Best parts for building a computer...

[N1LAF]

What is the best motherboards to get these days? Asus? Gigabyte?

Add on sound card or are built-in sound just as good?

DVD+/-R drives?

Hard drives - Western Digital? Seagate? Maxtor?

[n6hcm]

honestly? it's nearly all commodity parts. bits is bits. seagate and maxtor are made in the same plants by the same people. i never see any wd disks in enterprise product.

a bit part of this depends on how you plan on using the resulting computer (obviously windows has the best exposure for some kinds of drivers, linux may be better for legacy support) ... you gotta be more specific.

[W4GPL]

It is an extremely loaded question, not intentionally.. I'm sure. It's like going to a NASCAR race and asking Ford, Chevy, or Dodge? There are so many options and so many purposes at this point, without narrowing down your specific needs it may be an unanswerable query. As 'HCM mentioned, so much of this stuff is made at the same place and simply rebranded.

Personally, I'm an Intel (CPU & chipset), Western Digital, Nvidia guy.. but that's primarily because that particular combo hasn't burned me lately. The 6 core Phantoms from AMD look very appealing, especially for someone into virtualization like you are.

I've always found Intel chipsets to present less problems with Linux, but even that is an extremely subjective statement.

At the end of the day, using my best judgment from the latest NewEgg.com reviews is probably the best way to determine the greatest value at this very moment.

[N1LAF]

It is an extremely loaded question, not intentionally.. I'm sure. It's like going to a NASCAR race and asking Ford, Chevy, or Dodge? There are so many options and so many purposes at this point, without narrowing down your specific needs it may be an unanswerable query. As 'HCM mentioned, so much of this stuff is made at the same place and simply rebranded.

Personally, I'm an Intel (CPU & chipset), Western Digital, Nvidia guy.. but that's primarily because that particular combo hasn't burned me lately. The 6 core Phantoms from AMD look very appealing, especially for someone into virtualization like you are.

I've always found Intel chipsets to present less problems with Linux, but even that is an extremely subjective statement.

At the end of the day, using my best judgment from the latest NewEgg.com reviews is probably the best way to determine the greatest value at this very moment.

Good post. I am looking for experiences and problems with todays components. I have a couple of Seagate Free agent USB drives (the bigger sizes) and it seems in colder temperatures 60 to 65, they do not want to work right away. Plug the drive in and it will go click click click click and it may or may not connect in. After three or four tries, it will connect. So I will avoid Seagate drives.

I will be sticking with intel Chipset, WD drives, and NVidia cards. FULL XP compatibility is a must! I fully intent to multi boot the next computer, at least with XP and Windows 7 (don't like 7, but no fool either).

I am looking for solid, quality components.

Forgot about newegg.. thanks!

[KC2UGV]

I also vote for the Intel Board and CPU + NVidia. I differ on the Maxtor suggestion. I'd go with Seagate.

But, I don't think there's any real reason to say "YEAH SEAGATE! And everyone else go to hell!". I just prefer Seagates, only because I see them everywhere in servers, all day long. And, EMC uses them in their storage line.

Onboard or offboard sound? What do you plan on doing sound wise? Watching YouTube and playing MP3's? On board works for that. Are you an audiophile? Off board. Sound card digi modes? I've had great luck with on board ones, some people swear against them.

DVD drives? Sony or Samsung. They "Always work". I've had issues with Lite-On drives, although the issues are few and far between.

[kf0rt]

Good advice here ...

Last several systems I've built have been Intel chipset / CPU, Gigabyte or Asus MB, WD hard drives. Optical drives appear to be pure commodity. Always hated ATI video, so I'll stick with the crowd on Nvidia.

I did build one system with a Gigabyte MB and AMD CPU (3GHz dual core). It's my "home theater" PC, so nothing special except that the MB has HDMI output (that's real common these days). Runs tiny-XP and I went with AMD to keep costs down. The on-board video is ATI and that's really my only complaint about that box. ATI video has always been finicky for me and this one's no exception.

I think the AMD stuff is really 100% compatible these days. A lot of folks prefer it over Intel, and it is a lot less expensive.

Haven't built a new i3/i5/i7 system yet, and it'll probably be awhile; don't need any more than what I've got.

ETA: And Newegg does rock...

[N1LAF]

Thanks! Since I have experienced problems with new Seagate drives, they are out. The smaller laptop size drives - haven't had any problems

NVidia website has excellent comparison charts. They have motherboards too.

[W4GPL]

I think the AMD stuff is really 100% compatible these days. A lot of folks prefer it over Intel, and it is a lot less expensive.

Absolutely. I've used AMD on and off for years and years. I have no particular beef with them, I just find I have to do a lot less research if I buy an Intel mobo, with an Intel CPU -- especially if it's a simple workstation and everything is integrated (video, etc). I just can't be bothered with combing over the latest Tom's Hardware benchmarks and whatnot. It's fast. Everything has been fast for a long time, the simple margins of just how fast is of very little interest to me.

[W3MIV]

I went for cheap, and I am using an MSI mobo, AMD processor (Athlon 64x2, 6000+ at 3G), nVidia chipset, nVidia 9500 graphics w/ 1GB, 4GB DDR2, and a new Seagate Barracuda (7.2krpm, 500G). No complaints about hardware. It is mostly low-end stuff for use in the shack, and it is not stressed to any great degree (that privilege is reserved for me). I really don't do a lot of multi-media, video or games on this setup. Yields a "5.3" on "Windoze Experience Index." The new drive, after I got all my tribulations settled, is very fast. Think I paid $60 for the mobo and the same for the CPU from Tiger.

The Realtek on-board audio is not bad, though I don't expect high-end fidelity from an on-mobo chip. It calibrated out pretty close, which surprised me.

[kf0rt]

You really can do quite well "on the cheap" these days. The box I normally run at home is a 2 year old job built from Newegg parts and I spent a little under a grand on it. Intel "Bad Axe II" mobo, 4G RAM, Nvidia 8800GT graphics, pair of DVD burners. And an Intel 2.4GHz Q6600 Quad core CPU. It started out running XP and had a pair of 640GB WD hard drives. Now runs Win 7 and has three 1TB WD drives. Turns out, the only thing the Intel mobo gained me is 8 SATA ports, and it was an expensive board (~$250). The graphics card is more than I'll ever use ($150) and the only time I ever really use the quad-core CPU is for video processing, which ain't much. "Experience index" is 5.9 and the bottleneck is disk speed.

Without getting into the newer Intel "i" CPUs, you can build a pretty respectable box for about $400, I'm thinking.

Got a peek at a new Dell "Vostro" computer at work this week -- haven't checked the price, but I'm betting those at least start in the same price range. Nice looking computer and well designed from the looks of it.

My wife killed her computer about a year ago and is now running a "$400 Newegg special." Even with the onboard video (Gigabyte mobo), she's happy with the performance on World of Warcraft. I'm pretty much convinced that the onboard video of most motherboards is good enough for everything but the most demanding apps these days. Not into the games myself, but when the kids are out here, they run WoW on the HTPC and it seems to work fine (AMD, and a WiFi connection). Daughter uses the wife's computer, wife uses the HTPC and SIL uses his MacBook. I hide. The dead computer had an MSI board in it. No complaints, tho -- ran trouble-free for years and we no longer keep that computer on the floor.