Anyone know anything about building gaming computers???

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Hi CompWiz17,
My comments about backup were made in the context of the thread.
I cannot see that the builder of a gaming computer would have any use for commercial level bulk backup.
I would expect virtually all of the data on their drives to be already on CD/DVD, as that was where it had come from. Should a drive fail, they just reinstall.

I can give you one instance where I have backed up data that I would rather not lose. It is the results of a two month (continuous) run of a program that generated the last term in this flups sequence. The program and results are here in this machine, on CD on the other side of the room, on my website and in Canada.

I've just recently spent 3 months working in a personal computer repair shop. Only in one instance was there a genuine drive failure, and I caught that just in time. I managed to back up the whole drive while the fault was still in an "intermittent" state. Out of the 10Gb of data I copied, the user was only really interested in a few megabytes of pictures, which they'd not burned to CD.

I certainly agree with your other comments on hard drive speeds. Again, for a gaming computer, there is absolutely no point in large/fast drives. Go for masses of fast RAM.

as for what I'd back up, while I do use my computer for gaming, I use it for many other tasks as well. (that's why I didn't just buy a console). For example, I do a fair amount of video editing, which takes up a lot of space, and I wouldn't want to lose it to a hard drive failure. Sure, it's not protected if my house burns down, and theoretically, I could delete it(I'm careful though, and I really haven't had any problems with that), but the odds of my hard drive failing are far, far higher than the odds of my house burning down.

Times have changed in that regard, my wife gets FPS rates under Linux which are slightly worse than she did under XP (or equal with less-than-maxxed video settings), but much better than the same games currently get under Vista. Ventrilo and the other things that MMORPG-players use to communicate also run well. And when the game locks up, as they sometimes do, she just kills it and restarts it, instead of having to hit the reset button like under XP. Many of Vista's problems with drivers and DirectX 10 support will get resolved, but others, such as checking your game 30 times a second to make sure it's not pirated, will not. Some gaming sites (see http://mmreviews.com/index.php?/archive ... umors.html for example) have gone as far as to recommend that users migrate from XP to Linux or OS/X instead of Vista.

I'm not saying that there's any compelling argument for gamers to change operating systems -- on the contrary, those who are happy using XP would probably be best just sticking with it. But there is at least one viable alternative for those who would like one.

I'd choose Intel over AMD, if you are going Conroe. Otherwise you might want to check out low-end AM2 or Opteron.

But there is no reason not to get a E6300. Some people are OCing to 3ghz and above with them. Destroys AMD in this regard.

I'd go for mid-end DDR2 667 (800mhz) RAM. RAM does not make a huge difference, but with 800mhz you will be able to run 1:1 without a divider.

Make sure you don't skimp on the mobo, you need one that can give you a high FSB.

E6300 is a wuss OCer compared the the E4300 and i'm thinking about getting a Abit AB9 Pro,its a decent OCer i heard and i want to get 800MHz RAM.

Sounds good. I got my E6600 before Intel's latest refresh. I run at ~3.4ghz 24/7 on water. I haven't tried finding it's max yet, mainly b/c I need this to last me till summer at least.

Looking at the pricing and overclockability of the E4300, I'd choose that over the 6000-series too.

Have you decided on a gfx card yet? I hear April is the ATI r600 launch, but it's going to only be a paper launch. Still I'd wait for it, at least it'll probably drive down the prices.

yeah, with the new line coming out from AMD and the new mid and low-end cards coming out from Nvidia, it's a good idea to wait a bit before getting a graphics card. Even if the AMD "launch" doesn't drive down prices, NVidia's new cards will. They're set to be launched at very good prices.

I want to get a 8800GTS 320MB and OC it.

And i ain't gonna get R600,because i doubt there will be a R600 card that will own the 320MB 8800GTS while not being much more expensive.

if i was you i would not OC anything because you barely know how to build a PC no matter know enough to overclock it sensiblely it is not as easy as it seems actually overclocking anything too much would cause there to be lags in the transmission times and therefore makes it SLOWER
it also lessens the life of the processor and obviously needs more cooling (hot processors are SLOW NOT FAST).

I plan on OCing the card and CPU but i'm not gonna push the card to the point where it'll become toastand i'll get some good CPU cooing before i push it to its limits,and the parts will be replaced long before they die on me anyway.

Ok but that isn't the end of the story, you can have software problems when you OC
also OCing your processor will void your warranty so make sure it works before even think about it.
You will need a decent motherboard if you are wanting to OC because for one thing not all BIOSs i have seen even have that option.

before you do such a thing:
read this
and this

OMFG why are you trying to keep me from OCing? I know there ARE RISK with OCing,but there are also BENEFITS (better performance in games & apps)

I plan on getting a ABIT AB9 Pro,and i heard its good for OCing.

No i am just making sure you are not like every other 15 year old who thinks hes cleaver and good with computers because he knows all the buzz words.
People who OC their PC should know nearly everything on those websites because microprocessors are complicated devices.
about 60% of people who have OCed their PC have broken it because they did not know what they were getting into and about 80% of them are 15 year olds.

Alright then.

Use a shell and power box [300 watts] to any old computer from salvage that a buisness used to use. [ Like a Gateway or generic brand.] Buy a motherboard with an intel core 2 duo processor with 2Ghz of power or more and put it in the shell. Buy 1GB or more of memory from MEMORYX.COM. Also buy some flash memory[1 GB] and get a video card [ATI AND nVIDIA cards with 128- 256MB of memory work fine.] Sound cards don`t matter unless your one is
made before 2003 or is a buget card. You also should get at least 2 80GB harddrives.
[One for XP or Vista, One to install an older operating system like Win98 for older game
support that XP doesn`t give.]

um i didnt read the other posts but don't forget ram and be careful about the type of mother board because it will determine how easy it is to upgrade and don't use the built in video card get a seperate one also ati and nvidia you can put two video cards in the one computer. im pretty sure Celeron dual core is the fastest cpu but athlon also offers dual core(sort of like 2 cpus in one) and i don't realy like Celeron overall.