Hello!

I'm planning on building my own rig. NOt modding it, not yet, but building the sucker, yeah.

I've upgraded components before, swapped stuff out, etc. But I've never built a rig from scratch.

So, with that in mind, I'd like to ask you guys for some help.

Where should I start? What should I read up on? And from what point to what point do I proceed?

1-2 grand is how much i plan on spending, but not all at one time. Over the course of the next 4 months or so, I'll gradually garner all the pieces to the newly forming rig.

But where do I start? What should I start with? Point me in the right direction. Nurture me. Feed me from thine supple breasts of informational wisdom.

I want to be a padawan.

I figure that the most overlooked and important piece of technology in the custom pc is the PSU.

Should I start from there and work my way around it?

A SLI gaming pc is what I am aiming at...


Let a newbi know!

Your right about the PSU, it is extremely important and should not be overlooked. Below is a list of components that i think would make a great rig, and lots of those components i have myself, but please do some research on each product and make sure you like it.

Hiper modular PSU 129.99

Lian Li V1200B 234.99

Athlon 64 3700+ Processor....pwnage 249.99

ILL post more components later when Newegg comes back up but this is at least a good start of some pimp gear to get you started.

Yes a good PSU is important--it's the very air your system will breathe.

As far as brands go--
I'd recommend for a top-of-the-line system PC Power+Cooling, SilenX, XG/MGE, and Seasonic.

Rosewill actually appears a good choice if you're NOT going to push the envelope.

But stay the hell away from Aspire (Total Meltdown), Antec (Thready at best- smokes at worst), Enermax (Overrated Power Ratings), and generics (L&C, Deer, KME, FSP, CompUSA).

For a motherboard brand I'd choose either Asus, Abit, Gigabyte, or Tyan.

Vid cards brands:
Ati: Sapphire, Asus, Abit or Powercolor
Nvidia: XFX, eVGA, Asus, or Gigabyte

Since you are buying the parts over a series of months I'd wait till Crossfire (Ati's take on dual graphics) has been released for some time. (and some vendors have attached after market coolers to them [Zalman flowers or DHES Arctic Silencers])

I'd also wait until this came down in price.

For Ram-- Corsair, OCZ, Muskin, and Geil
(And if you choose AMD I'd hold off purchasing the Mobo and CPU until the Socket M2 [uses DDR2] is in place and fully accounted for [That way you won't buying a part just to have have it semi-obsolete.]

Case: Gigabyte's Aurora or RaidMax X1(Just ditch the included PSU) ,

Hard Drive: Western Digital, or Maxtor,

Plextor for the DVD burner

Quote: Originally Posted by evermandibles Over the course of the next 4 months or so, I'll gradually garner all the pieces to the newly forming rig.

My suggestion would be to keep your eyes and ears open across that time period and everytime you get the money together that you would have spent on a component, put it in a shoe box and save it until the end of that 4 month period. It may be hard to wait, but . . .

1) The item you would have bought will have gone down in price and you could possibly put the savings towards another component.

2) The state of technology for items you buy in month 1 may be so different in month 4 that you may be wishing you hadn't bought the things you did in month 1.

3)You'll learn so much about building rigs across that 4 months that you'll be MUCH better suited to make an educated decision about the purchases.

This is all assuming you CAN wait that long, ie: you're able to make due with what you've got until the end of 4 months.

I'm just saying often it's worth the wait because you can make a better, possibly more economic decision. Knee-jerk/Impulse based buys often return to bite you in the hind-quarters.

Just my $0.02

Good Luck with your decision!!