I know this topic has been covered, but i need the advice of somebody who knows what they are talking about component wise.

I can build one myself, it's just what to build it out of that's difficult.

I need about 2-3 maybe 4 gigs of ram, already have one HD, seagate 120, figure i'll get another 160 or so. I need a good motherboard that's decent at transfering files. Have a monitor and sound system, but need a GREAT sound card. I want to have a kick ass sound card to go with my system 5.1 surround, the whole bit. Graphics card, nothing more than what's needed to play DVD's etc. My ATI radon 9000 seems to be sufficent. I guess a nice video out would be a good thing.

Where I want to go with all this:

I do a ton of photo editing with Adobe CS2 as well as a couple others, so that's the need for ram.

I also want to make an entertainment center out of my comp. Hook it up to the TV so I can watch movies on it and have the 5.1 surround on my speakers. Also with music and what not. Any advice on this would be great.

 

David, does your current graphics card support TV out?
If you are in the least going to game at all, consider getting an AT X800 series card, or the NVIDIA 6600 GT or 6800 GT models.
Both brands support TV out via S Video.
I have details on my PC page under the "TIVO" area at the bottom of my PC page.

One of the best sound cards is the Creative Audigy 2 ZS, it is what I am running right now.
It supports the new DVD Audio discs too, and quite simply they rock.
They sound far better than a normal music CD.

If you are going to use your current speaker setup instead of running cabling from the sound card to the TV like I am doing for my PVR setup, it will sound great with a good 5.1 system.

The motherboard?
I am partial to Asus mother boards.
Now it comes down to whether you want to stick with AGP or the much newer PCI Express bys system.
The PCI Express is the new way, and AGP graphic cards will eventually be phased out, but not yet.
My next upgrade will be an ATI X800 XL card in AGP flavor.

Both the ATI and NVIDIA control panels make TV out very easy to do such as cloning what you see on your PC the same to your TV.

Also I commend you for wanting to build your PC.
They are cheaper and much better than off the shelf store bought PCs as long as you are using good name brand parts.

One of the best places to order up all of your stuff is New Egg.

 

Sweet Corey, thanks!

I do have a TV tuner with my card now and it has TV out via s-vid. I'll end up getting mostly new stuff because my dad is looking for a better computer for home. I still have a bit till I'll really pursue it, but I'll have to do some more reading on the newer PCI express bys system.

 

Usually when I build one, I'll get all of my stuff from www.newegg.com

 

Sweet, yeah I've got all the upgrades on my computer from newegg, they are great! I'm just looking for the right components. Corey mentioned somethings.

I just want to get a good idea of what kind of motherboard I need because that is one point where I have no clue about. It has to support at least, very least 2 gigs of ram, but 4 would be much better.

The HDD's i know where to go with, plus I want to get USB 2.0 and Firewire connections.

Oh, and for the graphics card, I need to go with ATI because I've got a remote for it which works wonders. That is unless somebody would be willing to help me part with it.

2 cd drives would also be nice, just like I have now. I've got a CD-RW type drive and a DVD-RW DVD+RW, bla bla bla and it does dual layer (though that's too damn expensive for the dvd's right now)

I would like a good tower with very nice cooling. I always leave my computer running, and it's in my bedroom. I would love to have it be very quiet so water cooling is a possibility.

I don't pay games at all so I don't have to worry about all that stuff.

 

If you're not going to overclock or game, you're not going to need much cooling. Get one or two good quality, quiet fans and save a ton of money.

Also, getting good RAM can help keep temps down. There's something you're supposed to look compare, but I forgot what. CAS latency comes to mind for some reason.

I would definitely get a tube of Artic Silver 5 or whatever their latest stuff is. That stuff, used properly, works wonders in low temps.

Food for the thought... I once read about a guy who made the "ultimate" cooled rig. He bought some non-conductive liquid, filled a container with it, and submerged his entire motherboard along with all components inside. The container was plumbed to a pump that fed it into a liquid nitrogen thing. He could overclock the hell out of everything and it ran like a champ. That is... until the liquid nitrogen froze the non-conductive liquid and the computer overheated instantly and blew up. However, with the right kinda control over the liquid nitrogen stage, it's very do-able. But also very expensive. I don't recall how much.

Anyway... just babbling a little. Good luck with your project. I find it a little helpful to browse through Newegg.com's wishlists to see what other people build and get some ideas.

 

There was a story on slashdot about a guy filling an aquarium with oil (mineral or vegetable?) and dropping everything but the cdrom & hardives in it. The oil was non-conductive so there were no shorts & it ran very cool & quiet. I think he left the fans running too. /hijack

oly, if it were me I'd go for an amd 64 bit chip. There isn't much software out there right now to really take advantage but I think there will be. They also make it possible to go past the 4gb RAM limit IIRC. What CPU you choose will have a lot to do with which motherboard you can run, as the pin counts are all different. That's the part that always gets me confused, I can never remember what is on the way out & which is the new greatest socket configuration. Have fun!

 

The AMD 64 FX55 chip is the best for gaming, but from all I read in mags and on DSL Reports forums, if he is going to be doing heavey graphics and have other programs running, the Intel running with Hyperthreading on is still the better choice.

That is just not right
Do not mind me, I am getting ready to game here at 7 PM with some others from the forum.

 

Well, I do game, just not on the computer. Good ol' xbox

 

Also, to add, part of the reason I don't play games on the computer is because of the hardware needed. It can get spendy. I'd love to have a ton of money and be able to build a system to do this stuff, but I don't.

Anyways, Corey, you mentioned something about a intel processor? The one in my computer right now is about 2.6 GHz and a pentium 3. I really haven't payed attention to what they are at now.

 

Motherboard wise, I'm pretty partial to Asus. For memory, I usually buy from www.mushkin.com . I say take a look at some Asus boards and see what you think. I've had my current one for at least 5 years and I've not no problems out of that one or the other asus systems I've built.