"so when you guys say you're building these comps... are you purchasing all these parts separately?"
Yes. You pick all the parts you like, make sure they fit together, and screw them in a box. What you need is:
The case: these come in various sizes but ATX is the standard. Get a good solid case that has good soundinsulation. Flimsy metal boxes will resonate when the computer runs, and make more noise than my 550 at idle. I used a Lian Li PC A10A last time, and they're great.
Power supply: Getting something over 400watts will allow upgrades later. There are cases available with the powersupply build in already, but a powersupply is not something you want to save money on.
Motherboard: Make sure you get a good brand here too, this will be the big flat thing in your pc that all other components are mounted on. Make sure the SOCKET is right for the CPU you want. I think socket 775 what they sell the most now. Good brands are ASUS and MSI. An ASUS P5B is a good start.
CPU/processor: INTEL or AMD. This will mostly determine how fast and expensive your pc is going to be. My advice is never to buy the most expensive/recent CPU, but rather something that has been out for about a jear so the prices have dropped. The fastest Intel cpu is well over 1000 euro's now, but it's only a bit faster in practice than Pentium 4 3,4GHz costing 1/4th of that. Cpu's come boxed with a fan, and you need to take your time installing this component.
Memory: This comes in RAM sticks and many flavours. If your motherboard supports the fastest types (Dual-Channel DDR2) than getting these makes sense. Gamers, Musicians, Graphic designers, Video get as much RAM as you can afford,
Graphic cards: Some motherboards have these build in, I prefer separate myself. I use nVidea, but i'm no expert on these. Gamers generally use top of the line cards, but they cost more than a Playstation so it's beyond me.
Harddisks: This has been covered here before, If you need fast write/read capabilities from your disks (musicians & Video-editors) do NOT get a slow spinning harddisk. I like any Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM disk myself, they're fast and don't break.
Casefans: To keep your system from melting, you need to cool it down. Any brand will do here, as long as it provides a constant airstream in and out of the case, and past the hot components (CPU & Graphic card mostly). If you're into overclocking/heavy gaming, get some decent fans.
If you want a silent system for in your living room or studio, get silent fans like Papst or Zalman.
Operating System (OS): You don't have much to pick from here. You can get ripped off and buy Microsoft and then spend another fortune on virussoftware, or spend a lifetime trying to get Linux to work with your programs. This is the part that sucks about pc's IMO. Off course stealing software from Microsoft esspecially is illegal, and I would never reccomend doing so, even if the hacked version actually work better than the original one. Give Bill Gates a break, buy his cd.
All of the above is just my humble opinion, i don't do this for a living so to anyone shopping for a pc: please do your own research too. Actually building the pc is nothing more than screwing some coponents in the case, and connecting some wires. All the components you buy have installation guides with them, and this stuff is all over the Internet. Try opening up your old pc, and you'll see it's not that complicated.
Ivar
