Taking advices (building a computer)

[theholyavenger]

I'm planning on buying a new computer and am willing to spend about $2500 (canadian currency) on it. I have been here at the forum for a while and i know there are a lot of friendly people here and be willing to help out.

CPU

Processor speed- 2.2GHz Intel Northwood Pentium 4 (aka Pentium 4 "A")
Motherboard- Asus P4T533-C (Intel 850E chipset)
RAM- 512 Gb PC1066 rdram

Display

Video card- MSI GeForce 4 Ti 4600 128mb ddr-ram (should i take an Asus instead?)
Monitor- ViewSonic Black 19' CRT monitor (still taking suggestions, maybe a Sony Trinitron?)

Storage

Hard Drive- Western Digital 100Gb running at 7200rpm
DVD rom-16X DVD rom(any good company that sells the best dvd roms?)
CD burner- PlexWriter 40X/12X/40X

Sound

SoundCard- SoundBlaster Audigy X-Gamer 5.1
Speakers- Creative Labs Inspire 5300 5.1 surround sound

Any comments or advices on better parts would be most grateful. But please keep the budget at about my desired amount. Thank you all in advance.

[whacky]

i have 2 advices for you:
1. build it yourself, its a hell lot cheaper ,there are many sites out there which have manuals and how-to's if you're a newbie
2. if you're a computer geek like me, bulid an SMP for yourself, wheeeee its fun, so fun and so fast and so hot

[andrewas]

No obvious problem with that setup. By all means build it yourself, but if your a newbie be extremely careful. Cases may no longer have a tendency to amputate digits, but static still fries parts if your not careful. If possible have a knowledgeable friend around to help out.

And put a decent PSU in it, youve a geforce4, P4, hdd and two optical drivers in there, 300w will not be adequate.

Oh and whacky, I may be a computer geek but I dont recall what an SMP is?

[whacky]

Andrews my fault, SMP is a symmetrical multi processing box !! Whee it rocks! Marvelous thing, the sheer power and beauty of parallel processing, if i was a computer i'd do anything to marry her ! Well you can either configure it with NT or with linux, most motherboards support a max. of 2 processors but i think thats enough, if not then there are other things one can do, but it does generate a whole lot of heat so you have to be careful, and have you tried overclocking yet, if you havent then please do so! You'll love it!

[andrewas]

Jesus, you *have* one of those? My god, the power. I saw a multi-proc M/B a while back, *4* P4s on it! Needs a lot of cooling though.

AS far as overclocking goes, I cant go any further without doing some expensive cooling mods. Though of switching to ducted air, but to get more than a few percent I really need liquid. Which is not worth it for a system this old.

Oh and whats your preference between NT and Linux? I know both suck for games, but at least NTsp5 supports directX, hate to try and run BG on Linux. Unless they do a source release which isnt impossible given the success of some other companies that did that.

And XPpro supports multi-proc as well dosent it? Shame games cant take advantage of the power. Yet.

[whacky]

Yup, me and some of my older(ok lot older ) friends made one of those babies, took a lot of time designing it to perfection and also a bit of reading (heck im 15) i wanted to keep it at my school as a trophy, but .................
Well i prefer NT in some cases, though its not as secure as Unix, you and i both know that, for webservers any unix based system is good, but for simple networking NT is ok. Pity you cant most play games on linux, but a price has to be paid for a thing being customizable. But Windows vs Linux is a debate too old, no one has been able to win it, and i dont plan to be the one either . I hate, and really hate intel for locking the multiplier setting in processors, makes it a bit more difficult, it was easier before that

[andrewas]

Originally posted by whacky: I hate, and really hate intel for locking the multiplier setting in processors, makes it a bit more difficult, it was easier before that

Not a problem if you can solder SMD components - there are SMD resistors on the PCB that you can alter. But for us mere mortals without that technology were stuck with the FSB, which only goes so far. But FSB is the more effective of the two tweaks since it affects data transmission rates directly.

I think AMD are doing this as well. Sucks, but what can you do? Switch to Cyrix? [img]graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

And I like Linux better as well, cept it really *really* needs at least one standard API in the near future. I hate to say it but microsoft have a good idea with DirectX.

But I think if we take this thread any further off topic someone will have a go at us. Suppose Id better end with something on topic, but what is there to say?

That setup rules avenger. Just dont blow anything up building it, OK?

[whacky]

Dont worry about getting smited andrews we might be off topic but then its not worthless spam, its a good healthy and perhaps geeky discussion, but why take the risk, as a question, what do you do andrews ?

[andrewas]

Originally posted by whacky: Dont worry about getting smited andrews we might be off topic but then its not worthless spam, its a good healthy and perhaps geeky discussion, but why take the risk, as a question, what do you do andrews ?

Currently im doing tech support for a small charity in aberdeen. Actualy its a work placement thingy, but I still get to handle multi-thousand pound orders when the need arises, so its not all bad.

Plus I get to work with a fair old collection of machines. I think currently we have win95,98,NT and XP in various places. Technology ranges from 486 33 SX to celeron 1.7G (Which is a P4 in disguise).

So I get to have a fair bit of fun, trying to make new machines out of dead ones and suchlike things that make the finance department love me. But not pay me, natch. And I get to play with MS Exchange which is not something you get to do everyday. Very good for the old CV.

[whacky]

Andrewas, you seem to have a lot of old boxes, why not make a beowulf cluster out of them, that'd be fun and great for the CV too, yet think of the power you'll hold, but it'd probably be long, tiring and comlicated if you're alone i wish i was with you, we could have conjured something