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The PC-building/hardware knowledge thread

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dennis:
What's wrong with Tom's Hardware?

Had a couple of fit issues with my build, but nothing a ten inch bastard file couldn't fix. The retaining clip for the tuniq tower 120 was a little too wide and wouldn't fit between the chipset heatsinks. Everything went into the P182 ok, eventually. The cable management in that case is excellent. I have most of the cables running behind the mobo tray. I'll post photos later. Currently reinstalling some steam games.

est:
Nice gear picks, Dennis.  I am hopefully about to do a bit of a hardware refresh myself.  It's my birthday in uh, oh shit, 8 days I guess.   Huh, cool.  Anyway, I am planning some kind of hardware update for my birthday.

Currently have Antec 900 case, Antec 1000w psu, nForce 650i-based mobo, Core duo2 E6750 (2.66ghz), 4gb ram, Radeon 4870 512mb and a coulpe of hdds.  It's a decent enough machine, but the cpu and mobo are getting on a bit.  Gonna definitely be getting a 150gb Velociraptor and I already have a new case, but here's the rest of the planned spec:

Antec Mini-P180 case - already have
Antec TruPower 1000w psu - already have
DFI LanParty Jnr P45 mATX mobo - to buy (best mATX mobo I can find at the moment)
Core2 duo E8500 (3.16ghz) cpu - to buy (don't want to go quad yet, not worth it for what I use it for - ie: games)
4 gb ram - already have (future plan is to go to 8gb, but not at the moment)
Radeon 4870 512mb - already have
WD Velociraptor 150gb - to buy

So like I said, the current upgrade is the new hdd for about $250.  The mobo is about $230 and the cpu is about $280, so I am looking at between $750 and 800 if I want to upgrade all three at the same time (which would make sense really, seeing as I will need to re-install for the hdd and probably for the mobo.)

dennis:
My build photos!

example:

bluerobin427:
I'm liking that sub-$500 system.  I'm starting to look around for what's good in computers (I feel so out of the loop and I've only not been paying attention for about 7 or 8 months) because I'm pretty desperately in need of a gaming computer upgrade.  The one I'm using is about 4 and a half years old, so almost anything's an upgrade, but I wasn't sure how much I'd have to spend.  I WAS thinking about spending more than $500, but I'd need a monitor and an OS (for some reason my brain's not Linux friendly so I'm sticking with Windows), which would bring it up closer to the $1000-$1200 range that I was thinking about.  Still, what would your first recommendations on upgrades for that system be? 

EDIT: I guess I should say I'm pretty handy with the software side of computers but my hardware experience is sorely lacking.  I'm planning on building it myself and I've been around/helped other people build so I know enough to not screw it up (hopefully anyway).  That's my main reason for asking.  My big fear is that I'll order stuff, try and put it together, and it won't start because parts are incompatible or something like that.  Not really a huge deal if I know what's wrong, but it'd still be annoying.

Also, do you guys have recommendations for good wireless cards/adapters?  It doesn't have to be awesome because I'm just in an apartment and the router's pretty central, but I really want the connection to be reliable. 

dennis:
My video card recommendation for a sub $500 system is the Geforce 9600. You can find one for about $100 and they perform very well. For a little more, you can move up to the 9800, but you get less bang for the buck.

What is your current system and what components are you thinking about replacing?

In a 4+ year old system, you've probably got an AGP mobo, and AGP video cards are obsolete and hard to find (and expensive). For about $60-100 you can find a decent budget mobo in either LGA775 (Intel Core 2) or Socket AM2 (AMD Athlon and Phenom procs). You'll need 2 gigs of RAM minimum, and luckily DDR2 is dirt cheap lately, so look at about $30 for a 2 gig matched pair kit of PC6400 or PC5300. You can probably keep your hard drives, but I find it's easier and still cost-effective to just get a new HD at that point since a clean install of Windows is highly recommended if you're switching out so many components. $60 will buy you a good 320-500 GB SATA2 drive.

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