Sweet! They have awesome prices. I think I'll be ordering a gaming system from them pretty soon.dopefiend said:
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Building a PC from scratch
- Thread starter IJ Reilly
- Start date
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I wouldn't worry so much about a motherboard being "future proof" right now in the PC area. ESPECIALLY because of BTX this year. The newest pc right now is going to be nothing like the newest PC 8 months from now, so it doesn't matter much. As far as the difference between an 80 dollar motherboard and a 200 dollar motherboard, you're honestly not looking at a lot. Things like firewire, onboard optical, gigabit ethernet, raid, and SATA are all the distinguish them. If you're looking for firewire you can get a PCI card for about 20 bucks, give or take a few, so that's not a big deal. As far as any onboard digital sound or 5.1, any onboard sound in my experience sounds like trash compared to a 30 dollar sound card anyway. I had onboard optical on one of my motherboards, and the sound quality paled in comparison to the headphone jack on my 12" PB. If you want to do raid, then you're definately going to want the on board stuff, and that'll cost you. However, even if you aren't sure you want to mess with it you can always get a PCI card for that too.
In order to simplify things for you I think I will narrow down your choices to two motherboards.
ASUS
Gigabyte
If you don't need the raid you can step back to the simpler versions of these two motherboards without raid for about 25 bucks cheaper each.
In order to simplify things for you I think I will narrow down your choices to two motherboards.
ASUS
Gigabyte
If you don't need the raid you can step back to the simpler versions of these two motherboards without raid for about 25 bucks cheaper each.
IJ Reilly said:
Well after building a hellauva lot of PC's this is currently my favorite mobo to work with. My PC (gaming) rig is what I pretty much posted. Those motherboards go for around 80 bucks now. I have built systems for people and built myself some systems that have gigabyte and asus mobos in them and when i used the NF7-S and the Athlon 2500 XP it runs very stable like it was a 3200 XP. you can check out amdmb.com for reviews on different motherboards, or if you have some specific questions, pm me and i will be glad to answer them.
good luck!
Capt Underpants said:
Good luck, their prices seem great!
Nice system for under $700 prebuilt:
ATX MEDIUM TOWER CASE 350 WATT (BEIGE)
(800Mhz FSB) Intel® Pentium® 4 CPU @ 2.8GHz 512K w/ Hyper Threading
*(DDR400-800MHz FSB)MSI 848P NEO-V, Intel® i848 Mainboard PRESCOTT SUPPORT w/ LAN & 5.1 SOUND W/SATA
512 MB PC3200 400MHz DDR MEMORY (Major_Brand)
80GB 7200 RPM ATA 100 HARD DRIVE
NONE - Hard Drive
nVidia GeForce FX 5700 256MB 8x AGP w/ TVO, & DVI
NU DDW081 DVDRW/CDRW DRIVE (BEIGE)
3D WAVE ON-BOARD 5.1 SOUND CARD
Elbeano said:
I'd looked at the ASUS already -- the user comments seem to be a love-hate thing. I also looked at the Gigabyte GA-7N400L, which presumably is similar to the one you reference, but without the gigabit ethernet (and probably something else I didn't notice).
BTW, do I need a floppy drive?
IJ said:
Floppies, we don't need no stink'n floppies....
www.directron.com is pretty good too! Great prices...
I've liked the ...
Shuttle SB61G2 XPC Spacewalker ALL-Aluminum P4 Barebone System, Intel i865G Chipset, 800FSB, Dual DDR400, LAN, AGP8X, Video & Audio w/SPDIF.
I just wonder how quiet it is, it looks like it wouldn't be a hurricane....
IJ Reilly said:
The love hate thing is standard with any decent motherboard. They get good reviews from anyone who has success with them, and anyone that either doesn't know what they're doing, or gets a lemon is going to complain about it. That's the same way I felt before I bought my mac after reading all of the horror stories on here about dead pixels, kernal panics, and latch woes. And I've had my own go with apple over my own latch so I'm still a little annoyed with them even though I love everything about my PB. I'd be one of those 4 out of 5 star people on newegg about this thing.
As far as the gigabit ethernet, when are you ever going to use that anyway? Unless you're transferring files from one system with 10,000 rpm sata or scsi hard drives in some sort of raid, to another system like that all the time, it's not going to matter.
And as far as the floppy drive is concerned I'm suprised a mac user even remembers them. Even in the PC world the only time you ever absolutely have to use one is for installing raid drivers during an XP install. Other than that I view them as a waste of space on the front, and more wires inside. If worse comes to worse I'd say pick up a USB one for like 20 bucks, because that's not a whole lot more than you're going to pay for an interal one with a nice rounded cable for it anyway. However, I don't miss one. In fact, I get pretty cross with the people at work when they have problems with them.
I only have 3 pieces of standing advice for other PC users whom sometimes I can't believe actually know how to set their alarm clock.
1. Don't double click everything. It annoys me to no end when I see co-workers double clicking their way through link after link, and wondering why they printed their report two times in word.
2. Crap happens (or something else more bumper sticker friendly). No matter how PC savvy you ever become, nothing will help you more than when you finally realize there are things that happen that there is no logical reason for. They think there is an answer for everything, and can't seem to accept that someone might have just screwed something up, and unless you can debug windows there is nothing you're going to do about it.
3. Don't use floppies. Ever. I don't know how many times the same people keep coming to me to recover something that they saved on a floppy on one machine, and can't get to it on another. I don't know how the floppy standard caught on, or at least how it wasn't replaced before cdr's.
Ummm... sorry if I ranted a little there. Good luck and junk.
ToddW said:
I will second the vote for the NF7-S. Having had over 11months of experience on the nForce2 platform, forum experience, and of course personal hardware tinkering...the Abit (not my A7N8X) will overclock better.
Please, do not be horrified when I say overclock. The reason anyone and everyone who knows nForce2 recommends the NF7-S is b/c:
1) One of the least expensive, maturest mobo out in the market
2) Superior overclocking abilities for the dollar
Do not, if you buy an Athlon XP (Barton or Thoroughbred), waste your money on any model above 2500+. That is the BEAUTY of going AMD. You get superior computing power PER THE DOLLAR, while also gaining the ability of both MULTIPLIER and FSB overclocking.
Of course, most bartons are locked now, EXCEPT this chip:
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=19-103-401&depa=0
This chip (which with the NF7-S will probably make very, VERY jealous) should hit 2.4Ghz or 2.5Ghz pretty easily (get a SLK800 or Swifty to cool it). This equivalent to a 3.2-3.5ghz P4 easily when you get to these clock speeds. And before someone comments on Intel, YES, you can overclock those to, but the problem is, I have no experience with Intel.
*some mentioned the XP Pro/Home and the differences between services. My personal recommendation is go to Black Viper's site:
http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/registry.htm
and learn about this yourself (yes, it is gonna be a slight pain, but knowledge is power, no?
)If you want a simple fix, you can either use the "Gaming Configuration" on his site as I think this is one of the cleanest ones, or ask me, and I can send you mine. If you do use Gamer's Tweak, remember to turn on Cryptographic Service when you use Windows Update (otherwise XP can't update).
Mav451 said:
The price difference between the 2500+ and the 2800+ is only $41.00. This is not money well-spent?
I'm not interested in over-clocking, at least not yet. For now I just want to get the thing to work, which is going to be challenging enough.
Elbeano said:
I wasn't going to do either gigabit ethernet or a floppy drive, but I thought the latter might still be required for non-hard drive boots. Last I checked it was, but I suppose Windows may have finally caught up with the Mac in that department. I haven't picked up a floppy disc in years, unless somebody gave it to me (which still happens sometimes). I've got an external superdisk drive for those eventualities -- which might even work with the PC, if the drivers can be found.
You don't need a boot disc for installing windows or anything like that any more. When you want to do the installation just go into the bios and change the boot order to boot from the cd drive. Put the installation disc in the cd drive, and reboot. Then you're good to go.
Elbeano said:
No holding down the "c" key like on the Mac, I guess. Maybe Windows hasn't caught up!
Don't know how to edit the BIOS, but I suppose those instructions will come with the motherboard.
IJ Reilly said:
Well, if you are building "Per the Dollar", then I would disagree. Another reason I bring up the multiplier issue is b/c it is as easy as flipping a switch--it can be a 2500+ one second, a 3200+ with a single change in the BIOS. A single change in BIOS, that is all.
But, if you are willing to pass that up, then that's fine with me as well. I recommend the 2500+ mobile b/c it gives a user a wide range of options.
IJ Reilly said:
Haha, well the reason is usually, unless you are booting a RAM test utility or video card flasher, there's almost no reason to boot off the CD-ROM. Hence, the reason, by default, that the Primary hard drive is set as the first bootup device.
This procedure is very simple, so there's no need to worry about it.
Mav451 said:
Actually, I'm building more "per the spec" than "per the dollar." I started this exercise looking at a P4 2.8, so the AMD should be in that same performance category if I want to hit the same target. I understood that AMD rates their processors in "effective" clock cycles vs. the Intel chips. Or is that wrong?
Do I need to decide about overclocking now? If not, I'd rather set that to one side and deal with one issue at a time.
What are the advantages of the 2500+ mobile?
For PC's to get into the bios you generally have to press either delete, or F12 somewhere in the first screen while it's doing the memory test. It will say. The only problem is some of the PC's I've made are so fast that the option is displayed for less than a second before it goes on with other booting processes. Combine that with the fact that the monitor isn't usually warmed up enough to see the option and I've had to restart upwards of 5 times just to get in to the bios before. You do have to be careful making the adjustment from the 2500+ to the 3200+. My friend and I tried that on one of his machines, and it woudln't even boot after that. We had to remove the battery from the motherboard and let the bios reset. What a fun day that was.
Mav451 said:
...or installing the OS.
This will all be documented in the motherboard instructions, yes?
I don't know quite why anyone is persuading you against a floppy, where I come from (britain) you can get one for a fiver.
It has more uses than you'd think. Particularly usefull if at somepoint you want to install a unix operating system (for example, FreeBSD and many others require you to boot from floppy), also, its the little things that people haven't mentioned, I believe partition magic lets you create repair disks if it all goes balls up. Its five quid, and the wires are insignificant.
As for motherboard. I'd concur with the 9600XT, HOWEVER, whatever you do, DO NOT, get a motherboard with a via chipset to go with that, its perculiar, but, via + 9600xt = CTDs, its a known problem. Also, have a look at soltek's motherboards, they come in nice colours, and I've found them to be more reliable than asus'. I'd go with a motherboard with the nForce2 chipset myself, btw.
With regards to someone saying something about the 9800se having something to do with the 9600s, thats not really all that close to the truth, the 9800se is a 9800 with four of the pipelines DISABLED, what does that mean in real terms? It means you might be able to strike lucky and flash it to a regular 9800, do a search to find out more.
It has more uses than you'd think. Particularly usefull if at somepoint you want to install a unix operating system (for example, FreeBSD and many others require you to boot from floppy), also, its the little things that people haven't mentioned, I believe partition magic lets you create repair disks if it all goes balls up. Its five quid, and the wires are insignificant.
As for motherboard. I'd concur with the 9600XT, HOWEVER, whatever you do, DO NOT, get a motherboard with a via chipset to go with that, its perculiar, but, via + 9600xt = CTDs, its a known problem. Also, have a look at soltek's motherboards, they come in nice colours, and I've found them to be more reliable than asus'. I'd go with a motherboard with the nForce2 chipset myself, btw.
With regards to someone saying something about the 9800se having something to do with the 9600s, thats not really all that close to the truth, the 9800se is a 9800 with four of the pipelines DISABLED, what does that mean in real terms? It means you might be able to strike lucky and flash it to a regular 9800, do a search to find out more.
Elbeano said:
Overclocking sounds like advanced voodoo to me.
Still trying to decide which processor to use.
Thanks for all the great advice and guidance, btw. It's very cool of everybody to be so patient with a homebrew noob.
IJ Reilly said:Overclocking sounds like advanced voodoo to me.
Still trying to decide which processor to use.
Thanks for all the great advice and guidance, btw. It's very cool of everybody to be so patient with a homebrew noob.
Well, before macforums I didn't know a whole lot about macs. I'm just returning the favor. Some of my old haunts were overclocking and modding sites, so I jumped all over this thread. Feels like a little bit of home, even if I am more thrilled about my powerbook than any PC I ever got. I think that has more to do with the fact that I have built just about every one I owned except for one HP with windows ME on it. Dear Lord what a mess that system was. That was back when it was over a grand for a 1ghz PC, 256 meg of ram, onboard video, and a 17 inch monitor. Actually, that wasn't too long ago....
In any case, just wait until you actually start putting this mother together. I get the feeling this thread is going to get so big they'll have to add a PC forum for macrumors, heh heh heh heh.
egor said:
Indeed, they are cheap -- less than $20.00 based on a cursory investigation. Easily added later, I presume. The ABIT NF7-S, which seems to be the most frequently recommended, has an nForce 2 chipset.
I wasn't trying to completely dissuade you from getting a floppy though, just saying you don't really need one, and I like a very clean case. The more you put in it, the more it looks like a rat's nest. Once you do get all of the parts though I shall have to instruct you in the ways of cable fu, the art of hiding your wires.
Elbeano said:
If I close my eyes, I can see you rubbing your hands together.
Really, am I in for it? Is this going to be a weekend in hell?
IJ Reilly said:
Ha hahahah, well I can't say I haven't had a few of those when it came time to put some machines together. My garage is like a museum to those weekends. However, since my powerbook has spent about 20% of it's life with apple care and I've only had it since the newest revision, I can't say I haven't had some similar moments with Macs. I will say be prepared to invest some time. The wiring on my PC that is in the picture back on the first page of this post took me probably close to 6 hours alone. Now I took apart the power supply and cut off every wire I didn't need, taped them off individually, tucked them back in the power supply, sleeved everything with that blue stuff, put all of the molex connectors back on (I had to take them off with some thingy I got at radio shack), and put everything back together. Most people just let it dangle.
Well it is very nice -- it looks like a medical instrument. It's worth being so picky if your work is going to be on display like that.
I'm just afraid I'll plug everything together and no go, without any clue as to what's wrong.
I'm just afraid I'll plug everything together and no go, without any clue as to what's wrong.