Hi. Im a newbie to building. I want to order parts off the net but I understand that just sticking the CPU, ram, and HDD into the motherboard will not just magically start the PC up. So how does one load a bios into it? thanks in advance
The motherboard will already be loaded with the BIOS you only need to think about changing it, or upgrading it, if there are extra features in a later release that are not supported in the one it comes supplied with. Whay you will need to load is an operating system. How you do this exactly will depend on what operating system you are loading and what type of drive/s you are using as your boot drive. You'll need a bootable copy of the operating system (not an upgrade disk) If using IDE drive as the boot drive, just put the Windows CD in a drive and then when booting up the first time, enter the BIOS and select boot from cd which has the disk in, then just load the operating system by following the on screen prompts. If you are using a SATA drive then you'll need to make a boot driver floppy, and when loading as before, you will need to enter F6 at the on screen prompt and select the correct drivers to load for the SATA drive. There may be a few other options to do first depending on the way the BIOS is set at default, but this all depends on what kit you end up with. If you supply a kit list you intend to use, then I can look at any potential problems.
I intend to use Intel Pentium® 4 D 805 Dual core 2.66GHz, Gigabyte GA-8N-SLI motherboard, Sapphire Radeon X1300 512MB DDR2 graphics adapter, 1GB DDR2 ram, 160gb ide hard drive, and a dvd-rw drive. thanks for the prompt reply
actually I now plan on using Gigabyte GA-8I945PG motherboard since the former doesnt support dual-core. thanks for your help.
Hi, Forget the Radeon X1300 - it is really feeble. An X1600 is still not very powerful, but much better than the X1300 (which is a joke) and still very affordable. The X1300 is just a waste of money, Regards
OGS, ima newbie to this and when i saw x1300 (512mb) i just look at the megabytes (512) and dont consider anything else. What else should I consider?
Hi guys, The GeForce 6600 and 6800, plus the Radeon X1300 and X1600 are all available with 512MB inexpensive DDR RAM. There are even lesser models that leach your system memory (like onboard graphics) but these are strictly for Office types... Anyway, I would rather have a high-end last-generation vidcard like a Radeon X800XT with 256MB fast GDDR3 memory, than a new cheapo vidcard with lots of cheap memory. Actually the ATI X1600Pro clocks 500(core)/400(memory) so that's 800DDR, not too shabby. @ t229955 Video cards are measured in Pipelines and Shaders. More is better :^) Good video cards have 256-bit memory, and 128-bit is common now for mainstream use (just fine for most regular folks, including some 3D ability). The X1300Pro has 2 Vertex and 4 Pixel pipelines, and 4 Shader engines. The X1600Pro has 5 Vertex and 4 Pixel pipelines, and 12 Shader engines. The X1600 is a good buy, very inexpensive and so I can recommend it to you! The X1300 is like a 6600, and the X1600 is like a 6800. Consider getting a motherboard with on-board graphics (there are some good Asus ones with nice nVidia graphics) and an empty PCIExpress x16 video slot. You can then get up and running right away for zero cost, and start scheming for your video card purchase one day (after you get your cashflow back). Then you grab a really nice vidcard, better than the Radeon X1600... a GeForce 7600 would be fantastic and still affordable. But you can't beat Sapphire X1600Pro for the money, L8R
