by
genevh » Mon May 05, 2008 11:10 pm
I've been building my own PC's for the last several years and firmly believe its the way to go for someone willing to learn a little about how they go together. They are easier to put together than you may think and it doesn't take a college degree to do, either. It may be a little more expensive if you're building the entire thing, at least the first time around, but once you have everything you can then just upgrade one piece at a time later on. And you control the quality of what goes in, not Dell or HP, or whomever. The "off the shelf" PCs can be real cheap for a reason.
My philosophy has always been to get the most you can afford at the time, but leave some room for growth later on if you need it. Swapping out a smaller HD for a larger is not that difficult, and with the prices of HD's being as cheap as they are ( and getting cheaper ) is an easy upgrade. And the advice for an external backup is excellent. Losing all your stuff because you had no back up plan is painful. Also, if buying new, go with a SATA drive system. They are cheaper and faster than the older IDE drives are.
Max out your memory. You can never have too much. The max XP can really use is 3G. Vista can go higher, but you will reach a point of diminishing returns. 4G with Vista should be enough.
If I were building one from scratch today, with a new motherboard, I would also seriously consider a quad core processor. Not so much for speed, but for the ability to multi-task. The more you can spread out the workload, the better. And as far as processor brand is concerned, between AMD and Intel, you can't go wrong with either one. Unless you're a real techie and into processor specs, Intel is currently winning the processor wars. But, they are also a bit more expensive. I've been using AMD for years and have never had any problems. And if you read the motherboard specs, you can get one that leaves room for processor upgrades also. The MB I currently have originally started out as a single core processor board, but later, with a BIOS upgrade, it became a dual core board capable of running the fastest dual core AMD 939 processor available.
Get the biggest power supply you can afford. I currently have a 700 watt in my machine and its never given me a bit of trouble.
If all you're doing is working on pictures and cruising the internet, email, and the like, you won't need the fanciest video card out there. Unless you like to play some of the newer games, otherwise a good middle of the road card should be fine. I am also quite partial to wide screen monitors now, too.
Your biggest expense with building your own PC though; initially, will be your software. Especially your OS. But, once you have it, its yours and you can move it to another machine when you upgrade. I have a retail upgrade version of XP if you're interested. I upgraded to XP Pro about a year ago and this other disk is just gathering dust now.
And now, after all that, if you decide to go the Dell or HP route, all the above still applies. Decide what you want in the machine to start with, and then start your shopping. However, if you want one with XP, you will need to hurry. Last I heard MS was going to stop the sales of machines with XP pre-installed this summer. In June, I think.