and Noble book store called "Dude You Can Do It: How to Build a Sweet PC"


Has tons a of advice from buying hardware to putting it together to running it. They have a section where they tell the purpose of each part, and the trusted brands of them (about 3 per component). Great book! It sounds like you know what you want to do, but, hear me out... run to the book store and just skim through the trusted-brands section.
 
Is the 8600 a good video card ?
Well, it depends on you and what is good for you. It is not the best one to play demanding games if that is your question. But it is very good if all you do is watch movies, surf the net and deal with pictures. To answer that question, we need to know how you intend to use your computer, but fyi the gts is better than the gt.

Can a 500gb hard drive only cost 120$ ?
Yes it can, we are lucky to be in days where storage is cheap.

How do I choose a case ?
Well, the answer is partly personnal, as in what you like and you also need to factor in your needs, such as, do you want a small one, a good looking one, a quiet one, do you plan to overclock(I don't think u do). It can even go to, do you want one with a window to be able to see inside.

As for windows issues, well, Vista isn't recommended yet and for your copy... well, I'll leave that to others.

Asus is a good motherboard company, I think the P5N is good, but it is a SLI board which is something that I doubt you would need. It requires you to have 2 identical video card plugged in at the same time. It is supposed to increase the performance, but that is not always worth it (not to say, rarely worth it). I'd personally go for the P5B board, but I will let others guide you more for that.

The Processor goes with that and if you wait until after July 22nd, you should see a price drop in Intel processors.

For the RAM, well 4gb might be excessive, I will wait until I know what you intend to do with your computer before commenting. But what is sure is that you should go with DDR2-667 as it would get the best out of your processor without overclocking. Therefore, I suggest 2gb of DDR2-667 RAM

Good Hard drive, nothing to say about it.

As for the DVD burner, it is generally recommended to get a lite-on since it comes with a burning software, but that is up to you.

Now, for the canadian issue. There are a few stores available in Canada to order parts to build a computer yourself. Now I'd like to tell you that it is easy and that everyone can do it, but for now I do not know since I have yet to get to do it myself, hopefully in a few weeks. But rest assured, a lot of other members will tell you it is easy to do and they will gladly help you. But if you are too scared, well there are also some decent places where you can custom build it.

Here are a few stores you can order from:

Custom built from www.cipc.com,
Asus P5B
E6600
Corsair 2x1gb DDR2-667
Asus 8600GTS
Seagate 500gb
Lite-on LH-20A1H
1011$ without a case or PSU, you could easily go for an Antec Sonata III and 135$ and you'd have your case and PSU, only need the os.

Otherwise, there is
www.directcanada.com : I personally find they have the best prices and no shipping fees for orders over 300$ I think.

www.ncix.com : Apparently linked with directcanada, but they are often a few dollars pricier. They offer price match and some deals every week, but they have shipping fees.

Ordering from directcanada over cipc would save u about 100$ without counting shipping fees.
 
Well, for what i plan to do with the computer, i would like to be able to potentially do whatever I want. I will be playing games on it, and I don't want to have to get a new computer anytime soon, so I figured lots of RAM and a good video card is probably a good choice. That being said, I have never personally chosen the parts for my computer. Do SLI motherboards REQUIRE 2 video cards? I was led to believe they are CAPABLE of supporting dual cards. I have been told to get an 8800 gts, but they are about 150 more tha an 8600gts and the performance looked similar. I'm still iffy on whether or not to build it myself. My friends have told me to just get parts and then find someone who can put it together for you. Putting it together LOOKS very easy, but I imagine that it only becomes that easy after trial and error. I assume that if you mess up during the build, you could potentially damage the hardware. I am not looking to buy all the parts and then find myself down $300 on screw ups. I am however, willing to spend a lot of time, in the build if i were to build it and I am generally pretty good at figuring things out. There are a few things I'm still not clear on though, like BIOS configuraton. I really have no idea how to do that. I plan to Dual Boot Windows(XP or Vista) and Ubuntu. The only reason I would be getting Vista is because I will likely have to upgrade within two years anyway. Thanks a lot for the help.
 
ok Firstly, an SLI motherboard does not REQUIRE 2 cards, however if you were to buy a second identical card in the future you would get special bonuses from using an SLi board, however it works fine by itself with one card. both the 8600 and 8800gts cards are very good for both games etc so i don't know where Kilauea is coming from saying it's no good for games, not true, they are in the brand new NVidia 8 series of cards which are the latest and greatest and the 8800GTS has performance almost identical to the 2900XT according to a custom PC review, so i would advise going for the 8800gts. Also, hard drives are very cheap nowadays i've seen 750GB for £150 with 32MB cache, its just new production has made it cheaper as well as a mroe competitive market. Finally, the BIOS thing, theres not alot really to do in configuring the BIOS its all very simple, and to dual boot you can partition then on boot up you will be given a choice of which partition to boot from, find out about dual booting here
hope this helps
 
I think for everything software related I'll be fine, it's just the hardware parts. For Dual Booting, I think I'll be able to figure it out, and I'll partition during windows installation. I kind of want to build it myself, but theres something telling me i shouldn't. I'm so confused.
 
I think there has been some misunderstanding here, I have never said the 8600 was not good for gaming, I just mentionned that it was not the best GPU available and it is not a card I'd recommend to a hardcore gamer.
 
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