New Computer?

[rowyn]

I'm thinking about getting a new computer. Lut has offered to put one together for me, so the theory is to buy all the computer-bits and have him assemble them into a working machine. We don't currently plan to scavenge much from my existing computer, apart from peripherals (keyboard, monitor, trackball.) My 3d videocard, motherboard, and existing RAM all need to be replaced for any kind of meaningful upgrade, my powersupply and fan are already somewhat iffy (especially the fan), I don't have a DVD drive ... we're at the point where just building a new one seems to make the most sense.

Even though I'm planning to get a whole new machine, I do not want to buy an off-the-shelf box from a major chain. The one experience we've had with that (getting an NEC from CompUSA) was bad.

I'm assuming that buying parts and building it will be the cheapest route. I should probably check that assumption once I know what I'm building. There is a local store that will assemble machines to spec, too, so if it turns out the price difference is small, I met yet go that way.

Anyway, I'm posting this to ask advice from all my techie friends. I don't want to get a top-of-the-line machine, but I do want a machine that will still meet minimum specs on most new games two years from now. (My current computer has lasted me three years, so I don't think that's unrealistic). These are the things I want to know:

1) Brands and parts to avoid or look for. What experiences have you had with, say, AMD CPUs or Voodoo video cards? What're the best values? What looks like a good value but is really a total dog? Etc.

2) Companies to avoid or use. If you've had a good or bad experience with buying from a particular chain, online store, or mail-order place, that'd be helpful to know.

3) Any other useful advice. :)

Comments

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

GeForce 3 or 4 is probably the way to go... Avoid the MX, they are the consumer versions and are essentially crippled compared to their bigger brothers. Once your CPU speed is over Athlon 1GHz or Pentium-4 1500MHz or so, the card is what makes the difference.

Athlons are bigger power-suckers than Pentium-4s so yuo will need a 400watt power supply for one. But they do have superior floating point, and better performance per clock cycle by a factor of about 1.5 than Pentium-4s... Which is why the Athlon-XPs are rated in 'performance numbers' that match pretty much the equivalent P-4 rating, i.e. an Athlon XP 2000 processor isn't really running at 2GHz, it's 1.667GHz or so. But I like Athlons better in general; for a long time they were the performance leaders, and they are still price/performance leaders.

Building a machine is painful, and it's probably better to find a shop that will assemble and test the machine for you, otherwise you will need to deal with (potentially) returning parts that don't work. But it can be a useful learning experience as well, so you can deal with things like adding extra memory or hooking up a new hard drive in the future.

My computers, the last and the current, were both built by Central Computer which is fortuituously local to me, using the parts I spec'd and adding no additional labor charge. I haven't had any reason to pop either open or get either repaired.