Motherboard, RAM, CPU, power supply, hard drive, optical disc drive... that should cover it i think.

The motherboard will have ethernet, video and audio built in so you don't need to get a video card unless you are doing gaming or heavy graphics processing

If you go to newegg and select a motherboard, it will show you all the compatible memory and CPU's for it.

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1985 CA 300D Turbo , 213K mi

Even choosing the "correct" motherboard is daunting, but if I have a processor selected, that does become easier. I'll check it out. Tyan used to be a good brand; is that still the case?

The nVidia isn't for graphics.

AMD and Intel both make good processors.

You can always try to get motherboard + processor combos or look up a DIY kit from either newegg or tigerdirect

I find for the price/performance ratio, AMD CPU's are hard to beat. I picked up the 955 black edition for cheap a while back (quad core). While the i7's are faster in some select apps and scenarios, I don't think the real-world difference justifies the extra cost (of the CPU and associated mobos).

As far as motherboards, I've almost always stuck with Asus.

Memory - I've used cheap and expensive and found no difference. I think it's all from the same source.

Antec for power supplies.

For video both nVidia and ATi make excellent cards - they are constantly one-upping each other. I just bought a Radeon 5870, beast of a card, barely fit into my tower.

It's incredible the rate at which graphics processing has increased.

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Chris
2007 E550 4Matic - 61,000 Km - Iridium Silver, black leather, Sport package, Premium 2 package
2007 GL450 4Matic - 62,000 Km - Obsidian Black Metallic, black leather, all options
1998 E430 - sold
1989 300E - 333,000 Km - sold
1977 280E - sold
1971 250 - retired

"And a frign hat. They gave me a hat at the annual benefits meeting. I said. how does this benefit me. I dont have anything from the company.. So they gave me a hat." - TheDon

On the server side [the sort of development that I do] they are much the same as any other UNIX/Linux box.

Now the GUI programming model [Coco] is quite different, but so far I have not needed to provide a GUI for any of my server apps.

AMD and Intel both make good processors. Intel makes better tools for theirs, which is why I want Intel and not AMD.

I'd love to have an IA64, but that isn't happening anytime soon.

I'm not worried about GUI stuff at all. But Windows has been ahead of the game for many years in asynchronous operations on affordable hardware. Does OS-X support async I/O? If it does, I can guarantee that it won't look like Windows. Or Linux, for that matter.

You can use Berkeley sockets on Windows too, but then again, why would you?

I don't care about the video. nVidia has CUDA. I don't intend to connect a monitor.

Went from PC and Mac bashing to Intel vs AMD bashing, and now is Nvidia vs ATI bashing.




Geeez.

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-Justin

91 560 SEC AMG - other dogs dd
01 Honda S2000 - dogs dd
07 MB ML320 CDI - dd
16 Lexus IS250 - wifes dd

it's automatic.

I have used the following for a long time:

CPU: AMD exclusively
Motherboard: Biostar, MSI, ASUS, Tyan(mostly servers)
Power Supply: PC Power and Cooling, Corsair, Antec
Memory: Corsair, OCZ, Kingston, Super Talent
Hard drive: Western digital or Seagate
Graphics: ATI are more power efficient and produce less heat...so I prefer them. My current PC has a nvidia card though, got it free.

I've had excellent results....failures extremely infrequently. Some of the systems I have running are several years old of 24/7. My server is 7 years old....still runs perfect.

__________________
-diesel is not just a fuel, its a way of life-
'15 GLK250 Bluetec 118k - mine - (OC-123,800)
'17 Metris(VITO!) - 37k - wifes (OC-41k)
'09 Sprinter 3500 Winnebago View - 62k (OC - 67k)
'13 ML350 Bluetec - 95k - dad's (OC-98k)
'01 SL500 - 103k(km) - dad's (OC-110,000km)
'16 E400 4matic Sedan - 148k - Brothers (OC-155k)

Sounds similar to what I've had success with...DFI, ASUS, and Gigabyte for motherboards (intel or AMD, but I've built way more AMD). PCP&C and Corsair both make fine power supplies. Can't go wrong with most memory nowadays as long as you check the QVLs and follow voltage requirements. I can't fully agree with ATI being more power efficient on the whole, it's totally dependent on which card is being considered (and what generation).

In the end, it doesn't really matter what manufacturer you use, as long as you get what you're looking for (price, support, warranty, etc).

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1982 240D, sold 9/17/2008
1987 300D TurboW124.133 - 603.960, 722.317 - Smoke Silver Metallic / Medium Red (702/177), acquired 8/15/2009
262,715 and counting

I'm hardly bashing ATI. I am not a gamer. The only use I have for 3d hardware is to use for parallel algorithms, and nVidia exposes this.

I don't care which is better at producing video, as I don't intend to use it for that.

I really screwed the pooch last night. My computer won't even boot up now. Here's the story:
First when I booted up the computer it didn't see the second drive. So I checked the connections and booted up again and it was there but it wasn't allocated which I thought was odd since I had it installed before.
So I downloaded that Seagate program, went to Utilities and selected the add disc option. Went through that process. It asked if I ever intended to boot from that drive to select to move additional files over, I can't remember exactly what it said but I do want to eventually boot from that drive so I selected that option. All went well and it said to reboot to make the changes. So I reboot the computer and it wouldn't boot up.

It froze at a the PCI device listing screen and was asking for a System disk. Which of course I don't have.
It also has a Disk Boot Failure on the screen.

This is really bad. I was under the impression it would only COPY files not remove them!

Is there any way to fix this?

Danny

__________________
1984 300SD Turbo Diesel 150,000 miles

OBK member #23

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Sounds like you picked the wrong drive. You should not have picked "add a drive", but just allocated the space you wanted to copy to. There is a step by step slide show on Seagate's site on how to do this. Before you go any further, disconnect the new drive and see if it will boot off the old one. If not, the best thing to do is to make the new drive the master and the old the slave. Reload the OS on the new drive and see if the files are still on the old. If they are, you can copy them to the new drive.

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99 ML320
94 SL600
92 SL500
95 E320 Cabriolet
87 560SEC
86 300SDL Grease Car
80 380SLC Euro

13 Fiat Abarth
02 Maserati Spyder Cambiocorsa
00 BMW Z3
90 Rolls Royce Silver Spur
80 Ferrari 308 GTSI
88 Jaguar XJS12 H&E Edition
99 Land Rover Discovery

It won't boot off either drive.
By reload OS you mean reload windows? If so then I don't have an OS to reload from.

Can't I boot from a boot disk or a system disk? Like from here:
http://freepctech.com/pc/002/files010.shtml

http://www.bootdisk.com/

http://www.allbootdisks.com/download/xppro.html

Will these allow me to get back to the drives?
Which one would work best?

Danny

__________________
1984 300SD Turbo Diesel 150,000 miles

OBK member #23

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