As a new member, I just wanted to say hello to everyone. One of the main reasons to join this group is that I am thinking about building my own computer and hope to receive some advice from those interested in giving it on here. I have gone to CompUSA but feel somewhat limited when it comes to advice fromt their staff. Hope to chat with a lot of you along the way. Best.

Len Million

Welcome to PR!!! I'm sure the welcome wagon, chock full o' links, will be around shortly. CompUSA usually isn't the best place for advice/hardware, but our members can point you in the right direction. Do you have any ideas on what you may want to purchase? You should also give us a list of chores you intend your new rig to be doing. That will give people a better idea of what you need/want, and what you don't. Enjoy the show, and check out all of the different sections! There are alot of good projects on board!

Welcome to the PR.

You have come to the right place for the Q&A session.

As for building a new rig the answers will vary largly depending on your budget.
A good rule of thumb is to build as big and bad as your wallet will allow.
Thats not to say it must be expensive many deals can be found.
But remember today's CPU will be the slowest one on the block next week.
The same goes for most of the PC parts you will purchase.

Come often and ask questions. We will try to answer them all but remember
sometimes the correct answer may not be what you want to hear.

Welcome to the PR your online experience is just begining.

Quote: Originally Posted by nicklmill As a new member, I just wanted to say hello to everyone. One of the main reasons to join this group is that I am thinking about building my own computer and hope to receive some advice from those interested in giving it on here. I have gone to CompUSA but feel somewhat limited when it comes to advice fromt their staff. Hope to chat with a lot of you along the way. Best. Len Million

Welcome aboard to PimpRig, nicklmill it is going to be great one my freind, Thrasher2 should be along soon with his welcome greetings and very helpful links for you to check out. You have come to what i have found to be one of the best site to learn how to mod and find out problems with your computers and other great things. You will also find out alot of fello pimps and pimpets are here that will try to help you out with any kind modding and pc problems you might have. Great to have you aboard nicklmill hope you enjoy the site.....

90% of CompUSA are my bitches.

The techs who work in the back are the only ones I can hold an intelligent conversation with. Welcome to PR

Welcome To PR!

Welcome to PR , if you see something you like at CRAP USA , you can be 99% positive that one of the LINK HOE'S *cough T2 cough* will find you a better price than they offer, and any of the members here has WAY MORE knowledge than 99% of thier employee's ................... hang out, ask questions, find answers and sometimes just POINT AND LAUGH

Quote: Originally Posted by nicklmill I have gone to CompUSA but feel somewhat limited when it comes to advice fromt their staff.

Hi welcome to PimpRig.You'll find alot of bright people here. This spring I was at Crap USA and wanted to look at nvidia 6800gt vid cards(for SLI) that were on sale.Thay were out of stock so the tech manager suggested an ATI 9250 instead(very old) he said it's an awesome game card and had no idea what SLI was. Ive found that the 16 year old cashiers tend to know more than the tech staff there.

Kick back and enjoy the show....its gona have Games in it.....

Please check out the Sweeet Pimp Links..

• The first link is the Best!!!
• http://team.pcapex.com/
• http://gallery.pcapex.com/
• http://articles.pcapex.com/
• http://forums.uberw00t.com/
• http://www.stanford.edu/group/pandegroup/folding/
• BF2 Game Sever for Pimps

If Need a deal...i will find it

Welcome to Pimprig.

You've came to the right place. PR is [arguably] the best community on the Net for hardware and software advice, largely because the members here are very friendly and usually always quick to respond with excellent advice and solutions. Just post your questions here, and ye will have them answered!

Take care and...welcome to PR!

I am impressed with the quick acknnowledgements. Thank you all for making me feel at home.

Not sure yet what direction I am going to take as far as the computer. Have had thoughts about upgrading present one (HP 7850, pentium 3) but not sure if a new motherboard would fit. I have alread upgraded the video card and RAM but the max on ram is 512 and I would like for a little better response. I have 2 hard drives, one is Western Digital 8 Gig and the other is ? with 40 gig,,,,,so I dont need hard drive space. I have cable connection.

Someone suggested that I state what I was wanting to do:

I use the computer in work and play. My main focus is to increase the response speed and any thing else that might come with larger processor and RAM. I occasionally watch movies but not real concerned about video capabilities.. I like the fast action (response) that I have seen with some computers and that is one of my major interests.

Do you think I could change my motherboard in this computer and then change the processor?

Thanks to you all for your help

Welcome to PR and do not buy crap from CompuUSA. Their staff is chocked full of idiots and that store is WAY overpriced.

www.newegg.com is the place you want to visit for great prices and merchandise, anything from CPUs to Plasma TVs is sold there.

Ask questions, get some advice and make your purchase from a website like NewEgg.

I REALLY don't think putting any money into the current proccessor setup you have is the way to go. Check out pricewatch.com. You can find a CPU/motherboard/memory setup that will give you over 3 times the performance you currently experience for around the $200 range. Now there are a million variables that could be introduced, but upgrading your mobo to newer technology (more advanced than a PIII) with a higher bus speed will give you alot of bang for your buck. The PIII's don't run alot faster than what you currently have (a 933MHZ according to a quick Google), and the prices of new PC 133 are actually becoming larger than the price of PC2700 or PC3200. Don't get me wrong, I have 2 PIII's up and running right this second, but they are there to perform certain simple tasks such as web browsing. They are also great to give me that little extra boost to my F@H stats. You can reuse your HD's and optical drives. The case more than likely can be reused if you purchase a micro ATX board, and the power supply probably isn't up to the task of powering the new setup. It has already served its purpose, and should be replaced to give your rig long term stability. You are much better off going this route. Even though you may have to save a little to get what you want, it will pay for itself right away. The PIII is fine for simple tasks, but investing money in a dead technology is like beating a dead horse. My main rig is a Sempron 2400+ (166x10) OCed to 1900MHZ (190x10). I paid less than $100 for the CPU and mobo, had the rest of the parts lying around, and it does every task I tell it to without a problem. I only reboot it every once in a while when I'm bored anymore. Most of the time it folds, and I play an occasional game or hit up PR. Good luck, and if you are torn between choices, or have a fixed spending range and want an opinion, I'm sure more experienced people (link whores) here can help you out.

Welcome to PR. All the smartest people hang out here. You now have a wealth of information at your fingertips. You just have to ask.
As for your question about a performance boost, a faster cpu and more (and faster) memory will give you a faster response in some applications (office apps and such) while in some apps (games and graphic's) a faster video card will give faster response times in some cases. While if your just surfing the web Cable or DSL will give you faster response times. And for a lot of people just running Ad-Aware, Spybot S&D, updating your virus program and updating windows followed by a Disk clean-up and a DeFrag yeilds much faster response times. The best piece of advise is to stay away from Compusa. You'll save alot of cash by shopping at NewEgg.com . And find yourself a small computer repair shop for your help when needed (were good around here but we just can't show you something "in person" which can be helpful until your more knowledgeable). From the basic description of your system I would suggest a full upgrade, we would need a budget number to give more help.

I appreciate your response.

Will answer some of your questions..

My budget presently is around $500. Do you think that I could assemble all the parts after I purchased them? Is there any soldering that is necessary?

I will use your suggestion and check out NewEgg.com. and Pricewatch.com. Just not sure about pricing (whether the shipping costs might offset the pricing difference), especially if I should purchase a case. I have personally upgraded the cards in this unit (Video and RAM) as well as having some understanding of what is inside the case. I have replaced the hard drives (2 80 gig and 40 gig). Also, some of the terminology, I dont understand...such as PIII. Not sure the difference between PC133 and PC2700 and PC3200. I would like to get the best motherboard and CPU that I can afford so that I can expand later if I need to.

I agree with you about CompUSA. Even their salespeople are unfriendly. The only advantage is that I can look at the parts first hand. I found a very nice case (stylewise) and it has 400 Watts and was told that it should accomodate anything that I might want to do. I will most likely build the other unit while I keep this one working so as not to disrupt my work.

With your help, at least I am getting educated. Thank your very much for your interest.

Quote: Originally Posted by nicklmill I appreciate your response. Will answer some of your questions.. My budget presently is around $500. Do you think that I could assemble all the parts after I purchased them? Is there any soldering that is necessary? I will use your suggestion and check out NewEgg.com. and Pricewatch.com. Just not sure about pricing (whether the shipping costs might offset the pricing difference), especially if I should purchase a case. I have personally upgraded the cards in this unit (Video and RAM) as well as having some understanding of what is inside the case. I have replaced the hard drives (2 80 gig and 40 gig). Also, some of the terminology, I dont understand...such as PIII. Not sure the difference between PC133 and PC2700 and PC3200. I would like to get the best motherboard and CPU that I can afford so that I can expand later if I need to. I agree with you about CompUSA. Even their salespeople are unfriendly. The only advantage is that I can look at the parts first hand. I found a very nice case (stylewise) and it has 400 Watts and was told that it should accomodate anything that I might want to do. I will most likely build the other unit while I keep this one working so as not to disrupt my work. With your help, at least I am getting educated. Thank your very much for your interest.

Welcome to PimpRig.
By giving your budget ceiling you've started out assembling the information needed to pick out the components you will need. The variables are literally endless, so the next big question is "what exactly do you need this machine to do"? What are some of the tasks you are sure you will NEVER need to accomplish?
You had mentioned "work and play". Are you intending to participate in computer GAMING, and to what level? Whether you want to play solitaire on the computer or Doom 3 is going to make a huge difference in what you need to spend.
There is no point in tossing money to build a machine that will do more than you will ever use, or accomplish less than you need.
You do want to "future-proof" but your expectations of this computer still play a part in that calculation.
Are you going to be performing mostly "home office" type tasks? Computer Gaming? Digital Photography or Video?
All these members are incredibly knowledgeable and talented. But to assist you with the best direction, the "wish list" is the next step.
Most likely you will not be needing to do any soldering.

The PIII I refered to was the Pentium 3 processor (they used roman numerals, so I usually write it that way). As for the memory speeds, before the days of DDR (dual data rate, able to do 2 pieces of work for every 1 clock cycle), the memory was named after the bus speed it ran on. When DDR was introduced, they named memory by the maximum potential bandwidth it was able to reach (Its alot of math, but an FSB of 166 will yield a maximum bandwidth of roughly 2700MB per second equating to PC 2700). Although it is still very easy to plug all of the pieces together to create a PC, in order to understand one thing, you usually have to understand the big picture. Do a search on A+ certification, or browse around your local book store. Any good A+ book (A+ is the certification for computer hardware repair) will teach you everything about hardware except for overclocking (which you can learn about here). Man, I really need to get my website more organized and post up my article on bandwidth. One of these days . . . anyway, hunt around and try to find out what you can about hardware. Also, if you can source an old rig just to tinker with (maybe an original Pentium), that would be an awesome start to get you more comfortable with building a rig. Better to learn the hard way on something disposable. If I can find any good learning sources, I'll be certain to post them. I'm sure by then other people here will have a slew of links to keep you busy!

hI, First off welcome to PR, hope you stick around to enjoy all the great people here.
well i got a list for you to start out from so to take off some off the stress and to get you a starting
point to work from, i went AMD as it was the better deal at the time that i made this list. and you said you have a case a PSU so your already set there, this list makes everythin current, 64 bit cpu, 1gb ram for the speed in apps you wanted, a ata 133 hard drive with NCQ (native command quing), a better vid card for just in case minor gaming and ive heard that this card OC's well, and brand new 16x dvd burner to backup any vital office data you might need. but you can alway just eliminate this hdd as it looks like you already have one, so you can just do a switch-aroo to bring the price down.

motherboard/cpu=$214 rebate expires 10/31/05
ram=$99 rebate expires 10/31/05
storage=$50 rebate expires 10/31/05
vid card=$55 rebate expires 10/31/05
dvd/cd burner=43$

total $461.

good luck on your upgrade, i hope this list helps out some.

Quote: Originally Posted by beachbum86 hI, First off welcome to PR, hope you stick around to enjoy all the great people here. well i got a list for you to start out from so to take off some off the stress and to get you a starting point to work from, i went AMD as it was the better deal at the time that i made this list. and you said you have a case a PSU so your already set there, this list makes everythin current, 64 bit cpu, 1gb ram for the speed in apps you wanted, a ata 133 hard drive with NCQ (native command quing), a better vid card for just in case minor gaming and ive heard that this card OC's well, and brand new 16x dvd burner to backup any vital office data you might need. but you can alway just eliminate this hdd as it looks like you already have one, so you can just do a switch-aroo to bring the price down. motherboard/cpu=$214 rebate expires 10/31/05 ram=$99 rebate expires 10/31/05 storage=$50 rebate expires 10/31/05 vid card=$55 rebate expires 10/31/05 dvd/cd burner=43$ total $461. good luck on your upgrade, i hope this list helps out some.

Nice list Beachbum.... I was going to wait for a bit more info on where he was going to take this machine, but that's a good all round computer for someone that won't be doing any serious gaming.
My real concern here is the OS. What OS does he have available (if any) now....
Would be a shame to drop Windows 98 in a new rig.
Having to purchase a new Operating System could put a big dent in the $500.