Making My Own Computer

[Heretic121]

depends on what you want the system for... if its for gaming i can give you some very specific parts and prices, and can narrow it down within $100 bucks of what you want to spend... that comes to the second part... what do you want to spend??? also if you want to spend the extra for SATA HD's and PCI-express

Gaming Rig -
ASUS "P5GD2 Deluxe" 915P Chipset Motherboard For Intel LGA 775 CPU
Intel LGA 775 Pentium 4 520 2.8 GHz, 800MHz FSB, 1MB L2 Cache, Hyper Threading Technology
CORSAIR XMS2 Pro Series Dual Channel Kit 240-Pin 1GB(512MB x 2) DDR2 PC2-5400
2 Western Digital 120GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive, Model WD1200JD
ASUS ATI RADEON X800 XT Platinum Edition Video Card, 256MB GDDR3, 256-Bit, Dual DVI/VIVO, PCI-E, Model "EAX800XT/PE/2DHTV/256"

thats just about my system but i dont have PCI xpress...same company on all the parts and i have no complaints so far... (btw thats just about the top of the line right now)

[Tom Bottiglieri]

I recommend either getting 2 hard drives, or at least partitioning your drive into 2. This is very helpful because you can install windows on one drive and put all your data on the other, and if anything ever goes screwy, you can reformat the main drive and still keep your data! (I use C: as my apps drive, and D: and E: as storage and backup.)

Also if I were you, I would go with a 10k rpm hard drive as a main system and program files drive. These are mucccch faster than the normal 7200 rpm drives you may be used to and applications load much faster off them. It may be a little more expensive, but is worth it in the long run because applications that require more memory are always coming out.. and who wants to load them off a slow hard drive?! (My friend has a raptor 10k and a amd 64 bit 939 pin... he can reinstall windows in 5 minutes lol.)

Linky for Raptor 10k

[Ryan Dognaux]

Thank you everyone for their comments thus far.

With the barebones kit I mentioned in the start of the thread, I've been told that the motherboard is a good motherboard, but of course I don't know for sure.

I would actually prefer an Athlon over an Intel, but I could go either way.

I agree w/ the video card thing, I don't really want the latest thing, just a good one. I don't see why the barebones kit is a bad idea, it takes the hassle out of finding many parts and gives you somewhere to start.