To Build or Not to Build?

[Parker]

I want a new computer. Should I build one on my own (never done it before, but I have a fair amount of Computer Skills) or buy one made for me? (And if I buy one, where should I buy it?) Last time, I got my computer from IBuyPower, and I've been fairly happy with it. I edit video and pictures, I game a fair amount (planning on getting Hellgate: London as soon as it comes out, and I used to be hooked on WarCrack.), plenty of word processing and internet surfing. I want the computer to be upgradeable, and I'd rather not pay an arm and a leg. Looking at something in the $1500 range. So--what do you think?

[Spriggan]

building's not hard once you know how to check what you need and what works together.

So here's what you can get, without a monitor, for about $800 which is about what you'd pay $1,200+ for in a desktop

case: $50
motherboard: $70
AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ Windsor 3.0GHz $170
3 gigs of DDR2 RAM $150
Gforce 8600GTS $200
Power supply (700 wats--need for graphics card) $50
500 gig harddrive $100

I wouldn't even bother buying new optical drives, just take them out of your old PC unless you have to have something better.

[Parker]

So you'd go with AMD instead of Intel. Can you say why? And I'm having difficulty making sense of the slew of graphics cards out there. I want something that'll last me, but it doesn't need to be bleeding edge. 3 GB of RAM? Is that what I should be shooting for?

[Spriggan]

AMD is cheaper for mid and low-end processors and unless you want something really bleeding edge you don't need to get Intel (though check for sales because better Intel chips can drop into the AMD price range), however since you do video editing investing $400 into an Intel processor will return significant performance increases if your Software is designed to take advantage of a 4 core processor with 2 gigs of cache instead of 1 per core.  I believe Vegas 7 is multi-threaded but I have no clue about Adobe products (I would assume CS2 isn't and CS3 is) and if it's not you won't see any significant jump from a 2 core mid chip and a 4 core super chip.

Same with Ram, it's one of the biggest things that will increase your performance for rendering out video.  I'd say 3-4 gigs is what you want if you want to run today's games or rendering HD video with little problem and not having to worry about upgrading later--though you can easily get away with 2 gigs for 80% of things but ram is so cheap if you can spend the extra $50 you might as well do so but you can alwayse start with 2 gigs and decide if you need to add more since that's not hard or expensive to do.

For graphics cards the Gforce 8x line does support Direct X 10.0 (but won't support Direct X 10.1 which will be out with Vista SP 1) however it runs DX 9 games better, one the flip side the ATI cards run DX 10 better but got some really bad scores for everything else.  You can get by with a Gforce 7800 or ATI equivalent (name escapes me) but you'll have to upgrade in about 2 years if you want to take advantage of Vista and DX 10 games that will be out then.

Graphic cards don't help much for Video and Photo editing, which is why Macs can use low-end cards and still be popular in those two areas, but they still help for real-time changes and moving clips around the time-line.

If you have more specific questions you might want to ask and wait and see if Tage chimes in, he's the real expert and who I learned how to build from.

[Parker]

Tage? You reading this?

So should I be worried that a card won't support 10.1 when it arrives? How much would it cost to buy one that does? And how much VRAM should I have?

[Spriggan]

there are no current cards that support DX 10.1 the specification change was made only this summer and requires hardware that current cards don't have.  I really don't know how the DX 10 thing is going to shape up in terms of DX 10 vs 10.1 but I wouldn't be surprised to see most games support both for the next few years (you just won't get as pretty as features with 10).

VRam is pretty trivial now days--it's all about how fast you can move textures and other information into and out of memory and not how much memory you have, so you'll be very pressed to find any card under $400 that has more then 256megs, also VRam will become less important with DX 10 since it allows the card to use the system ram as it's own.  This change in how the memory is shared and some other buffer stuff is why DX 10 is Vista only, making it work on XP would be a lot of effort and money which Microsoft doesn't want to spend on an OS they want you to upgrade from.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

You will always save money by building your own, but when you build your own, there's something you don't get: a warranty.

I built a computer, and on the whole I was really happy with it. Though the power supply would blow ever 18 months no matter how good a supply I got. I also had problems once with the mo.bo. Would have been nice to have the warranty. On the whole, I'm of the opinion that the extra money to get a system from someone else with a 3 year warranty (most pre-built systems come with 1 year, with an option to upgrade to three year) is more than worth it.

[Spriggan]

Some manufacturers offer warranties such a EVGA,which offer a lifetime warranty on their graphics cards, and there are also retailer warranties--either way you have to pay for them and to get a 3 year extended warranty you're looking at an extra $200-$300 at Dell or HP (that doesn't include accidental damage which is another $200-$300) and I find that just paying out of pocket to replace items is generally cheaper if you can do it yourself.

If you do decide to buy a built one because of service and repairs check their service record, Dell Small Business (not Home which is lousy) is one of the better ones out there.  I really don't know how any local establishments stack up so I'd google and check the BBB for complaints.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

Some manufacturers offer warranties such a EVGA,which offer a lifetime warranty on their graphics cards, and there are also retailer warranties--either way you have to pay for them and to get a 3 year extended warranty you're looking at an extra $200-$300 at Dell or HP (that doesn't include accidental damage which is another $200-$300) and I find that just paying out of pocket to replace items is generally cheaper if you can do it yourself.

That's my point. $200 for a three year warranty is fantastic if your motherboard goes out -- which wil lbe the 200 alone. You'll get it faster and cheaper.

[Spriggan]

Motherboards aren't $200 in 90% of PCs, they're more $50-$70.

Alienware brobably uses $200 motherboards but you'd be looking at a computer with two processors (not dual-core but two seperate ones) DDR4 ram upto 16gigs and other stuff very few people need.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

That's funny, because a quick look at the lowest prices on motherboards at Pricewatch shows a good half of them being close to $200. Sure if you want low end you can spend $50, but if you want a computer to last a while....

Oh, and that was mobos ALONE, no memory, no cpu. In stores I haven't seen a decent mobo at under $100. Love to know where your shopping Sprig if you can get a *good* mobo for $50. The ones I investigated at that price had 90 day warrantees.

edit: Incidentally, Dell's 3-year warranty is $170. If you decide to go 2 year, it's less than $70. Both of those are ON SITE. Meaning you dont' have to do anything to get it fixed, jsut call 'em up and wait for 'em to show up.

[Spriggan]

again those are the motherboards that are for cutting edge stuff, high amounts of RAM (that have a faster speed), newest Intel processors and RAID support.  My $70 one has support only for 8gigs compared to 32gigs, older chipset (AM2) and a weaker RAID support.  I think the savings is worth it since the buss speed is the same and I don't need the fastest ram out there.  But this is not that important to the discussion since there are more then motherboards that can crap out on you (like you're powersuply).

I've not priced Dell's desktop warranties but what you listed is about half the laptop price (where on site costs an additional $100+ on top of the normal warranty which doesn't include accidental damage).

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

uh, no, that was the price *for* a laptop warranty.

[Spriggan]

The problem with Dell is the prices of their services change based off of which section you're in (home, small business), what the deal of the week is and various other packages.  My laptop, which I got about 2 months ago, got 3-years free (though it was the mail in service) and to upgrade to on site was $150 for the 3 years.

[Faster Master St. Pastor]

That's funny, because a quick look at the lowest prices on motherboards at Pricewatch shows a good half of them being close to $200. Sure if you want low end you can spend $50, but if you want a computer to last a while....

Oh, and that was mobos ALONE, no memory, no cpu. In stores I haven't seen a decent mobo at under $100. Love to know where your shopping Sprig if you can get a *good* mobo for $50. The ones I investigated at that price had 90 day warrantees.

edit: Incidentally, Dell's 3-year warranty is $170. If you decide to go 2 year, it's less than $70. Both of those are ON SITE. Meaning you dont' have to do anything to get it fixed, jsut call 'em up and wait for 'em to show up.

Newegg has pretty good MB's for around the $70 range from what I've heard. They also have a reputation for excellent customer service. I don't like Pricewatch, they tend to recommend things that are superfluous or outdated, and I haven't had much luck finding what I needed with them.

Sprig, I'm curious, why three gigs instead of four? You could easily get 4 1 gig sticks for only a little more. Are you recommending that because of cooling problems with the sticks being too close to the CPU?

Also, it might be worth it to wait a little and grab a Penryn when they come out, since Intel is pricing them very competitively, they have enormous caches, and they're 45 nm. I'd probably wait some more to see how they do though.

Of course if it were me I'd go close to what Sprig recommended because I have to buy everything myself and I'm a teenager with a crappy budget. I probably wouldn't go with the 6000+ though, but that's because I'm into overclocking and would rather buy a cheaper chip and clock it to the same performance. I wouldn't recommend that though, its easy to destroy things if you don't know what you're doing.