Anyone here build personal computers? I am looking to have an AMD system built.

What motherboard would you recommend? One W/o ANYTHING onboard, period!

Yes, I have already checked tomshardware.com as well as pricewatch.com.

I used to.  Now you can buy complete units asininely cheap, so it is a no-go anymore.

I'm researching my next build at the moment.  I've always built AMD machines but this time I will go with Intel.  AMD's latests chips are not performing up to the rating AMD gave them.  Also, Intel just bumped up the bus speed on their latest chips.

If you aren't into working on computers much, I would recommend getting a Dell.  The prices at Dell basically match what you can build one for.  The only difference being you get to chose the manufacturer of the parts going into your PC.

DO NOT BUY A DELL!!  you are supporting a company that chooses to ship jobs out of the country rather then hire americans!!!  If you want your money supporting the Indian economy go ahead....

check out:
[url]http://www.hardocp.com[/url] for the Best information on computer hardware...

I just built a new one for my office

FIC AN19E   Motherboard
AMD 2400 XP
512 Ram DDR
Gforce FX 5200


This cost $400 from Outpost.com and I used some old harddrives laying around.   The FIC board is a hell of a board, RAID, SATA, 8X AGP, everything you would want.

Oh, hell, if you're buying a pre-packaged PC from ANY manufacturer, you're supporting people who work for that company in some other country, period.

Personally, I've got a Dell.  It's reliable, fast, and hasn't caused any headaches of any kind. It's not perfect, but you can blame that on MicroShaft.

I'd rather support people in India than, say, Mexico or some banana republic.   Indians have earned my respect by their solid work ethics, great food, and willingness to not just come to America, but to actually jump whole-heartedly into American society and culture, and actually become Americans in the truest sense of the word.

Indians INTEGRATE into our society as rapidly as they can.  This means a lot to me.   They don't make me think that they're trying to just take advantage of America without giving anything in return or trying to even join OUR culture.   I can't say that about some of our other visitors.

CJ

Yep, "it would be hard to beat Dell prices building your own system."
Personally I build my own systems because I like flexibility and customization. For instance I DON'T use a main board that has "on board" SCSI, audio, video or LAN. I prefer to separate the cards so I have the option to upgrade later. Some people think you save IRQs by having onboard components. As far as I know this is not true. The same IRQs are used whether onboard or separate cards.
I also use a full tower case. What good is a mini tower or smaller if you can't fit another peripheral in the cabinet. I personally run 3 HDs (would want 2 minimal, I'll explain), a CD burner and a DVD burner. Of course these also serve as CD ROM drives.
Why 2 HDs? Okay the problem with buying a factory built machine is you may not get the CD for your operating system or copies of the drivers for your peripherals. The driver for your modem for instance.
I run my operating system on my "C" drive. I archive on my D and E drives. Why? Because, If I get a virus, my system takes a shit or gets corrupt I simply format (erase) and reinstall windows on the C drive. Since I built my system, I HAVE THE OPERATING SYSTEM CD AND ALL THE COMPONENT DRIVERS. Granted windows 2000 and above recognizes and auto installs drivers for most components... but not all.
Of course, I leave all my archived files intact on the secondary drives. Viruses and corruption usually occur within the operating system and don't jump drives. I keep drivers on my secondary drives as well.... easier to install em than loading off floppies or CDs. I can format and reinstall my whole system on my C drive in an hour or so. Cool huh?
I know a woman who's Dell went corrupt. She asked me to take a look. I couldn't do a thing with it. It was FUBAR. I told her ya need to just format and reload the system. She looked at me cross-eyed and said can you do that for me? I said, "do you have the drivers for all your components?" She said "the what?" I said, "gotta go, I think I hear my Mom calling ....."

Yes, I build computers for a living. I would need more details before I answered your question.

Is money a problem?

Do you need it to be upgradable?

Stuff like that.

If money is not a problem I would recommend ASUS. Find something with RAID on-board and maybe even Serial ATA.

Ohhh sorry, BTW... I like Asus or Tyan motherboards

Jake's right, how much are you willing to spend, what options do you want?  Upgadability so forth.

If you want cheap a decent m/b is a soyo dragon platinum.  It's 6 channel sound and raid are onboard, but you can add cards for those and disable them quite easily.  I haven't had a prob with them.  Good boards for the price.  Not a tyan though.

if you want to pick out all your own parts, but not go through the hassle of actually putting them together yourself, as well as get a warranty, i would recommend somewhere like [url]www.cyberpowerpc.com[/url], built my system from there

I got a MSI.  People say they're junk but it works and doesn't have a million jumpers to worry about.
I got a few friends who have the new nForce boards and they seem to be really good for games.

The only motherboards that I have complete confidence in are the Asus boards.  For the AMD CPU I recommend the A7V8X.  Mine has been running excellent and has tons of great features.

Asus and AMD have worked well for my last three builds.  I can't recommend a model of MB or processor speed or species of memory or video adapter because they change so rapidly.

I wouldn't be so negative about things onboard.  It's good to have:

USB 2
FireWare (IEEE 1394)
100 BaseT network adapter
Sound

Figure out how much money you want to spend and what your priorities are.  If you MUST have a particular sound system then look for a system that doesn't have it onboard.  If you are planning to use the machine for intense games then figure out what graphics adapter you want and build around that.

Don't go cheap, and don't go top of the line unless you really need to.  The best bang for the buck is always one tier or so down from the top.  That goes for processor speed, memory, hard drive, graphics, and sound.

I'd take a look at either the ASUS or ABIT boards for the AMD's. I'm assuming you want a single processor system. I would consider the Nforce or Nforce 2 chipset due to the greater memory bandwith potential.

I think "Paul" is joking -very very very few parts are made in the US these days. You're buying foreign no matter what.

As far as building your own system, I like to sit just below the plateau that indicates a premium for new tech. Stuffing others' pockets is not a hobby of mine. As far as processors go, AMD still seems to reign in price/performance ratio. According to [url=http://www.pricewatch.com/]Pricewatch[/url], the following is a sample of lowest prices:

$129 Athlon XP 2600
$95  Athlon XP 2600 333
$93  Athlon XP 2500
$91  Athlon XP 2500 333
$77  Athlon XP 2400
$65  Athlon XP 2200
$65  Athlon XP 2100

The XP2600 is obviously a real cashcow, so I'm not going for that or anythign above. Based on what I see, the 2400 or 2200 is the best deal. You could optimize your money better if you overclocked, but this is somehwat involved, and probably not for the first-time PC builder.

As far as motherboards go, the Asus A7N8X has gotten rave reviews on [url=http://www.hardocp.com]HardOCP[/url] and elsewhere, and mine has been nothing short of fantastic. [url=http://www.newegg.com]Newegg[/url] often has good deals on these. I know  it's got integrated stuff, but it's all top of the line, and it's hard to find a better board. It's not very expensive, either.

Do buy a good case with thumbscrews; Antec has some good cases. Since I'm a LAN gamer, light weight is important for me, and I have a Lian-Li case; this a premium item, though.

With hard drives, there have lately been a lot of good deals on western digital 120 GB drives for around $100. If you can find these deals, go for them. Otherwise, remember not to accept any less than 7200 RPM; an 8MB+ cache is also good.

Have fun

Mugzilla,

What do you want to do with the computer?  Will you be playing games, basic MS Office, etc?  If you're not a hard core game player I'd just get a DELL.  Expandabilty doesn't concern me too much as this isn't the good old days where you got one mobo and just upgraded the CPU every year/6 months for 2/3 years.  The architectures are changing so fast it's almost more economical to buy a new PC every year and a half or two years.  If you're doing the basics like surfing the net, MS Office, email, light/medium game playing (dependant upon what type of games), etc.  You probably won't need to upgrade for two years.  

To give you an idea of the deals to be had my friend picked up a complete DELL system with a 17" monitor, speakers, 2.4 Gig P4, 256 megs of RAM, and a combination DVD reader/CDRW for $420 shipped.  To top if all off he got a one year on-site warranty and three years parts.  Sometime after the on-site warranty is up you just buy a new one. Now how can you beat that?

If you're concerned with on-board devices just ask the DELL tech for a rundown of the system.  He/She should be able to give you an idea.

Now if you want the ultimate gaming rig then by all means build your own.

rssc

p.s. I've built a whole bunch of computers in my time so I've seen both sides of the story.

the forums over at [url]http://overclockers.com[/url] is your best bet for support and Q's

[url]http://newegg.com[/url] is the best place for parts. Check out the 8rda+ mobo for $89, kicks ass.

I just upgraded my system, very happy with it so far.  I was on a strict budget so I went with a AMD 2200+, 512megs of PC2100 (DDR 266) RAM, and a cheap but supposedly decent Shuttle AK32 mobo.  It's been running great, much faster than my AMD 1ghz/ABIT/320mb ram combo.  I got the whole setup for under $200, of course I already had a couple harddrives, sound, video, etc from my old system.  Certainly not the ultimate system today but it's a good setup for cheap.

I still have some room to upgrade in the video card department too, still running my overclocked Geforce3 (running every game I've got just fine right now, will need to upgrade before too long though)...

Hey [b]Mugzilla[/b], I'd add my advice, but there is plenty-o-good stuff already posted...Good luck!!


ByteTheBullet  (-:

I love the asus nfource2 motherboard. I used to think like you about onboard devices.  But in my old age I have made consions on allowing a few things on board:  Network card, good sound, firewire, usb, ide raid.   As long as the motherboard has room to add card and you can turn off the onoard stuff in the bios I think having these onboard is fine.  Things I will not deal with onboard are SCSI, video, Raid.
Hope this helps.
NoKarma