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Oh, we can still get ripped off if we don't know how much the parts are supposed to cost,

If you buy them retail, say from FUTURESHOP, STAPLES, or Best Buy, prices will be about the same.  Just watch for sales.  One week, one store will sell it for a lower price, with or without a rebate.  If you don't mind rebates, then get it-- I like STAPLES because I can do it online, and I get them much faster.

Read the weekly flyers.

Local computer stores tend to ask more or lesser money because they are not mainstream, asking prices nearer wholesale, their parts being more OEM.  OEM is cheaper because they are bought in bulk, and don't come in retail boxes.  Again, here it is buyer beware, as long as you know what you're looking for.   

or even what parts we need if we want the thing to work for more than six months.

You get what you pay for.  You cut corners, you'll get it in the end.

Well-known retail parts are guaranteed higher quality.  Their name has been around forever, so it's something you can trust.  Microsoft and Logitech (mice and keyboards, webcams, joysticks, etc.) are well crafted stylistically for comfort and stand behind their stuff.  Dynex and Belkin are lower end, for people that only have a few bucks in their pocket-- not great (in eye appeal and use), but it'll get you where you're going.

We got a quote from a place that will sell us the parts and put them together, and our techie friends say the guy who runs it can be trusted,

Go to many places and get 2nd, 3rd, and 4th opinions.  Do the research yourself-- if he asks $120 for a 160G hard drive, ask for the brand name (like Western Digital) and how long the warranty (is it 1, 3, or 5 years-- through him or go solely to the company), and compare the price with other places-- if cheaper, ask him to match it.  9 times out of 10 he will.  

Ask for the brand names of all the parts he's selling you-- and I mean everything.   Is the motherboard Asus, Gigabyte, or ECS?  Is the RAM Kingston, Corsair, or (yuck) cheap Azen?  Is the DVD burner, LG, Sony, or Plextor?  Each part has its own warranty and toll free number.

Even get a good deal on the PC case-- is it black or ivory, how many USB ports in the front, is it plastic or aluminum bezel, is the power supply  included and higher than 350W and by Antec, Enermax, or Sparklepower?  Antec, BTW, has a 5 year warranty.

Some places charge by the hour for assembly.  My buddy up here does it for free, because he makes his money mostly by selling the parts. 

but I'd still like to take along someone who can actually talk intelligently to him and get us what we need,

Ask for a parts list, with prices and brand names clearly writtten.  Read the weekly flyers.  If something seems over priced, like the keyboard or mouse, or it is better elsewhere, buy it from another store. 

Hell, five years ago I could have done this myself. But technology has kept moving and I haven't kept up. :-/

Hell, years ago we had to preset our motherboards before putting on the CPU, thus clocking it correctly, using jumpers and flipping tiny switches with a pen or toothpick.   Now, we just slap everything on, and play.

Everything now has gotten easier, and colour co-ordinated.  

Hardware wise, nothing has changed-- you still use the same parts now as you did 10 years ago.  Mouse, keyboard, printer, hard drive, DVD burner, and so on.  The only thing that has changed is software, and that everything runs faster with added bells and whistles.   

--TT 

Here is my MacPro running Boot Camp with Windows XP, running 3ds Max rendering a scene, and... oh look! 4 processors running at once. Isn't that the coolest thing ever! 4 processors.

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TheTransla:

Here is my MacPro running Boot Camp with Windows XP, running 3ds Max rendering a scene, and... oh look! 4 processors running at once. Isn't that the coolest thing ever! 4 processors.

I'd o' thought you'd be getting a G5.  Tsk, tsk, someone needs to upgrade.

 

--TT 

Yea, I might as well, since I have to wait for Adobe to come up with the Studio upgrade for Universal Binary. Right now Photoshop and Illustrator are crashing always, so am waiting till April. For now, my Mac is a windows machine running Windows Photoshop, Illustrator, Macromedia etc.

So am I King of the Castle? 

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Thanks for the advice TT. We've been doing our research, and this will definitely help.

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OK, techie friends have been consulted, parts have been ordered, system should be built by Wednesday.

Can't top ya TT, but I can come close:

ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe motherboard 

AMD Duo Core, 4600+

Check.

2GIG RAM DDR2 667

Check.

500G Hard Drive

320G; good enough for me.

ATI X1950Pro

XFX 7950GT here.

Sony DVDRW 18x burner, onboard sound card for now, room for a second graphics card later if necessary, and that pretty much covers it. Just gotta buy the OS now. Damn, it'll be good to have a better machine than this POS I'm using now.

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All I have is a HAL 9000.  I'm going to keep it for the time being since it does play a good game of chess and it does sing well.  The only real problem is that it has trouble with opening and closing of the doors at the appropriate time.

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20 minutes into the future.

In fact, very, very good.

There's that three letter word b-u-t coming in...

ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe motherboard

Have you read the review for this board?  It's right here: http://www.techspot.com/review/2-asus_m2n32-sli_deluxe/

Duo Lan,  Silent copper pipe cooling, SLI-- this is a gaming board.  Are you into games?

I think you must know what SLI is-- if not, for those reading here, its where you can have two NVIDIA video cards running as one for greater speed.  Are you going to need SLI? 

 
XFX 7950GT here.

Ooooh, an NVIDIA 7900 series card.  Spankin'!   Now I know you're a gamer.    Might I suggest Need for Speed Carbon, for your first official game?

 320G; good enough for me.

Might I suggest the Western Digital Enterprise YS series?  It gives a 5 year warranty, and specifically designed for servers, so you know it will last for a very long time. 

 
Sony DVDRW 18x burner, onboard sound card for now, room for a second graphics card later if necessary, and that pretty much covers it.

I got the LG-H22L with lightscribe.  Got it cheap too-- $36 each for 2. 

Your soundcard is fine.  Get yourself Logitech z5300 5.1 surround sound speakers-- or maybe, the X-540s. 

Just gotta buy the OS now.

Too bad you didn't buy XP home upgrade last year-- Picked one up for $89 at a STAPLES sale.

Damn, it'll be good to have a better machine than this POS I'm using now.

Better nothin'-- freakin' sweet!  What you have is an enthusiasts' computer.     That's a lot of power you're playing with there, missy.

Whoever designed your computer did a great job, but if you're not into gaming and such it might be too much for mainstream needs.

Then again, if you have the $$, you can never have to much. 

 

--TT 

Hehehehe, there's always a "but!" We won't be using it right away, but we did want to have that second video card capability for down the road. I seem to upgrade video cards more often than anything else, so that could be a real bonus in the event we need more speed before the new generation becomes affordable.

Yeah, between Tom's RPGs and my adventure stuff, we have a stack of games sitting here that won't run on our current system, and an even bigger stack on the shopping list. I don't think that'll be a problem again for a while.

Actually, I think the parts guy was kind of disappointed that we went so high-end. He was probably hoping we'd come down on some things so we'd have to upgrade them in a few months and he'd make more money off us.   But everything was run past three different people, all of whom know a hell of a lot more than we do about this (I'm more of a software person; hardware confuses me) and none of whom stand to benefit from our purchase decisions, so we're pretty confident.

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How long will it be before I have to upgrade my computer again? I have a AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Dual Core(so basically 4 Ghz), 1 GIG of DDR Ram, and a Geforce 7800 OC PCI-e. I don't care if I have every uber eye-candy option going, I just want to know if I can play upcoming games with a modicum of quality.

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How long will it be before I have to upgrade my computer again?

Until, your needs change. 

I have a AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Dual Core(so basically 4 Ghz), 1 GIG of DDR Ram, and a Geforce 7800 OC PCI-e.

Actually, it's only 2 GHz, and you have only a 939, if I'm not mistaken.  I know this because you say you have 1 GIG of DDR Ram, not DDR2, otherwise you'd be running an AM2 940 pin socket computer.

LOL, I don't think AMD has ever made any of their CPUs with a clock speed that high.  

Hmmm, a BFG 7800 series video card.  Not bad.  Not a fan of those OC (over clocking cards), but eh, BFG always over clocks them-- not harmful, because it's only a small setting, but still...

I don't care if I have every uber eye-candy option going, I just want to know if I can play upcoming games with a modicum of quality.

You'll be able to play games for a long time with that.  However, come Q1 (first quarter of the year, this Spring), they're switching over to Quad Core (AM2), so you'll be two generations behind.  And, they're coming out with directX 10 (Vista), all the newer games will be running it with greater improvement-- it'll be a while until that comes in so I'd say if you wanted to I'd give you 6 months to a year before you'd wanna consider upgrading the video card.  Just remember: when a new video card is released, it will be better-- faster frame rates/acceleration, newer technology like Pixel Shader 3.0, and so on.  Depends if you wanna junk your card and get something recent.  Right now, it's the 8800 NVIDIA that's out there, the first of its line to support directX 10.

If you wanted to upgrade your motherboard, I'd say wait until Quad Core comes out before upgrading to that.

Overall, I'd say wait until your computer breaks, or when you feel its time because your (newer) games are running slower. 

--TT 

And you can't go wrong with more RAM. But that's easy to add.

Oh, I forgot to mention - my new case will have neat LED glowy things. Purely cosmetic and didn't add to the cost, but cool nonetheless.

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TheTransla:

How long will it be before I have to upgrade my computer again?

Until, your needs change. 

I have a AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Dual Core(so basically 4 Ghz), 1 GIG of DDR Ram, and a Geforce 7800 OC PCI-e.

Actually, it's only 2 GHz, and you have only a 939, if I'm not mistaken.  I know this because you say you have 1 GIG of DDR Ram, not DDR2, otherwise you'd be running an AM2 940 pin socket computer.

LOL, I don't think AMD has ever made any of their CPUs with a clock speed that high.  

Hmmm, a BFG 7800 series video card.  Not bad.  Not a fan of those OC (over clocking cards), but eh, BFG always over clocks them-- not harmful, because it's only a small setting, but still...

I don't care if I have every uber eye-candy option going, I just want to know if I can play upcoming games with a modicum of quality.

You'll be able to play games for a long time with that.  However, come Q1 (first quarter of the year, this Spring), they're switching over to Quad Core (AM2), so you'll be two generations behind.  And, they're coming out with directX 10 (Vista), all the newer games will be running it with greater improvement-- it'll be a while until that comes in so I'd say if you wanted to I'd give you 6 months to a year before you'd wanna consider upgrading the video card.  Just remember: when a new video card is released, it will be better-- faster frame rates/acceleration, newer technology like Pixel Shader 3.0, and so on.  Depends if you wanna junk your card and get something recent.  Right now, it's the 8800 NVIDIA that's out there, the first of its line to support directX 10.

If you wanted to upgrade your motherboard, I'd say wait until Quad Core comes out before upgrading to that.

Overall, I'd say wait until your computer breaks, or when you feel its time because your (newer) games are running slower. 

--TT 

Poop. Sounds like I have a junky computer.

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WooHoo! It finally arrived, my Freakin Awesome 30" Dell Monitor (Running with a ATI X1900XT graphics card)

2560 x 1600 pixels or 4,096,000 pixels. 25" x 15.75"

One sour note is Dell reduced the price by $300 the same day my monitor arrived. So that sucked. But now you can get a 30" monitor for $1399 CDN. How cool is that.

Here is a pic with my MacPro running MacOSX Tiger and Windows XP with Parallels. Yes, that is a 3d Serenity model I'm playing with in 3dsMax. (See a few posts up of pic of taskmanager showing 4 processors being used in Boot Camp).

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Holy hell, that's amazing. I can just imagine how far you must have to sit from that.

My new computer is here, but I haven't set it up yet. Still waiting on the OS. I'm stubbornly refusing to install Vista on it and I (er) don't have CDs for the copy of XP I'm running on this machine, so I'm tracking down a copy of XP Pro elsewhere. Once that gets here, I will be having lots of fun - in the meantime I have a cool looking box on my living room floor.

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