Does anyone have any idea how much it would cost to build the following system:
-2.6 GHz processor
-Mother board with a minimum of four PCI slots, preferrably more
-1 gig RAM
-video card still being researched
-two 80 gig hard drives
-Win XP pro (this will be a business computer, and if my ideas take shape there will be hacking attempts, which is why I should probably go with pro)
-DVD burner
-DVD drive
The sound card is a soundblaster live card that will be transferred from my current system. My brother recommended getting one 120 gig hard drive instead of two 80 gigs, but seperate physical drives would make dual booting easier (in theory.)
If anyone has any recommendations for changes/additions let me know.
$800 +
(do you need a case, cpu fan, cables, … )
wait, no, more than that, amd isn’t up to 2.6Ghz yet
(and I am cheap)
250 for cpu/motherboard
200 for ram
200 for video card (assumption)
180 for 2 hard drives (get a 160, it will probably be chaeaper)
200 for xp
150 for dvd burner
1200?
Having dual hard drives also makes it where you can set up a RAID array. Makes things alot faster.
I’m a gamer at heart. My advice would be to make sure your CPU and MB are of the multi-threading variety. Also, the newer Audgy line from Creative uses a heck of alot less CPU resources than the Live! as it is a breakthrough architecture. You can get the Audigy2 now for about 100USD and the Audigy1 for like 40. Maybe you can get one later.
Good luck on the video card research. It’s a jungle out there :o
What’s a RAID array? Also, what are the advantages of multithreading? This is kind of new to me, and my brother, who has a side business building computers, hasn’t been much help.
If it helps with the advice aspect, I’m working on a system for 3D, game design (particularly implementation of the holy grail of gaming, VR) and audio publishing. Can a DVD burner write to CDs?
umm, a number of disks act as one. there are different types, one of which is to spread files across both which increases it’s speed. Another type is a backup. There are more (and combinations of) but it isn’t particularly worth noting. You need special hardware (though not drives) for it, do a search on google, good answers are avalible
more things can be done simultaneously. Most apps these days aren’t very threaded, but a simple example of where multithreading is useful is that one cpu can be used to render, another to mess with blender. Newer intel cpus have built in stuff (hyperthreading) which acts like another cpu, and can increase preformace. It can also decrease it.
im just about to get a system of my own. It’s costing me about $650 and it’s based around an Athlon XP 2400
Kind of a budget system. I’m going to upgrade parts of it later, but it’s still decent.