Needing desperate help with Computer Hardware

Hello,
I’m needing a some help with computer hardware for the computer I am wishing to build and have complete in the near future. The main problem I am having is that when I look through computer hardware such as Video Cards, Motherboards, CPU’s, Hard Drives, and Memory (RAM)… I see a lot of different features in all of them, I’m not sure which are up-to-date features and which are just the old, or if the feature’s that are included, if they are still going to be compatable with everything updating in technology or if they will just be around for a bit then soon be sort of unsupported or if the technology is so new that specific product’s, game’s, etc.. are not supported yet. Mostly I am referring to specific area’s of each hardware I listed above… which I will get into more detail below.

Motherboards - There are so many manufacture’s, along with many feature’s on every board. I’ve experienced 2 different motherboard’s that within 6 months I had to fully replace, I don’t remember the brand of the 2 as they are already trashed and I wasn’t up to date with technology at all, I just went for the cheapest motherboard’s I could find and I guess as the old saying goes “You get what you pay for”. I’ve seen motherboard’s that hold support for both S-ATA and IDE Hard Drive’s, Storage means everything.. I store a lot of huge file’s on my computer, In the size range of 500mb-1gb in size... Not specifically movies nor music as I purchase all my audio/video myself, so in all. I’ve also seen 3 different type’s of PCI (PCI, PCI-X, PCI-E) on each board… I have no idea what PCI is or what it is used for, nor what the most up to date PCI and more supported PCI is. Basically, All in all I need a Motherboard that can hold plenty of Hard Drive’s (Either S-ATA, or IDE… As I do not know what is best, and will get into in a second), aswell as the motherboard be made by a trusted manufacture that isn’t going to give me a motherboard that burns out before it’s time.

Video Cards – I am a freelancer and a gamer at the same time. So, This is a sort-of important piece of hardware I would need without going out of reach to spend a lot of money on. (As a freelancer I do web/graphic design for online-based companies, aswell as Flash, 3D Design, etc..)

CPU’s – This is a big confusion for me, with AMD vs. Intel an so forth.. No real conclusion I guess you could say on what is better then the other. I trust either but would like suggestion’s on what would work best for me and why you chose the specific brand. The speed is important aswell as at time I do drain the CPU down some with running multiple application’s at once that are very intense such as Photoshop CS, Lightwave 3D, Macromedia Flash. Right now I am currently running a 2GHz CPU… It tend’s to get fairly lagging from time to time, With speed’s up to 3.8GHz (I believe), I’d like to have something a bit faster and able to handle the strain it will receive once I get to work. Their’s also 64-Bit and 32-Bit, I have no clue on this stuff.

Hard Drives – S-ATA or IDE? I don’t know the difference between the 2, I just need what is supported by the Motherboard with the most space, Again like the Motherboard I would like a trusted Manufacture/Brand… not something just cheap that I will run into problems.

Memory (RAM) – So many Brand’s/Manufacture’s/Speed’s/Type’s that this choice is very hard on me aswell. As mentioned above the work that I do, like the CPU the Memory play’s a big part. But… With manufacture’s like Kingston, Ultra, Corsair, etc.. DDR, DDR2, SDRAM, etc.. 512MB DIMM’s, 1024MB DIMM’s, etc.. then to throw me into a bigger confussion, their’s PC**** (Too many different type’s to list). I would like to have thing’s easy to maintain without just taking up space on my motherboard, such as if you suggest 1GB of RAM.. Suggest a single 1GB RAM DIMM, I’d rather not throw in 4 512MB DIMM’s when I could just throw in 2 1024MB DIMM’s to get the same memory yet also have 2 more DIMM’s opened to throw in possibly 2 more 1024MB DIMM’s in the future when it’s needed.

Power Supply – I’m not sure how much power one would need or what the max is that will supply the right amount of power to everything. I never heard of a PSU that is too much for a system that gave out to much power an messed everything up.. I don’t stay up to date enough to know if that is even possible. I’d like to push the PSU some so that it stay’s cool with fan’s an so forth.. along with being able to handle the strain that will be put on it such as the Motherboard, CPU, Memory, Optical Drives, Removable Data Drives, and large amount of Hard Drive’s an any other modification’s I make such as installing LED’s, an so forth.
Cooling System – I don’t like the noise of the fan’s, but I guess it is just something you get when you have a computer with fan’s on it. I have been through Zalman’s site and seen different fan’s an stuff told to be quiet, I guess my computer wouldn’t be as noisy if I actually put in to get quiet fan’s, but as I haven’t seen a quiet fan before.. I’d like some suggestion’s. Also, I have seen countless number’s of Water Cooling… In a way it seem’s like it would be a little more quieter or maybe just a better source of cooling for the system, but I do have the fear as I’m sure many do that prevent’s me from investing in a good Water Cooling system and that is just basically computer hardware + electricity + liquid (i.e: Water) = doesn’t seem like a good mixture if something is to leak. I would hate to invest a lot into a computer and get it ruined by a faulty setup on a water cooling system, but I may just be fearing for nothing.. I’d like some inside info on this if any of you have installed/use a water cooling system, it’s advantage on things and if you ever had a water cooling system fail/leak outta nowhere and ruin everything inside the computer.

Conclussion:
I would like a computer that is up-to-date with technology and so on… but I currently do not make million’s of dollar’s every month, I would say my current income comes random and as any other person on here I do also have bill’s I have to pay each month. Also, I would like to stay within a low price for each piece of hardware, such as I’m not going to pay $1,000+ for a P4 EE CPU, or $500+ for a Video Card, so something that would still provide me with a good stability/performance would be great. I realize on some of the detail’s I provide it seem’s like I am leaning more to a Server/Workstation which could be the case, it will be a home-based computer just more then the everyday hunk of junk you pick up from the major computer manufacture’s (i.e: Dell, Gateway, IBM, etc..). I preferably think it would be more of a workstation then anything else. I have looked into the possibility of running a Dual Intel Xeon or Dual AMD Opteron, heck, I’ve even looked into the possibility of running a Quad AMD Opteron computer. The thing’s that stop me from is the issue’s I have above, plus the fact that with a Dual Intel Xeon or Dual+ AMD Opteron system, I would have to wait until I get 2 or more of the CPU’s (Depending on Dual or Quad) just so that I can run the system.. If I had the possibility of running the same board etc.. with just 1 Intel Xeon or 1 AMD Opteron until I was able to get the other(s), that would be great and would make that more of a possibility for me into running if you suggest with my little knowledge on technology that it would be a great choice an have more stability then what you would have originally suggested if you haven’t had read my Dual/Quad CPU section. It is important for you to know that I would like the most speed/up-to-date features in the hardware I could get, but overkill isn’t wanted.. I don’t need a 3.8GHz because the number’s are higher then a 3.6GHz if the speed between the 2 CPU’s aren’t really that noticeable if you ran them side-by-side, but if the 3.6GHz has a special feature that would really be nice to already have ready for the near future with the release of a 64-Bit Windows XP, or cache size, or anything similar.. If you point these thing’s out it will help out with making my decision if the 3.8GHz would be better for me then the 3.6Ghz.

Their are some other things I didn't include.. which was the Chassis and so forth, I'll look up the motherboard/cpu etc.. you suggest and go from their on picking out a chassis, I will modify the chassis so the design an stuff make no difference. If you think for better cooling within the case to look for specific things on the case.. I'm open to everything.

I have to finish off with sorry about the long detailed post, but thank you for actually giving me the time-of-day to read through it.

Also, Thank you in advance for any help or suggestion’s you may give.

Sincerely,
Chris Dudley

 

Wow, that was probably the most well thought out post I've ever read, on any forum. I'll try and help you as best I can. I'm not expert but I've had my hand in the cookie jar quite a few times as far as building computers. I can say that I'm not very familiar at all with Intel CPUs or Mobos as I have never built an Intel rig before.

Motherboards - Obviously a very important decision here. As I said above, I'm not very familiar with Intels at all, so I'll go with what I know about AMD. It seems that you want one of the high class CPUs, so you'll be going with an Athlon 64 (If you go with AMD). Make sure that the socket on the motherboard is 939 (as 754 isn't made anymore). S-ATA and IDE have very little speed difference. Your best bet if you delete and move large files around is going with a RAID 0 configuration. This allows two hard drives to do the work of one, increasing performance drastically over a single hard drive. The only set back is if one hard drive fails, they both fail. Or not physically, but one cannot function without the other.

As for PCI, I can't remember what it stands for (ddp could tell you). I know that it's just your average bus port. It's a white slot on your motherboard and you no doubt use it for everything except your video card (which would probably be AGP). PCI is an old technology but will not be completely obliterated in long time. PCI-X, if I remember correctly is an older slot and is only used on servers. PCI-E is PCI-Express, a newer technology that has just made it's appearance on boards not too long ago. PCI-Express effectively doubles the speed of an AGP Slot. AGP's fastest data rate is 8x while PCI-Express is 16x. There's not a big difference now as I don't believe video cards even use the AGPs full bandwidth. PCI-Express is more of just a cushion. Plus, eventually all video card manufacturers will move to PCI-Express, so you'd be ready for it down the line. Basically, they come on a lot of boards and the cards are fairly cheap. In building a new system I'd go ahead and go with a board with PCI-E, but AGP will by no means go extinct anytime soon.


Video Cards - Photoshop and Flash won't require industrial strength video cards. You should be fine with one of the gamer cards off the shelf. I do some freelance web work as well and use those same programs. I have a 9700 Pro and I don't think the video card makes that big of an impact on their performance. Right now the X series for ATI are the most updated series and for Nvidia it's the 6000 series. The choice between getting an ATI and Nvidia video card is usually solely on perference. There are minimal differences in speed between the rival cards in the series (usually). I've used both ATI and Nvidia cards and been happy with both. If you're looking to play the average game well, while having a nice video card that can handle things for the future I'd go with the 6600GT for Nvidia and the X700 for ATI. Both great cards available in PCI-E.


CPU's - Again, no Intel experience (ddp is very knowledgeable in this area so he may be able to help you). AMDs "top dawg", so to speak, is the Athlon 64. You've no doubt heard about 64 bit computing and it's revolutionary... blah blah blah. Right now there are very little if any programs written to utilize 64 bit addressing. However, the 64s are basically the kings of gaming and do very well under a 32 bit shell. They're great processors that come with a variety of cores. You'll see some with 512kb cache, even up to 1MB cache on the fastest. They can also get pretty darn expensive though if you don't watch it. What you also have to know about AMD and Intel is that looking directly at the numbers doesn't help you. Example, someone has a Pentium 4 3.2 GHz CPU and I have my 2.5GHz AMD Athlon XP. You'd think the P4 is a great deal faster just because it's clocked higher, that isn't the case. AMD's CPU's do more per clock cycle than Intel, thus allowing them to run at a lower clock speed and get the same job done. AMD's rating system can be very confusing as a chip may say 2400+ and run at 1.8GHz. Basically, if you convert the rating to GHz and take 80% of that you will have close to the actual clock speed. If you don't go Athlon 64 there are always the Athlon XPs left and overclocking. The Athlon XP+M (Mobiles are the best Socket A overclockers in history). They overclock extremely well and can get you cheap speed, but if you don't plan on overclocking then I'd go with something different.


Hard Drives - S-ATA stands for Serial ATA and it runs off of, what else, a serial cable instead of an IDE cable. They are just a bit faster and are hot swappable. I'm not sure of the other advantages of S-ATA (if there are anymore). Manufacturer shouldn't be a problem as long as you stick to a known brand name with a good warranty (Maxtor, Western Digital, Seagate, etc...). Again if you're looking for lots of space with nice speed, I'd get two identical drives and set them up in RAID 0 (striped array).


Memory - Memory can be a big part of how your system performs. For all intents and purposes you'll be working with mainly just DDR. DDR2 is more expensive and only on the newer boards. DDR should serve you just fine. Again, brand names are key. Read reviews of certain modules and see if anyone has had problems with those paticular models. I don't see how you could use over 1GB though as I used to have 1GB and never even came close to pushing the threshold even with photoshop open editing several pictures and other web developing apps. Albeit, I'm sure you'll always hit the limit. As for 1 1GB stick and 2 512MB sticks, for me I'd rather have the 2x512MB as I can run them in dual channel mode on my nforce 2 board. I'm not sure of the significance in speed (if there is any) over using just 1 stick instead of two on the newer Nforce 3s and KT800 chipsets.


PSUs - This one is not to hard to decide. Just grab a good brand name that actually puts out it's actual wattage. Fortron, Sparkle, Tagan, Enermax, Antec. All good PSUs. I'd say with any new system, any PSU that's over 400watts and a brand name will do. Albeit, you're going to be running several hard drives so you may want to invest in something bigger. Just to be safe down the line for other accessories. I've never water cooled anything, but I know it can cool a CPU fairly well, but not extremely well. Water Cooling, in my opinion, is just for people who really can't stand any noise at all, as it is almost silent.


As for Chassis, they're all built to do different things. Some are meant for room, big tall large cases. Some are called LAN cases and are usually designed for you to carry around to LAN parties. Some are for easy installation. Screwless, sides fold out for easy mobo installation, etc... There are tons to choose from and it doesn't really matter as long as you get a nice, study case and one that you're happy with.

I'm sorry if I couldn't help you much. I tried my best to explain as much as I could. There are others on the forum who are far more knowlegeable than I am and could probably help you much more.

 

Thank you Divinus for the inside information. I was looking more in the direction of specific hardware that would be good for me to look into for purchasing, Price wouldn't be needed. But, Your post is still great nonetheless.. It help's me understand each part and it's technology more then what I did at first.

Thank you again =)

Sincerely,
Chris Dudley

 

Motherboard: Intel D925XECVLK 925XE Chipset Motherboard with DDR2, PCI Express
Price: $199.00 (Without Shipping)
Found At: http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=13-121-262&depa=0

Processor:Intel LGA 775 Pentium 4 540 3.2 GHz, 800MHz FSB, 1MB L2 Cache w/ Hyper Threading Technology
Price: $230.59 (Shipping Included)
Found At: http://www.newegg.com/app/viewprodu...ion=19-116-183&ATT=Processors&CMP=OTC-B1zrat3

Video/Graphic Card: ATI Radeon X700 PRO Video Card, 256MB DDR, 128-Bit, DVI/TV-Out, PCI-Express, Model "100-437402"
Price: $198.00 (Without Shipping)
Found At: http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=14-102-414&depa=1

-------------

I need help with the Memory.. Their are so many type's an so on I don't know what is a good brand and what exactly I want.. I would like to put in as much memory as possible, but at the least I want to start out with a 512MB DIMM, but later on I will add more 512MB DIMM's or 1024MB DIMM's when needed, I want to start out with the sorta least for a good stable system for this current time until I need to expand. If you can find 1024MB DIMM's that are a good price, either 1x1024MB or 2x512MB, then that would be awesome aswell even tho I'd prefer 1x1024 more then 2 512MB DIMM's to free up the space for future addon's.

Question's about hard drives..
1.) The motherboard (At: http://www.intel.com/design/motherbd/cv2/index.htm) which is the motherboard I chose above, It says it has "Four Serial ATA interfaces" and "One Parallel ATA IDE interface with UDMA", If I'm not mistaken.. That mean's if I wanted to max out the system with hard drives (Which I wont.. And can't afford even if I wanted to), then I could put in 4 S-ATA Hard Drives and 2 ATA/IDE Hard drives correct?
2.) Say I was to put in the max hard drives, again if I am right above would be 6 hard drives, Would I be able to have 1 Master HDD and 5 Slave HDD's, or how does that work? Would I be able to have C:\ (SYSTEM), E:\, F:\, G:\, H:\, and I:\ ? (I'm wanting to have the extra storage available to me through WinXP Pro so that I would be able to access/modify/store files on the other hard drive's.)
3.) Is their a max weight you can put on the Motherboard with Hard Drive's, or does it matter what RPM/Capacity the Hard Drive's have?


Question's about the Video/Graphic Card..
1.) The Motherboard Specification's says that it takes "One PCI Express* x16 bus add-in card connector supporting PCI Express x16 graphics cards" so if I'm not mistaken it can handle 1 16x PCI-E Video Card? I just want to clear this one up because I seen some Motherboard's in my search that hold Dual Video Card's. Also, If I am wrong and it can take Dual Video Card's, would it still run with just 1 video card?.

That is all the current hardware that I have actually looked for and found, I spent plenty of hour's researching through everything. You will notice that I am missing the Monitor, Case, PSU, Cooling, HDD(s), Optical Drive(s), Removable Storage, Networking, and other hardware.. It's not that I didn't forget any of that stuff, I just wanted to get the basic hard part out of the way as I know with the HDD their is alot that say Western Digital Raptor or Western Digital Cavaier (Sorry if I mispell anything), I am gonna stick with Western Digital as it is just one brand I always have used and haven't had any real problem's with yet, or atleast that I know of anyway.. I'm sticking with this brand because I read in this forum and on a seperate hardware review site that the brand doesn't actually matter just Western Digital, SeaGate and other's are the most popular out of personal opinion's of I guess you could say Users/Consumers.

Outside of everything..
Out of the current setup that I listed above, do you feel I am overkilling anything and should trim it down?, could make any money saving changes?, see what you believe may not be stable/reliable? Give me your insite.. I'm open to any and all suggestion's. But, Please remember at the same time that I am new to this, so try not to be too harsh on me. 0=o)

Thank you again in advance!

Sincerely,
Chris Dudley