acme

hope some of u pros can help me here.....as i want to build a new comp in the next month of so....

what i need to know is what mother board/CPU/DDR RD or SD rams?

i want a comp which is very very stable ( also what window...XP? ) coz i will be running 4-6 programs at one go

speed does matter.....the faster the better
and the one thing i need in the mother board is there has to be 3 or more Ram slots ( best to have 4 ram slots )

i've looked at Asus mother boards but i still donno which one to go for
and for CPU wise should i get Athlon XP 2100 or P4 2.4G ?? which one will be better of for running multi programs?

DDR RD SDrams...? which should i go for? and should i aim for 512ram or above?

plz help.......thx

Fosters

Get an Asus or abit motherboard
for good performance/price, go for a
KT266 chipset, PC2100DDR ram and an athlon XP 1800+
make sure it's goto udma 100 (ATA)
Don't necessarily get on board graphics - sometimes you are scuppered if you want to buy a dedicated gfx card.

for speed, go for a
KT333 chipset with PC2700DDR and an athlon 2000+

the IBM deskstar drives are quick (for IDE ) and a 60gig drive is 70 quid at the moment.

gfx geforce 3 or 4 - but make sure it's got 'Ti' in the model description. the MXs are like the difference between celerons and P4s.

Fosters

P4 2.2+ gig £400+
Athlon XP 2100+ £250+

Similar performance (Athlon better for windows, P4s seem to be better for games)

For more info, go to www.tomshardware.com

Doc

I would only build my own system if I wanted to do it for fun or if I had old components to reuse as new pc prices are very competitive.

I have just put together an Athlon 1800+ with 512MB DDR on an ABIT KR7A-Raid board and 2 40G Hard disks in a RAID configuration. It handles anything I throw at it but it was not any cheaper than buying a machine from the likes of Mesh or Evesham.

Hanslow

Agree with Doc. Only reason for building systems I can see these days, are for fun, or to get the exact spec you want when you can't find it anywhere.

I've built my last three, but given some offers, would probably just buy off the shelf next time

Mkhan

I always build my own pc’s buying off the shelve is a waste of money.. Crap motherboards with built-in sound cards and normally built-in graphic cards as well which just hog performance. Cheap ram and naff HD’s.

My system is:

M.T. case with dual fans
MSI K7T-266-Pro2
XP 1900+
Coolermaster HHC001 Delta Heat Pipe fan
512meg 2100 cas-2 curial ram
Asus 52x CD rom
Sony Floppy drive
Lite-On 32x12x32 IDE CDRW Burnproof
2 x 20.5Gb Maxtor D540X ATA-133 2MB Cache
Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy
128Mb GeForce 4 Ti4600 TV Out/DVI/VIO (bench marking at 12,645 with 3Dmark2001)
Compaq NIC
Logitech (Mouse & Keyboard)
NEC flat screen monitor
All running on W2K

I do a lot of app. Work ie. Web designing and video work plus play a hell of a lot of online games )

Now where you going to buy that spec off the shelve…

Build it yourself mate

And have fun.......

DominicA

Mkahn, you could buy that sorta crap anywhere if you really want to compromise.....

Original poster - what CPU MBO combo depends on the exact type of work you're gonna be doing. P4 for some things AMD XP for others. IF you go P4, buy a Northwood and only run it with RDRAM. As for the Athlon, buy GOOD branded DDR stuff, not cheap crap. Unless your on a tight budget go for a good quality branded MOBO, Soyo Dragon seems quite good at the mo. As others have said ABIT and ASUS are very good. That MSI thing Mark has got, well, nuff said...haha

DominicA

PS, don't trust Fosters, 266 based boards are crap, you want 266a... sorry Fosters...

bioforger

iTrader: (1)

Fosters, £70 for 60gig! where from?? please.

Fosters

Dabs.com m8.

deskstar 120 61.5gig

bioforger

iTrader: (1)

75+vat £88.12 thanks though.