upgrade/new PC hardware advice

[Sonomaa]

as reviewed in this article http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=OTMzLDE=
maingear PCs are quite shiny, if you dont want to build yours and are afraid you might mess it up, these people do a good job at making solid value systems at what looks to be decent prices.

about 1200-1300 dollars nets you a really really nice system, Im honestly tempted to have them build my next one because of lazyness

but... I really like to build PCs ^^

edit: link~~~ http://www.maingear.com

[Sonomaa]

OK, what about if one does not possess the technical expertise to build one's own system?

Did you play that game where you fit the pegs into the correct hole? Computers are just like that game. If the square peg doesn't fit into the round hold then try to find the square hole. When it doubt, buy your buddy a beer to do it for you.

Im going to disagree with you 100% on this

They are not like simple toys you throw together, you say that and he might just mount the motherboard right to the tray, not knowing what the risers are for, he might strip the screws by using the wrong sizes, he could overtorque hard drive screws and break them off inside, wire the powersupply incorrectly
put the power leads for SATA in with both the normal and the 4 pin, put the case fans in both 3 and 4 pin connectors, wire the floppy power cable upside down

Im not saying he is stupid, and probably wouldnt make mistakes like that, Sept is an exceptionally smart person and I am sure he could do it, but if he doesnt feel comfortable, there is no shame whatsoever in asking for help or having someone else do it. Invite a good friend over to build it for you, ask them to show you how they did it, show you some tricks, watch them tie off cables and route wires around hotspots, have them mount the CPU for you, so you dont pop something or worse

Ive seen people who said they were sure they could do it right destroy hundreds of dollars worth of computer equipment, Id rather someone ask for help and be given it than possibly hurt thier money

[dietvanillapepsi]

I was trying to give him credit for not being an idiot. But yes, I suppose he could be a complete idiot and just start going without instructions, jamming things into other things, super gluing parts together, maybe adding some duct tape...

[Septimus]

I was trying to give him credit for not being an idiot. But yes, I suppose he could be a complete idiot and just start going without instructions, jamming things into other things, super gluing parts together, maybe adding some duct tape...

If it can't be fixed with duct tape it can't be fixed...

[levish]

Iku's selection of parts is pretty decent, here's my 2gil on it

-the 3800+ x2 dual core is a great processor but FF is not multithreaded and you will get better performance out of a 3200+ or better and if you overclock at all, will have no trouble running at 3500+ speeds.

-the 2gb of ram helps in a lot of situations but I haven't seen FF come close to using up 1gb

go with 2x 512 low latency stuff

-get a segate hard disk drive