building a new computer question.

[maflynn]

Ok, so we have one thread here about building a new computer, and to be honest, I'm interested in doing this.

I had not done this since the intel 486 was the latest and greatest, so I've been out of the loop.

Can someone point me to some resources available for research.

I'm looking for a good motherboard to handle the intel i7 quad cpu. There's so many motherboard manufacturers, its quiet confusing. So if I can find somewhere to read up on what to look out for and what to consider when building a computer. That would be most helpful

btw, creating it for a hackinstosh is not the end, but keeping it close what apple uses so that if I do choose that path, Id still be able to do so, i.e., no amd.

 

[velocityg4]

Toms Hardware Guide has a lot of painfully in depth articles on Video cards, Motherboard, RAID &c. They also have charts for you to select and compare different video cards, hard drives and CPU's that you want with a very thorough set of benchmarks.

As for choosing specific manufacturers and components. I look at the customer reviews on Newegg.com (for reliability data) plus the Toms Hardware charts (for the benchmarks) to select the fastest part for my money that will actually work.

The only weakness with the charts is they do not update them the moment something new comes out. So for new hardware I will look at the article to see how the new device competes against an previous generation, say Radeon 5870 vs. 4870, then look at the charts for the older device and see how it stacks up against all others.

 

[maflynn]

Awesome, thanks. I had forgotten about Toms hardware

 

[prodigee]

Awesome, thanks. I had forgotten about Toms hardware

I would also check hardocp and hardforum, the forums have some really knowledgeable members and the site itself has plenty of in depth reviews.