[DonMarco]

I'm not really into PC gaming, but then I got a free copy of Vista, so you know I can't let it go to waste.



CPU: $83 + Free shipping
Intel Pentium E5200 Wolfdale 2.5GHz 2MB L2 Cache LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor.
800MHz Front side bus
2MB L2 cache

Mobo: $55 - 10 = $45 + free shipping
Foxconn M7VMX-K LGA 775 NVIDIA GeForce 7050 / nForce 610i Micro ATX Intel Motherboard
Max 4GB DDR2 800, 2 slots
PCI Express x16 slot: 1, PCI Express x1 slot: 1, PCI slots: 2
Micro ATX, 24-pin power pin

RAM: $53 - 5 = $48 (-$30 mail-in rebate)
OCZ SLI-Ready Edition 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory

Video Card: $70 (-$30 mail-in rebate)
EVGA 256-P2-N762-TR GeForce 8600 GTS 256MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported



That's the big four. So far up to $250, which isn't a bad number, should you upgrade/build once every three or four years. The mobo has a GeForce 7 chipset and 4GB of RAM- plenty for Vista. It's also capable to take faster CPUs, should the price come down in a few years. Also, I don't see Windows 7 needing 4GB, no way no how. The video card is only 256 MB, but GDDR3. Cheap and "powerful enough".

All that's left is the power supply and case. Chances are, you already have one or the other. The video card takes a 6-pin PCI-E cable, but can also use two Molex connectors instead. 400-watt and up. Many, many options even looking at just the ones with free shipping. I kept my case and spent $30 on a power supply.

Also! But not necessary!



HDD: $60 + free shipping
Hitachi, Seagate, Western Digital all have 500GB 7200rpm SATA hard drives at this price.

DVD burner: $20 to $25 + free shipping
DIRT CHEAP. Get SATA or IDE, whatever floats your boat. SATA gets you better airflow, I guess. IDE get the job done and has been around for decades.

Media reader: $22
nMEDIAPC ZE-C98 All-in-one USB 2.0 Card Reader with USB/IEEE 1394/e-SATA Port/HD Audio Ports
Damn awesome media reader. Adds ports to the front of the case. Does have a problem sticking out or in too much, but if your case has a shield on it, who really cares? Mine has no shield and I still don't care. It's that awesome (for the price and all).

Case fan (80mm): $4
SILVERSTONE FN83 80mm Case Fan
It's a 90mm fan you can fit in most 80mm mounts. Quiet, too. Adding more fans if your case can take 90mm or 120mm or larger is never a bad idea. They draw only a bit of power and help everything work faster and last longer. Space hard drives, wrap up cables, clean out dust at least once a year.

Case fan (PCI): $10 -3 = $7
Rosewill RFX-100B 90mm PCI Slot Case Cooler
You can never have enough cooling. I put it on top of my video card, in the PCI-E x1 spot. It cools the underside of the card, I guess. Never measured how much it actually cools though. I will!



You crazy PC gamers out there, what are your setups? I'm curious only because my brother may build one right after he graduates in a few months and he'll have closer to $800-1000 to blow.
_________________
Still alive.

[Panoptic]

The only point I really like to drive is to keep your OS and your multimedia on different hard drives. If you're like me and run music or video or whatever in the background almost constantly, the performance difference is huge.

[Touran]

I blew easily over $1,000 a few months ago.

Panoptic has some pretty great advice.

Intel just released a new CPU, the i7. They are pretty amazing.
_________________
Man, I'm sorry.

[km]

Unless you've owned a really nice case, you don't know how much of a difference it makes.

My desktop was nice, but it was SO LOUD that I just never used it. I bought myself an Antec P182 a few weeks ago, and now it's so quiet I can't even hear it when it's on.

The fact that it's silent is probably it's best feature, but it's got a whole lot of other nice things about it. There's a little box attached to one of the drive cages that holds all the screws and stuff that come with it. A second HDD LED so you can see what your RAID card might be up to. Every edge inside the case is finished.

Anyway, spend money on a good case because it's just about the one thing that can't even become obsolete.
_________________

vi) RPGs (Role-Playing Games)
For adolescents; half-formed personalities roaming (in packs) in search of identity.

[GcDiaz]

I'm about to put this rig together, soon as the case arrives today.

Case
Motherboard
Video card
CPU
Cooling
Media Reader The case already has frontal firewire and audio ports, which is why I didn't get one like DM's.
2GB of RAM

Already have the HDD, power supply, and twin DVD-RW drives. Got a floppy drive too but I guess it's time to let it go. Total cost was $400 with no mail-in rebates (too late to claim them now, it seems - anyway, too much work for $10).
_________________
Steam/PSN/Xbawks: GcDiaz

Let's bring sexy back!

[GcDiaz]

[GcDiaz]

Jesus what a pain. The thing is assembled, nothing too difficult about that. Finished at around 1P, then moved to install Vista, which is where it got annoying. Left it installing before I took a shower, and when I returned the screen was just black and nothing responded. It was time for work so I left it as is; will tackle it in force tonight. If it keeps acting up then it's back to XP after all.
_________________
Steam/PSN/Xbawks: GcDiaz

Let's bring sexy back!

[DonMarco]

[GcDiaz]

Holy shit that's not the price I paid. It only cost me 39.99 when I bought it. I have no idea why it would've shot up like that!

PS: After getting my first BSOD in many, many years while setting up my Vista preferences tonight, I'm back on XP Pro. Fuck the future.

PPS: Know what? Newegg sent me an email yesterday telling me how that RAM was selected as a "Customer's Choice" product or some such. Could they be stupid enough to jack the price now that it's a popular item?
_________________
Steam/PSN/Xbawks: GcDiaz

Let's bring sexy back!

[BalbanesBeoulve]

Here's the thread from the computer i built a bit ago.
http://forums.selectbutton.net/viewtopic.php?t=16647
_________________

[Kappuru]

[GcDiaz]

It wasn't during installation, but afterward when I tried to install my motherboard's drivers. Some vital Vista component failed to load or whatever, resulting in a reboot. Happened a few times, with the last featuring a brief BSOD. That was the last straw for me. Now in XP Pro the RAM shows fine and the system couldn't be more stable.
_________________
Steam/PSN/Xbawks: GcDiaz

Let's bring sexy back!

[belthegor]

I built this PC last month:
Case
Motherboard
Video Card
CPU
4GB RAM
Power Supply
Hard Drive
DVD+RW Drive
Network Card

It works great! Only things I would've done differently is gotten a bigger case and a modular power supply. And I want to add a Sound Blaster X-fi card at some point.

[Toptube]

[Toptube]

This is what I'd buy right now for a micro atx board

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813186138

It costs almost double, but that other board lacks even basic features like dual channel memory support. Nvdia's boards lately have also lacked in bios features. This Gigabyte actually has a lot of bells and whistles that more expensive boards would have. Also, Gigabyte has been building their boards lately with good capacitors and good power components, so that's nice.

The layout is a bit better than that foxconn, too. Which is pretty important considering the tight spaces this board will be used in and also helps a lot when using a full size video card.

[Toptube]

I actually bought some components last week to make the move to Quad-Core.

Processor
Intel Q9300 I bought mine off Amazon marketplace brand new in un-opened retail box for $200. I've been in contact with the seller just to make sure it wasn't too good to be true.

Motherboard
GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3R bought on Amazon for free shipping to Alaska.

Ram
OCZ 2x2GB DDR2 800 I've actually had the ram for awhile, just sitting around waiting to be used. OCZ is a great brand. This particular model has decent timings (not awesome) and overclock pretty well. I probably could have gotten something a little better had I waited and shopped around more, but this ram should serve me well.

That's all the new stuff. Will go with my Gigabyte ATI Radeon 3870, 640GB Western Digital SE16 (2 platters, 320GB per platter, because of the data density, its said to approach the performance of a 10,000RPM drive in benchmarks), and an Antec Neo-HE 650 watt power supply (literally wisper quiet, very efficient).

and this is the beauty that will sit atop my Q9300

OCZ Vendetta II with an white LED aftermarket fan


*shit I need to send $10 to microsoft for my 64-bit Vista Home Premium disc.

[DonMarco]

[Toptube]

Whoopsie. Here's the board I meant to link:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128354


What do you need 2 optical drives for? And, they DO make SATA optical drives.

[manmachine plays jazz]

because having LEDs is important

[Panoptic]

That and on-the-fly copies.

Also, if you get SATA optical drives, note that enabling AHCI tends to piss them off, so don't use AHCI unless you have two SATA controllers.

Also also: standard DVD-ROM drives tend to be faster than DVD burners - another reason for dual drives.

[DonMarco]

[Toptube]

[potato]

you forgot the thermal paste toptube
_________________
Dammit potato!

[Toptube]

[Toptube]

My new hard-drive just went out in a spark of glory. It never got to spin its platters for even a second. Thankfully, Western Digital's RMA process is very straightforward/painless. I was even able to get an advance RMA where they send me a new drive before I send the dead drive within 30 days.


Double Plus: The RMA helped me figure out my address problems with Microsoft's site for ordering my Vista home premium 64-bit disc. When entering my address on ANY website, I've always used "Elmendorf AFB" for the city.

Westernd Digital's RMA site didn't like that, but it suggested that I put "Elmendorf Air Force Base" instead. Microsoft's site never suggested as such and I never though to try it. It works!

[Toptube]

This Q9300 Core 2 Quad will be my first ever Intel processor.

So far some things I'm not very impressed with:

The heatsink they give you with your Quad-Core is shit. Its small, I'd feel bad about putting this on my old Athlon XP, and the fan fucking rubs on the aluminum of the heatsink. Whereas AMD has been bundling pretty swank heatpipe coolers since they went dual-core. Right now they give you a good mid-size 4 heatpipe cooler with their quad-cores. Very popular with SFF builders.

Intel's mounting system for their heatsinks is shit. 4 pushpins. Its a bitch to get even pressure when mounting, the pins can be difficult to push in, and it flexes your mobo. I'll probably buy a replacement system that puts a metal bracket on the underside of the mobo and uses for screws instead of push pins. AMD's mounting system is really easy. Set heatsink into mounting bracket (built onto mobo) attach the retention clip to its mounts on either side of the processor, then turn the crank to tighten it and lock the crank into place.

I gotta say I was really reluctant to buy Intel, but unfortunately they've been kicking AMD's ass in clock for clock performance so...

[Panoptic]

With that cooler you should already be running at 4GHz. If you're not... what are you waiting for?

and yeah, the 775 heatsink mounting system sucks.

[Toptube]

[Panoptic]

Turn up FSB, turn down memory multiplier, done.

I got a Conroe back when the Core 2 first came out. Immediately cranked it up to 3.2GHz (400 FSB) dropped the memory to 800MHz, and booted up. No voltage adjustment or anything. I have an extreme series now (unlocked multiplier) that runs ~3.6GHz, and it's even a 65nm chip.

[Toptube]

My RMA replacement hardrive shipped yesterday with 2 day shipping, so I should have it by saturday noon.

I also ordered the metal bracket thingy for mounting LGA775 processors. So now I'll have a metal brace underneeth my mobo and real screws instead of plastic push-pins. Hopefully that gets here by saturday too, otherwise I'll have to completely take my mobo out when it does arrive.

[GcDiaz]

Here's how mine came out ultimately.

The cat likes it because it's QUIET. Seriously, if not for the blue LED sometimes I wouldn't even know it was on.

That PCI card is a SB Audigy 2ZS I bought for my very first build 4 years ago. With today's on-board sound technology I figured I didn't need it anymore (christ, my board puts out 5.1 optical AND hdmi!) so it's gone now. I also picked up a widescreen LCD monitor so the new rig can put out its best. Of course I could've just plugged it into my 42" in the living room, but I don't trust wireless peripherals.

Here's what's in it, again.
_________________
Steam/PSN/Xbawks: GcDiaz

Let's bring sexy back!

[Toptube]

I'd put that Audigy 2 back in. Mobo sound might be equivalent in features, but that Audigy is still gonna sound better.

[GcDiaz]

[CubaLibre]

Diaz, you have made me jealous. Mission accomplished.

I can't wait to graduate and get a real fucking job so I can afford a decent box.
_________________
Let's Play, starring me.

[GcDiaz]

[Panoptic]

Is that an analog CD audio cable I see going to the sound card?

[Toptube]

Well I really thought that my RMA drive would arrive by today, but it didn't.

So I went ahead and built the computer and installed onto my 80gb Maxtor IDE for now until my Western Digital 640mb SATA arrives.

Fuck this board is picky. Apparently you can't run AHCI on the two SATA ports that run off the northbridge, otherwise it disables the IDE port. So at first, my hardrive and LG combo drive weren't showing up at all. Luckily, there are like 37 SATA ports running off the southbridge, so I can run AHCI on those with my in-transit SATA drive and still use my 250GB Seagate IDE that currently houses all of my stuff.

Its also really picky about how you have the jumpers setup. You can't even do cable select. You MUST configure the jumpers on your IDE drives in accordance to how they are arranged on the cable.

Then it wouldn't boot into Vista 64 after doing the install. After hours of troubleshooting, I figured out that it didn't like the IDE cable I was using. A cable that I've used for 3 years on my socket 939 mobo. So I switched the cable and it finally worked.

Man I hate computers! I need to get out of this rap!

[negativedge]

[DonMarco]

[Toptube]

[negativedge]

The PCIe slot on that board is only wired for x4.