Quote by bobobobOk i made the same mistake as you but i think i fried something on my motherbored. My computer works fine unless im trying to play games. I should of bought the warenty. BUY THE F**KING WARNTY. trust me.

There is no point to buy the warranty, because by the time the item breaks it's way
pass the warranty period. (If you use it in it's normal condition)
The intel processor (retail only) comes with a 3 year warranty.

As for the Asus barebone well I'm not to sure about its warranty, but
some of their motherboard comes with a 3 year warranty also.

And Kingston RAM comes with lifetime warranty!

Ohh BTW: The chipset used in the Asus barebone Vintage PE1
SIS661FX supports dual-core.

http://www.sis.com/products/sis661fx.htm

Ohh one more thing I had built a PC yesterday with a Intel Pentium 4 630 processor, when entering the BIOS it has the option to enable NX disable bit,
and that motherboard was using a VIA chipset, but I forget the name of that
chipset of the model of the mobo.

Therefore check you BIOS and maybe you may have that option also.

.....what? no Athlon 64 3000+ Venice? you guys offered sammo just too much money to be wasted, if he had budget more than $190, it would be much more worthed for a pentium system.

otherwise, use sempron (socket 754) for a value solution and Athlon 64 3000+ "venice" for mainstream performance in either gaming or photoshop performance. semprons are perfect fit for Barebone.

Pentium are usually for overclockers, which cost more than $200 for extra coolant if they need to run the super hot Pentiun 2.4 C "prescott" which can boil at more than 70 degree celcius in full load when working at 3.2 ghz. (so far, Fooger at xtremesystem.org Overclocked Pentium 2.4 C to friggin 6.6 Ghz in somehwat unstable condition. O_o" )

for motherboard, you can offer him either Gigabyte or Abit (user-friendly, yeah.) that cost less than $200 for Athlon 64 system. -stay way from ASUS or EPOX and DFI LANPARTY series if you are not Overclockers. Foxconn are the best for stablility and performance.
-it's kinda hard for MicroATX, but ECS does have many of them.

Memory....... Kingston did the job, but the Value version of Corsair did the job extra well, but that wasn't made for value purpose. so i recommend V-Gen or Visipro for it (the value thingy, still...it's barebone, right?)

Chipset - many variables for this one, depends on motherboard - you can get either NVIDIA NForce 4 (normal, ultra, SLI), SIS, and VIA. (intel didn't support chipset for AMD, dooh)

video card....Well.....if your motherboard covered PCI-Express, Radeon X550 did the "value purpose" very well, in fact...stock are low because this hardware sells like a hot cake! people love this.
For AGP version, GeForce 6200 did the best in low-end video card. (choose Inno3D and avoid ASUS at all cost, they are too expensive in many factors.)
-Video card are the biggest part of computer...but dont worry, low-end VGA card are small......size.

Sound card - if your motherboard supports onboard soundcard, it wouldn't be necessary to buy PCI-based soundcard, since many of onboard soundcard these days are based on either Karajan or AC97, which in comparable quality with creative soundblaster Audigy 1 & SBlive 24 bit.

Speaker - this is the power of your multimedia, buy a logitech Z series should greatly increase the quality of sound, in which most people told me to.

Hard disk - photoshop? well........a single 200gb WDC SATA hard disk would suits him, since hard disk is the most crucial part for storage.
-if you are lucky, try to find a motherboard that supports RAID 5 (0+1)

Monitor - let sammo decided by himself, and try to buy CRT since the color output are more intensive than LCD monitor.

-power supply - dont use bad-quality power supply! it reduce your computer age's!

warranty - it depends on the user, not the way the hardware works. 80% of the computer trouble that goes to reparation service are usually software problem, it happens in my country.
while 20% other are people who pushes the limit of their processor, like some crazy-a55es who pull off his Athlon Fx 53 to 4.5 Ghz or other, the workload are so full that the results are distressing the other component, like burning some transistors at motherboard, or break the hard disk, some even destroy a chipset since the heat caused by the workload are somewhat too intense, it's just blown. my motherboard once sparks when i overclocked my Pentium 4 2.4 Ghz to 2.8 Ghz, luckily.... only one resistor are burned down in the motherboard, and it was replaceable....some unlucky guy thrashed his motherboard.

-x86-64 architecture (64 bit supporting) is not necessary~~ are you going for some server application or what? theres only few program that runs at 64-bit environment for now, and most of them are for server and workstation uses.

-SSE3 ....... its for 3D application, not much use in photoshop.

-3Dnow! .....as you can see from the title....its for 3D application acceleration, only AMD supports it.

well...that's all my comment...i sorry if any of these are a little offensive for you.

oh, if you are really focusing for photoshop, i suggest you to buy Dual O****** 244 "sledgehammer". It's really fast! trust me.

Stay away from the DFI Lanparty series unless you overclock? I wouldn't say that, granted they are good boards for overclocking, but that also makes them excellent boards at stock speeds. Even if you don't overclock getting an overclockers board almost guarantees stability in your system at stock speeds, cheaper not overclocker boards often aren't built to the same exacting tolerances as a good overclockers board.

I have a very good overclockers motherboard in my Nforce2/Athlon X.P. system (Abit NF7-S v2.0), but I never run the board itself overclocked, it's a Nforce2 ultra 400 chipset and I run it at stock speeds which helps keep my system stable for weeks on end even under the most brutal workloads. It is a myth that overclockers boards aren't for everyone.

*sammo headbutts Radeonator* come quicker next time

o well, money wasn't actually an issue to me, but i still didn't want to spend more than i needed to. since i already ordered all my parts, it looks like 300 out of my pocket (100 for barebone, 200 for processor + aftermarket heatsink). combined with 1gb ram, 9200 ati radeon, and 80 gb of space i should be set *_*

should be enough for an average joe like me, right? i mean, all i do is photoshop and occassionally do 3d renders and eat cake.

Quote: Stay away from the DFI Lanparty series unless you overclock?

well....it's not quite that way, but some people complaining about the complexity of the setup, unless you leave the motherboard setup to someone else. XP

Quote: It is a myth that overclockers boards aren't for everyone.

uh......i guess you are right, ABIT uGuru Control center arent really for overclockers anyway, but most overclockers usually uses Clockgen + CPUid.

Quote: o well, money wasn't actually an issue to me, but i still didn't want to spend more than i needed to. since i already ordered all my parts, it looks like 300 out of my pocket (100 for barebone, 200 for processor + aftermarket heatsink). combined with 1gb ram, 9200 ati radeon, and 80 gb of space i should be set *_*

haha.. but you did say about saving your money, right?

too bad that you already ordered most part, it could be much more fun this way:

uh yeah, athlon 64 rocks! but how about this one? but if you want more performance, buy the 3100+ one, with 256kb L2 cache size.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/sempron-2600.html

and for motherboard....most of ECS's motherboard has quite same performance, but i think this one is quite better....not exactly MicroATX, but there's a variation for that one.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/mainboards/display/ecs-755a2.html

uh yeah.... Radeon 9200 is quite outdated for an AGP card, there's one much better, in both PCI-e and AGP:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/radeon-x1300.html

and for the memory, i can recommend this one, but its your choice...since this baby is quite well run and extremely stable.

http://www.dvhardware.net/review/2856

'bout the hard disk, pick one carefully:

http://www.tomshardware.com/storage/20050927/index.html

Quote: should be enough for an average joe like me, right? i mean, all i do is photoshop and occassionally do 3d renders and eat cake.

yeah, forget about the cake when you are using dual Opteron 275, you cant even blink when it does photoshop or maya bussiness.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/opteron-ws.html

hmm... that's quite a lot of information to take... but if i build another computer (that is, if i have sucess with this one), i'll have better idea of which components to consider

just one slight thing: my barebone kit (which should arrive tommorow \o/) requires this for storage information:

Storage
IDE ATA 2x ATA 133
Serial ATA 2x SATA 150

does that mean as long as my harddrive is IDE Ultra ATA 133 or serial ATA 150 interface, i should be ok?

Quote by sammohmm... that's quite a lot of information to take... but if i build another computer (that is, if i have sucess with this one), i'll have better idea of which components to consider

just one slight thing: my barebone kit (which should arrive tommorow \o/) requires this for storage information:

Storage
IDE ATA 2x ATA 133
Serial ATA 2x SATA 150

does that mean as long as my harddrive is IDE Ultra ATA 133 or serial ATA 150 interface, i should be ok?

Yes as long as your drives interface does not go beyond the stock controller speed then it's okay to use it.

Most HD are ATA100 and it's hardly ATA133

If you have a SATA 3G HD, it let's you configure it back to SATA 150 by
setting a jumper*

*WesterDigital SATA II HD has this feature all others, please
check the their support site.

Ohh one more thing...
SATA II is not SATA 3G

You are welcome, hope you get rich soon, I'm planning to buy a new comp, or the parts to build it, and your money can help me a lot! ^-^

mmmm........ i don't trust intel very much........ i'm very happy with my amd athlon64 2800+ ........ 512mb RAM PC3200.... an ati radeon 9200.... gamer chasis..... all from newegg... athlon64 beats intel in many ways especially games

Quote by YohYou are welcome, hope you get rich soon, I'm planning to buy a new comp, or the parts to build it, and your money can help me a lot! ^-^

*sammo runs away* rofl

but generally speaking, what is the ultimate difference between ATA 133 and SATA 150 interface? which interface should i be leaning more on buying?

Quote by sammohello boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen. my name is sammo and few weeks ago, my computer had the misfortune of getting its processor cache fried. the cause is unknown, but the fact remains that i need a new computer. (i suspect it was the alignment of the planets and the forces of people whom i made fun of for drawing robots during class).

after saving my old computer i had before the new one broke, i now have 2 computer to which i can refer to in using for spare parts... hard drive, power supply (2 250 watters), video card (your average joe ati radeon 9200).. you know, the works. so i thought hey! why throw this away? why not build a computer and use spare parts and save some money and make a computer built for my specification? this sounded like a wonderful idea to me, just like how a man found out that adding ketchup to french fries made its taste much more superior.

there's a slight problem. i dont know anything about hardwares. *overhears people on MT irc channel snicker at him*

ok, so here's the situation: my budget: $300-350 its laughable, but sammo no longer works as a server at his restaraunt, so he needs to cut back on his spendings

i plan to buy a barebone system and build things from there. video card and hard drive should be no problem pretty much, since i have that from my previous computer.

what im really stuck on is the processor. supposing i spend about 100-150 dollars on a barebone kit, it will leave me about another 150-200 to buy processor and ram (that is, if the motherboard is imcompatible with the RAM i have now). with that money, which processor is the best for me, the best for its buck, the best for what i can afford?

straight out, im no gamer. i hardly ever game, and the only time i do is when i play yahoo online games once every blue moon with mt irc-ers. so therefore, i dont really need a SUPER demanding system.

i do, however, do a lot of graphic work (no brainer, right?). i plan to buy 2gb RAM eventually for the computer after i build it, so that's all good. that leaves the processor issue wide open still, so im very much confuddled. people say AMD is better for the bucks, people say intel is more reliable, and im just like uhh i dunno i like ramen ._.

if possible, i would love it if people could goto newegg.com and choose what processor they think is the best for the price that go from 100-170 dollars. if you want to pick out the barebone system that should go with it, that'd be even awesomer too *_*

thank you, your help is greatly appreciated *_*

well if u take computer course then u'll know what does what so that it will save u alot of money in building it. I see that u're mostly into "huge" graphics and this means that it will need a better processor and a bigger ram to run it. The better the processor not often means faster processing but the number of files it can execute during one cycle and the bigger the ram means more data can be stored and waiting to be execute. So it's better to have a better processor it will save your pc from being frozen. that's all the advice i could give u. Hope this helps

Quote by sammo

Quote by YohYou are welcome, hope you get rich soon, I'm planning to buy a new comp, or the parts to build it, and your money can help me a lot! ^-^

*sammo runs away* rofl

but generally speaking, what is the ultimate difference between ATA 133 and SATA 150 interface? which interface should i be leaning more on buying?

ATA 133 are devices that run up to 133mb/s and uses the traditional
EIDE cables. HDs mostly run up to ATA 100 while some will go up to ATA 133.
optical drives mostly don't go up to that high , it's usually ATA33 or ATA66?

SATA 150 is the newer technolgy. The cables are thiner and easier to manage, but
their connector is a PITA it comes out very easily.

Some SATA 3G supports hotswap*

*hotswap requires a SATA port to support hotswap
and the SATA HD needs to be plug with the SATA power and data cables, not
the standard molex power connector.

Hotswap is the ability to unplug a hotswap compatible device without ever to turn off the PC.

If you have a old HD and it's still good, just use it. but if you want a new one
go with SATA, but some controllers will not be supported by XP and therefore
you will need to install the drivers by using a floppy disk.

Quote: Storage
IDE ATA 2x ATA 133
Serial ATA 2x SATA 150

Well...uh, are you really going combine PATA with SATA?

questions about HD, here are some interesting links for you!

link1
link2

well, thanks to all you guys' help, i am now running on my new built comupter... it runs a bit hot, (pretty damn hot) as it idles at 45 degrees celsius, even with the thermaltake jungle heatsink that yoh recommended.... i added the ceramic stuff and everything, but i guess i'll have a computer technician check on everything in general to see if i messed up anywhere. or maybe pentium processors just runs hot... o well :b

but anyways, thanks guys! you were a HUGE HUGE help!

You can try to adjust the fan setting inside the BIOS.
Most Asus motherboard's BIOS has this "Quiet" Feature,
Disable that or see if there is a way to increase the fan RPM, but still
keep the "Quiet" feature enables.

When the "Quite" feature is disable, that PC will sound like a jet engine taking off.

hmm... it didn't have the quiet feature, but strangely enough, on the bios, it says my CPU temp is 45 degrees celsius... when i go on windows and load up a program called speedfan, it tells me that it's actuallt 35 degree celsius. kinda confused as to what value i should go with

hmm... it also seems like i need a video card, because i noticed that video files skip a lot on my computer... any recommendation for AGP 4x/8x with +1.5 V specification?

Not your video card....its the ram. Bump it up and it'll fix the jumpy vids....

Here is what I am running:

Winfast Moboard (IDE and SATA) with NVidia chipset
Athlon 64 Processor 3000+
2x 400Mhz, 512Mb DDRam (1 Ghz of ram)
NVidia GeForce 5500 PCI Graphics Card
37gb Raptor Drive
2x 120 Gb Maxtor Drives
Linksys Wireless PCI card
Linksys Etherfast LNE500 PCI card
430w Tagan Power Supply

My motherboard supports an addition 3 SATA connections, so I'll be adding 3 300gb drives to them too......

LigerZSchinder might be right, your Radeon 9200 is good enough.
BTW: How much ram you have on your system?

As for your barebone kit. it's the Asus Vintage PE1 am I correct?

Your barebone does have a "quite" feature.
In the BIOS located under the "Power" tab inside
"Hardware Monitor".

It's not called "quite" but name as something else.

Look into your manual and you shall see it.

If you are not familar with the BIOS, then I suggest you to leave it alone.

yeah a Radeon 9200 is enough, he needs to increase is ram....it'll keep Windows from messing with the virtual memory when playing video files. It'll use the Physical memory ( your RAM) instead.

merged: 11-14-2005 ~ 11:27am

Quote by sammoah, yosh... damn, so i ended up spending 170 on that stupid processor after all... it better be fast as hell

ok ok, one more question! (my god sammo, you want more answers!?)'

ok, so my barebone kit has this requirement for memory:
Memory slot 2x 184Pin
Memory Type Supported DDR333/400
Max Memory Supported 2GB
Dual Channel Memory Supported Yes

which i totally understand (or think i understand). imi planning to get 2 1gb stick so i can fully maximize max memory supported on my barebone kit... but what is:
cas latency
ECC
registered/unbuffered
timing
and how do these 4 really tie in with compatibility, speed, etc?

if you want, please feel free to recommend me a good 1 gb ram stick... ur.. please

DDR333/400 . There is your problem. What is the Mb you DDRs carry? 400Mhz is fine but the 333Mb seems a bit low for what you are doing. Are you streaming your videos, or are they stored in your HDD? If you are streaming the videos, its your bandwidth! If you are watching them from your HDD, then increase the RAM!

merged: 11-14-2005 ~ 11:34am

Quote by sammowell, thanks to all you guys' help, i am now running on my new built comupter... it runs a bit hot, (pretty damn hot) as it idles at 45 degrees celsius, even with the thermaltake jungle heatsink that yoh recommended.... i added the ceramic stuff and everything, but i guess i'll have a computer technician check on everything in general to see if i messed up anywhere. or maybe pentium processors just runs hot... o well :b

but anyways, thanks guys! you were a HUGE HUGE help!

How many fans you have in your case? You should have at least two in the power supply, one on the CPU one on your graphics card (if the card has one) and one in your case. Three is good but two is gonna make it hot. Also your ATA, IDE and Floppy cables, are they ribbon or round? Judging that this may be your first build, they are flat. You should invest in round IDE, Floppy and ATA cables; they takes up less room and don't confine the heat buildup inside your case. Also your case should be well ventilated. You should be able to touch your case with the back of your hand and it will be cold. Then again you can go for the water cooled system.

So its 45 degres hot? I have always seen my comp with active monitor at 40's Round cables are a good option and for the video card I dont think its that. Maybe downloading some new drivers can fix that, like the omega drivers

i built mine...its decent...better than those in the stores...if only i had more wolongs...i could hav a super comp

Quote by lilabyssiniani built mine...its decent...better than those in the stores...if only i had more wolongs...i could hav a super comp

Yes, if you have a loooottttt moooorrrreeee woooloonnggsss. An personal supercomputer starts out at aprox $10,000 and up

It's called the Orion MultiSystems.

There is one model that contains
96 processors @ 1.2Ghz
192gb of ram
9.6TB of hard drive space.

http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=231
http://www.orionmulti.com/

So Doom3, F.E.A.R., Final Fantasy series, Serious Sam2, Age of empire, black and white2, Civilization 4,Call of Duty2, Half Life 2 lost coast, and Battle Field 2 anyone?

Ok i made the same mistake as you but i think i fried something on my motherbored. My computer works fine unless im trying to play games. I should of bought the warenty. BUY THE F**KING WARNTY. trust me.