A greeting and some questions

[Condar]

Greetings all,

I've been looking for a good forum about pc building recently, and just stumbled across the Tech Forums. After reading various posts here, it looks like you guys know your stuff, so I may have found myself a new home.

Just a little background, I'm a Computer Science/Computer Information Assurance major, currently in my sophomore year. Thus, I'm more into the software side of things and have never really gotten into hardware. This summer, I will have a budget of around $2,500 for a new computer, and I have heard (and am quite confident) it is much cheaper to build a computer than to buy one from a retailer.

The problem is, as mentioned before, I am quite a newbie when it comes to hardware. I've never built a computer before, and have essentially been 'wandering aimlessly' around the internet for resources and information on getting started.

What I've determined so far is that I will be building an AMD based system, as the processors I've found are cheaper than Intel and I've heard AMD processors are better for gaming. My main games at the moment include HalfLife 2, Pirates!, Rome: Total War, and EverQuest II. As such, I'm looking to build a very good gaming system (which of course will be able to handle every other normal task I perform) with the budget I have.

So my questions to you all really are:
1.) What would be a good place to look for some computer-building basics?
2.) Will it be possible to build a system with my budget that can run the above (and similar) games with high detail and speeds in my budget ($2000-2500)?
3.) What suggestions do you have about various components (particular brands, parts you would recommend for this comp, etc)?

Thank you all in advance!

-James

 

[tigerfootball05]

Your budget shoudl be plenty to give you a great system that will work very well with your games as well as everything else you might be doing.

I was in the same boat a month or two ago and was just looking around the web for ways to build. Basically when I started thinking about building a computer i read a bunch of articles that helped a little but didn't help me much. I finally went to newegg.com and just started putting together a wishlist of what i thought might be good and that is when it all started to make sense to me. So i suggest that you do just that. I found that by buying your processor first and then a motherboard (mobo) that works with it, it will be easier to make sure everything is compatible. Build-your-own-computer-tips.com is a good place to find the steps to build and what to look for when buying components. Also, this website is awesome to help you determine if a product you are looking at is good or not or answer any questions you may have.

Make sure any website you look for help is fairly recent. A good way to check how old a website is (if there is no update listing) is to look at what they recommend for hard drives. If they say to get anything less than a 40 gig hard drive for average use then the webpage is too old.

 

[phosho510]

welcome to techforums.
some good places to look for good hardware is newegg.com
great services and fast shipping.

 

[phosho510]

you should get this mobo, cpu, and video card.

AMD Athlon 64 FX-53 =$727.00
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=19-103-459&depa=1

DFI "LANPARTY nF4 SLI-DR" =$225.00
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-136-151&depa=1

eVGA nVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra Video Card= $435.00
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproductdesc.asp?description=14-130-196&DEPA=1

 

[DJ-CHRIS]

For the extra money, it's worth it to get an FX-55. It's only like an extra 125$, and if your going high end, best to go all the way.

 

[DJ-CHRIS]

Delete this post, i was multitasking and forgot i clicked reply already :/

 

[gaara]

Good time to buy, I am hoping that by summer both nVidia and ATi will have released their next generation cards, as well as dual core processor availibility.

This will mean that you will either have the choice of some sick leading edge technology, or you can be a bit conservative and get a bunch of great deals on the hardware availible now.

Either way, you have a fine budget that is very flexible, and you will be quite satisfied with your parts. Once you are ready to purchase it would be wise to consult here again and we can hopefully pick you out what suits your needs and budget the best.

My current favourite companies for hardware are as follows.

Motherboard - MSI
Memory - OCZ
Video - nVidia
Hard Drive - Western Digital
Power Supply - OCZ

Those are your key parts there, excluding the processor which you've already stated will be AMD. The former will all be the main factors affecting performance and all other hardware is less important so to speak.

 

[Condar]

Wow! Amazing how quick I got replies, thank you all!

Tiger, that is a great site, thankfully one that doesn't look outdated, really appreciate it! Good tip too.

Phosho, thanks for the site, I had been looking there previously. I've heard of tigerdirect as well, how is that site? I've heard nothing but good reviews about newegg, but some mixed information about tigerdirect. About the parts, any particular reason you chose those? I'm really concerned about a video card, as gaara was saying, new technologies are coming out soon, including the new dual-video card setups and dual core processors.

So right now, I'm going to do a little more reading before homework, and maybe start picking out some parts and posting back here as gaara suggested. Just need to be cautious I guess since by the time I actually get to build my computer, there will already be bigger and better components out there.

Again, thank you all for the quick replies and great help!!
-James