Building a PC - Make it Better

[JMarimon]

Hey guys, I'm sure you get a lot of these, and I know just how much you enjoy it. I am rebuilding my PC. The one I have now sucks ass, and just needs a good upgrade. (AMD Athlon XP, 1GB RAM, nVidia 5700)

 

Basically, I am going for a lot of good power, but still keeping it nice and cheap. I will be using it for video/audio editing, photo editing like Photoshop, lots of media stuff. So, rendering and such needs to be fast. But I don't need all the expensive gaming PC stuff. Keep that in mind. If you are up with US currency, I am keeping it under or around $700.

 

Here we go:

 

 

-Computer Case - Antec Sonata II - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129155

-PSU - Coolmax 550 Watt - http://www.newegg.com/product/Product.asp?item=N82E16817159033

-Mobo - MSI LGA NVidia - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16813130082

-RAM - Patriot Extreme 2GB - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16820220174

-CPU - Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115003[

-GPU - nVidia GeForce 7600GS - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16814127210

-HDDs - Western Digital 500GB SATA- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16822136073

 

 

 

All of that comes to total price of $673.99, and that includes all the tax and shipping. For your comparison, that is roughly the price of a PS3 and a game.As you can tell, the strong point here is the processor. That will be great for general video and photo stuff. The RAM doesn't really need to be high-end gaming stuff, as I really don't PC game. Nice big hard drive, and so on. I already have the Antec Sonata II computer case, it works really nice, and the PSU is a combo deal for cheaper with the CPU.

 

So, you know what to do. Critique it, make it better, find better prices, help a guy out. Have fun, and don't hurt yourself.

 

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Huge updates on June 6 2007

[Ginger_Chris]

Soundcard? I'm never a fan of onboard ones, but only really matters if you have a decent speaker set up/use your pc as a stereo.

RAM is fairly important for photo editing, the faster/more of it the better.

Also you might want to look into having 2 smaller faster (10,000rpm) drives. Faster read times, and you nca keep windows separate from other tasks. Although I'm not sure if this would actually give much performance for non-gaming, probably not worth it.

If your doing a lot of photo editing you might want to consider buying a graphics tablet.

[JMarimon]

Soundcard? I'm never a fan of onboard ones, but only really matters if you have a decent speaker set up/use your pc as a stereo.

RAM is fairly important for photo editing, the faster/more of it the better.

Also you might want to look into having 2 smaller faster (10,000rpm) drives. Faster read times, and you nca keep windows separate from other tasks. Although I'm not sure if this would actually give much performance for non-gaming, probably not worth it.

If your doing a lot of photo editing you might want to consider buying a graphics tablet.

 

Soundcard... ehhh. I just use headphones all the time, really don't need one.

 

When you have DDR2 RAM, speed doesn't make a huge difference. Really, for the price, the upgrade to DDR2 800 isn't really worth the cost.

 

A much smaller 10k drive is actually about the same price as my 500GB. I would rather have more space than faster space. I also have a 200GB drive already that I plan to use for Windows.

 

I might get a graphics tablet someday, they are on sale every now and then. We'll see.

 

Thanks for the suggestions, I appreciate the feedback.

[Marshmellow]

I have a 10k hard drive and it is just amazing how fast it reads and writes and all that good stuff.

 

If you have some extra cash you should get both. Because the 10k hard drives have a deadly small capacity, I only have about 10Gb left . But they are extremely fast. Good boot disk.

[Caris]

Change your mobo with a Asus PB5 and change the Graphics Card to a 7600GT.

[Shorty]

I'd go even higher than the 7600GT, 8800! And twice as much RAM if you're feeling daring.

[Guest Jordan]

He's not playing games though...

[Colin]

Change your mobo with a Asus PB5 and change the Graphics Card to a 7600GT.

I agree that this is what you should change as well. Everything else is looking good.

 

I'd go even higher than the 7600GT, 8800! And twice as much RAM if you're feeling daring.

Yeh, should be able to get all that, and a quad core maybe for $700.

[Shorty]

Oh right, no games? It's just... I have a 7600GT and it's the first thing that I'm starting to feel 'could be better'.

[JMarimon]

I have a 10k hard drive and it is just amazing how fast it reads and writes and all that good stuff.

 

If you have some extra cash you should get both. Because the 10k hard drives have a deadly small capacity, I only have about 10Gb left . But they are extremely fast. Good boot disk.

 

Ya, I would, although they are really expensive. Anyhow, since hard drives are easy to buy later, it is not a need to buy it now.

 

Change your mobo with a Asus PB5 and change the Graphics Card to a 7600GT.

 

The issue with the Asus P5B is that it only has one IDE port. I have a DVD Burner, DVD Reader, and then my 200GB IDE drive. Therefore, right from the start, I need to two IDE ports. Graphics card really doesn't matter to me. If it will run Windows Vista and give me two monitors, it is good with me. I just want it to do its job and do it really quietly.

 

I'd go even higher than the 7600GT, 8800! And twice as much RAM if you're feeling daring.

 

Haha, maybe someday. I could always upgrade that stuff.

 

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Thanks for the suggestions guys. I did look around and I did change the mother board.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16813130082

 

It is a bit more expensive, but it has a better chipset, a better PCI layout, much better audio, a firewire port, and even comes with two extra USB ports.

 

Sounds good to me, I update the first post of the thread with this change.

[RoadKill]

If you don't intend to game just buy a low to mid range new laptop from Dell or something, having a portable computer will be much more useful for other situations - also plug in your existing monitor to have a nice dual monitor setup out the box, convenient for what you want to do

 

Also another thing to consider is buying a prebuilt because frankly you can get them cheap and with say 2GB RAM and a Core 2 Duo it will be more than adequete for all the tasks you've listed, and on the plus side you'll get a proper warranty.

 

Maybe several years ago I'd have said the opposite but right now it only makes sense to build your own PC if you really want to tinker with it and build some kind of custom gaming beast

[JMarimon]

If you don't intend to game just buy a low to mid range new laptop from Dell or something, having a portable computer will be much more useful for other situations - also plug in your existing monitor to have a nice dual monitor setup out the box, convenient for what you want to do

 

Also another thing to consider is buying a prebuilt because frankly you can get them cheap and with say 2GB RAM and a Core 2 Duo it will be more than adequete for all the tasks you've listed, and on the plus side you'll get a proper warranty.

 

Maybe several years ago I'd have said the opposite but right now it only makes sense to build your own PC if you really want to tinker with it and build some kind of custom gaming beast

 

Ehhh, I do appreciate that feedback, but I've looked around and I just can't get the PC I want through buying kits and such. I like the idea of having full control of everything inside the computer.

 

Anyhow... I have made some huge updates and improvements. The original post is updated, and on top of that here is a shopping cart with pricing and such: