btw, the parts Mexicanpizza chose are all high quality. The only thing different I *personally* would change is the motherboard to a straight Intel board, not Abit, and Mushkin RAM instead of Kingston. But that is just me being picky.
I have 768MB of Kingston RAM in myhttp://www.slakin.net/imgs/sjchouse/TV&PVR01.jpg homebrew PVR (www.mythtv.org) and have no problems at all.

 

I was going for "cheapest, GOOD stuff that will do the job".

 

thats why I said, that is just me being picky.




Kingston gets the job done great for the price, cant argue with that!

 

ok build my system i shall do, i was kinda bummed cause i wanted an lcd i guess i can invest in that now! good thing i have 6 months to return it!

 

Just make sure you have a warranty

 

Or if you buy the stuff from local stores (Fry's, compusa, central, etc...) then you can return parts in 30 days.

In the last 5 years I have built 30+ systems from mail order, frys, central, or online sellers. Only thing I have ever seen go bad is motherboards and hard drives. Motherboards always bad off the bat (only seen 2 go bad), and hard drives take time to die usually. As long as you stay with good brand hard drives (avoid hitachi/ibm, low end cheap seagate drives like the plague!) you will be in good hands and no need for a warranty.
Plus, you can call up mexicanpizza or me and tell us to fix it since we told you to jump in this mess! HAHA!

Happy shopping!

oh yes, for an LCD, get the white wide screen sharp that has coaxial input, or the black covere NEC LCD.

 

I've been building computers for a while too (1st computer I built was a 386). Even though I'm capable, I'll be buying my next PC. For me, it's not worth the effort of sourcing/pricing/shipping parts.

If you've built your own pc and want to feel good about it, more power to you.

 

man guys i just wanted something simple how hard could it be to build a system anyways

 

its not as long as you can piece together a puzzle. I have seen people do some stupid as **** before, like not putting heat sync & fan on the CPU, trying to plug ram in the wrong way, etc...

square blocks dont fit in round holes. get it? simple eh?

 

If anyone ever wants a custom computer built, just let me know. I can build some nice computers for about 1k. Putting the computer together isn't that hard at all, but getting it to operate smoothly and reliably is what gets tricky.

 

I bought a Dell and I am happy with it, don't get their DVD burner though, its a waste, its a DVD+R/RW so you can't extract data from DVD Movies, kinda defeats the purpose (IBldivinagtellsmeburningdvdmoviesisillegal)

Get a computer without it, u'll save $150 and you can get an 8x DVD+/-R/RW burner @ newegg for $80.

-Zoeb

 

or get an Emprex 8x DVD-/+ R/W from Fry's for $60 (just make sure to do the firmware upgrade on the drive otherwise it burns coasters). ;D

And getting the OS to work is easy with quality components and a decent OS like windows XP or Linux. =)

 

fry's now has 15 days on computer components...

 

hey, you should seriously build a computer by yourself, and if you don't want to order online and go through the online shipping hassle, I would definately recommend going to a computer show in the bay area, they're usually at cow palace and Oakland convention centre. I used to work for Caloptic, so if you buy, buy their sh*t, it's legit and they have some really crazy products. I think the shows are Robert Austin or something like that and if you go to their site and print out their coupon you get in for free.