Building your OWN PC?

[gost]

well bank account is getting bit overloaded($2000 for my age) so i wanted to shake it up a bit.

i might be ok with software(who isnt?), i have no idea on how to make a PC, i can take it apart and clean the fans etc.. but thats the max it gets.

So 2grand for a new PC (inc. Monitor, hate my CRT screen)

I do work in Acrobat Maya, Autocad, and 3D Max. I also work on photoshop(i suk) and all the other adobe band wagon(flash etc.), I do not play video games(may be online games ie. tetris?)
and i use the usual things like AV, firewall, MS office, watch HD movies, read PDF tutoriols...
I would like to be able to burn and rip movies.
I would also like to do some programming.
I also need space for the files...

Thank you.

[carpefile]

This is prolly gonna get ragged by the purists, but imho, your best bet is to buy something along the lines of what you want off the shelf and upgrade a few parts to make it exactly what you want.
The way pcs are packaged today, you can't build one yourself from scratch cheaper than you can buy one off the shelf. Most bundles now come with a nice lcd monitor, 2 to 4 gb of ram, and a dvd burner at least.
Unless you are a fan of Vista, make sure that the motherboard has XP drivers available for it, so you can "downgrade" to XP, then maybe add a second drive, a better graphics card, another stick of ram, and boom, you got your dream machine.

[Sephiroth]

If you know what your doing you can build a PC way cheaper than what you can buy at retail with better parts and better performance.

Use Google look up some PC building guides one some of the tech sites, then use a site like Newegg to get the parts. It is not a easy thing to do, if you just go and pick parts without really understanding what your buying then your probably just better off getting a retail PC. You have to make sure what you getting will work, and you also need to look up reviews and decide what you really need to get.

[Mels_Smileys45]

If you know what your doing you can build a PC way cheaper than what you can buy at retail with better parts and better performance.

That doesn't hold true any more. Can it be done? I guess it could. But the amount of hassle to save a few peanuts is a waste. I can slap together a real cheapo PC but it won't be top shelf or at the edge of the Ghz. Buying a top CPU will blow your budget right away.

[wapazoid]

If you have the opportunity to have someone knowledable enough to recommend parts and walk you through it, take advantage of it. You can get a lot of satisfaction out of building your very own rig. If not, I'd go with carpefile's suggestion. Out of laziness, I recently bought a toned down Dell XPS quad core tower, upgraded the graphics card and got a 28" lcd monitor. The cost was well under $2000.00. It satisfies my two basic requirements: damn quiet and damn fast.

[mountain_rage]

It all depends on your needs, but I do recommend building from parts rather then a Dell or HP. Dell and HP are definitely giving you a good value for their prices, but the parts are substandard. So although building from parts is more expensive, you get a better machine in the end.

[gost]

well who makes the best PC then?

I still would like to go thought the experience of building it myself for cheap. Its summer i got tons of time.
I don't need best of the best, but a decent pc that requres little or no maintainance or upgrading for about 3-5 years.

[Feather]

no such animal any more

[wapazoid]

It all depends on your needs, but I do recommend building from parts rather then a Dell or HP. Dell and HP are definitely giving you a good value for their prices, but the parts are substandard. So although building from parts is more expensive, you get a better machine in the end.

In all honesty, I would have agreed with you a few years ago. I used to be one of those enthusiasts that had to have the most expensive parts and outrageous cooling systems for overclocking. I just got sick of dumping hard earned money into something that was literally worth half the price in just six months. All for the sake of boasting about some lame benchmark score. This Dell's surprisingly solid and stable. I don't see myself putting another custom system together (at least not for myself).

[Signa]

I still vote build your own. I have a friend that got a prebuilt, and as sweet as it is for the price he paid, the amount of system maintenance you have to go through just to remove all the preinstalled crapware is a huge headache. Not worth it IMO

[wapazoid]

Rule #1 when your prebuilt system arrives: Format HD. :icon_prof

[Sephiroth]

That doesn't hold true any more. Can it be done? I guess it could. But the amount of hassle to save a few peanuts is a waste. I can slap together a real cheapo PC but it won't be top shelf or at the edge of the Ghz. Buying a top CPU will blow your budget right away.

That's why you don't buy things based on how expensive they are. CPU prices have gone down in price. A E8400 is only $190 and that is a great performing CPU. A Geforce 9800GTX is $200 bucks and it has great performance and can play all the newest games on high.

It goes back to what I said that you need to know what your doing and what your buying. You don't need to buy the most expensive CPU, and have a Quad SLI PC to have a great performing gaming PC that will last at least 3 years. You have to do your research and get what you need, GHZ stopped being relevant benchmark of CPU's for years now.

[mountain_rage]

In all honesty, I would have agreed with you a few years ago. I used to be one of those enthusiasts that had to have the most expensive parts and outrageous cooling systems for overclocking. I just got sick of dumping hard earned money into something that was literally worth half the price in just six months. All for the sake of boasting about some lame benchmark score. This Dell's surprisingly solid and stable. I don't see myself putting another custom system together (at least not for myself).

I'm not talking about overclocking, my system is no overclocked. Here let me put it this way. Here is a dell gaming rig for 1000$

http://configure.dell.com/dellstore/...C=D420Q4V_F_1E

It has a cheap video card and cheaper processor. I could build a similar machine but with a faster processor and at least a geforce 8800 for the same price.

[gost]

Rule #1 when your prebuilt system arrives: Format HD. :icon_prof

and the drivers??

[mountain_rage]

and the drivers??

Most Operating systems have at least the standard drivers required to get your machine running. But to be on the safe side you can download them from the manufacturers website. If your really proactive you can even go to the website for the individual components and get the original drivers.