[Techtalk] Motherboards and Bus speed

[Dave North]

lain:
> Processor: Athlon XP 2.2 GHz (I'm kind of getting fed up with Pentiums)

Duals are way cool. I was very pleased with my dual p3 1GHz (which akk
uses now). I don't think I'd even think of building a single-processor box
again, if I were after performance.
	I still prefer the p3, and have seen a fair amount of trouble with
the current crop of amd chips. p4, you got me.

> Video card: Voodoo or GeForce 4Ti series? (preferably at least 16-32 MB)

I prefer the ATI cards myself. Pretty trouble-free and plenty fast.

> Harddrive: Unsure.  Need a large drive for several logical partitions for
> graphics and os (at least 80 Gig).  Someone recommended Seagate.

I'd like to recommend seagate, since they're nice and quiet most of
the time. But my maxtors test out _much_ faster than my seagates of
similar spec (in one case, over twice as fast!)

> Memory: Unsure. Kingston maybe?

Got me there. I buy cheap stuff and it works fine so far (I run memtest on
it with fine results).

> Sound card: Unsure.

Me too.

> CD-R/DVD: Unsure...Plextor seems to be the fav of my classmates.  Would
> like to get burner that is faster than 4x. ;)

I like my sony but have no real strong opinion.

> Removable Storage: Iomega ZIP 250 (maybe)

No point any more. Go with compact flash and a usb adaptor. Really!

> Tower/Chassis: Know any websites with kickass towers at a decent price?

pixelusa.com has a cheap window box with front usb and whizzy light-up
pimp powerbutton.

> I have looked online for tutorials on building computers, but most of
> them were kind of out of date.  If you know a good up to date website on
> building pc howtos, I'll be glad to know that as well.

Other than selecting components, most motherboards will come with all the
instructions you'll need. It's pretty darn easy these days, and definitely
the way to go if you're up to it.
	And just about everyone here is, so don't sweat that part.


d