HEy well I finally decided to build my own computer from scratch. I found this one at FRY's for $149.99 with a $40 mail in rebate which I have already mailed off. Anyways I'm going to start with the motherboard and the guy at FRY's suggested since I'm going to be playing games mostly to go with a socket 775 with pci express. Is that a good mother board? Also what other parts do you guys reccomend? Thanks

 

Looks like Thermaltake Tsunami, nice case. IMO, Id go with an Intel. Im prone to Abit motherboards also. 775 and PCI-Ex is the way to go. ATI makes a good PCI-Ex video card. Make dam sure you get good memory too. PQI Turbo, OCZ and Corsair are my suggestions. If you get a really new board you will have to get DDR-2 memory. Havent checked the price on it lately but it might be a bit more than plain old DDR. Also, if you are a big overclocker you are gonna have to ditch the stock cooler. It will do for light to mild gaming and such. But it is still a lacking cooler. ThermalRight makes by far the best chip coolers. Although Zalman has come out with a pretty nice one not too long ago, all copper, big 120mm fan. When you get your processor, scrape the **** thermal compound from the bottom of the stock cooler. Do not use it! Buy yourself some Arctic Silver 5 and use that instead. It isnt much fun to apply. But after a few heat cycles it fully cures and transfers heat much better than the stock crap.

 

to what 99silver5.3 said.
I have an Asus board with a P4 2.4GHz CPU. It plays Doom 3, NFSU 1 and 2, HL2, and many other games with no choppiness at all with all the graphics options turned up. Of course I have a 256MB ATI Radeon 9800 Pro video card and a Gig of DDR RAM...both cost an arm and a leg ($1000) but it's worth it. Do NOT skimp on a video card and/or RAM if you're a serious gamer...
As far as OC-ing, you don't need to do that if you get a good processor(CPU) speed...like I said I have a 2.4GHz(not OC-ed) and all my games play perfectly.
Have fun and let us know what you intend to do!

 

hey Chingon, would these be good motherboards to start with? Which one would you choose?
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...740705121&rd=1
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...MakeTrack=true
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...MakeTrack=true
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...MakeTrack=true
There are more that I found but that would take up many pages. Also what does the "socket" of the mother board mean, does the larger th number mean it can hold more info/RAM? Thanks for the help guys

 

The socket is the plug in part of the board that accepts the processor. Sockets have holes for the CPU pins, and each type of CPU has a different pin configuration. THat why your Pentium2 board won't take a pentium4 chip (or AMD). You buy the board for the processor family you plan on running.

AMD Athlon 64 is the best bang for the buck.

Nice case.

Be prepared to spend a few bucks on the video card. Whatever you do, make sure its DirectX 9 compatible. That means its up to date and should be able to handle most of the current games for a little while. DX 8 cards would work, but its features are already outdated.

Have a read at www.tomshardware.com to so a little research. Thats an old school internet site.

 

is a 64 MB video card a good gaming card?

 

The ram on the card isn't everything. Its the processor thats running it. You need an Nvidia or ATI card. Pick one of their budget cars that have direct X 9 support. It may be a 64 meg card, but it also may end up being a 128mb card.

Check out the frys ad from today. They usually have good deals listed on Fridays.

 

I would get any one of those except the second one. The last one I don't know about that motherboard, so I would probably pick the first or third one. Personally, I think I would go with the third one
Listen to what BigTex said, AMD is the best bang for the buck, but I've always been partial to Intel/Pentium. Just a preference thing I guess.
About the video cards, get at least a 128MB vid card. I never liked Nvidia, had problems with them in the past(I used to work for a PC Repair shop in college, so I dealt with thousands of computers, pre-built like Dell and also home-built ones), so I've always used ATI. Like BigTex said, you need DirectX 9 support.
I bought all my stuff from Fry's because I can always take it back to them personally, I wouldn't want to have problems with hardware over eBay

 

hey thats the case I have. it's nice looking with the blue leds on it. the amd is cheaper than the intel. they also do better on video games. you could get a AMD 64 3200 socket 939. think they make it in 939. Get some dual channel ddr ram 1gb. I got patriot mem runnin 2-2-2-5. if you dont want to spend much on video card, but want good performance. Get the nvidia 6600 GT. Every reviewer says its the best bang for the buck card right now. its only like 200. I got it, but the agp version. doom 3 and hl2 are nice!!!

 

I bought an ATI radion 9800 pro last year off ebay. It worked, but had been overclocked before and any 3D graphics caused the system to crash. Seller screwed me saying "as is". Paypal buyer protection screwed me because the seller did send something, even if it wasn't working.

Stick with Frys. Oh yeah, don't buy anything from Frys that has been opened before and returned. Make sure its new.