ok, so i decided that i need another computer, i dont want to store all my photos on my laptop. How easy is it to build my own computer? I still have my old gateway desktop that i never use anymore, what would i need to replace? The computer will probably be used to store pictures, edit pictures, and just school work. I dont really know anything about this stuff and would like to build my own instead of buying a new one.

 

If you want to store pictures, get an external hard drive or copy them to CD/DVD.

If your Gateway is more than 4 (maybe 3) years old, it is pretty much a boat anchor. It is hard to add to a Gateway or Dell because a lot of the parts are custom.

If you want a second computer, buy one of the $400-$500 ones from Dell or Circuit City if it is going to be a glorified file server. If they still sell eMachines, they are a pretty good deal.

I have built so many computers, that I hardly think when I do it. It is pretty simple these days, with almost everything being plug and play. If you want an idea for parts, try sharkeyextreme.com. They build a system every month and give a pretty good review of the basic parts. Some months they do a really expensive build, others it is a more affordable build. They are gaming systems, so even the low end has good stuff in it. It would be hard to build a machine under $600. Below are some real rough and probably low numbers:

Motherboard with onboard sound and network $125
Processor $125
Hard Drive $80
Memory $80
DVD Drive $50
Video Card $50
Case $30
Power Supply $50
Keyboard and mouse $25
Operating System $90 NO VISTA! VISTA SUCKS!
Monitor?
Speakers?

Any other questions, feel free to PM me.

 

To have a file server, you don't need a particularly fast computer. Anything that is running a P4 should do. I installed Windows Home Server onto an old IBM running a 1.6GHz Pentium 4 and it runs fine. It even encodes video. The only problem might be doing photo editing. This usually eats up alot of system resources. You can upgrade the RAM and this should help the speed of the machine. Also, I would recommend against an external hard drive if you are going to use it for permanant storage as in you would like to keep the photos indefinatly. For this purpose, you are better off with internal hard drives. You can get IDE (you computer should come with 4 IDE ports, 2 for DVD/CD and 2 for hard drives) which would be the cheapest. IDE hard drives are pretty cheap and you can hook up two of them as master/slave. However, IDE doesn't have redundancy (RAID). If you want to protect against hard drive failure and data loss, I would recommend getting a SATA or SCSI RAID. A SATA RAID will be the easiest one to implement as SCSI can be a PITA at times and harder to find. You might need to buy a seperate PCI SATA controller and make sure that it can do RAID. What RAID will do is take your data and spread it across a 2 (or more) hard drives. That way if you lose a hard drive, the other one still has the data. You always want to use a hardware RAID b/c these are much faster and work better. I would also consider running a Server operating system such as Windows 2000 Server or Windows Home Server. Home Server just came out a couple months ago and I tried it out and its not too bad. You can access your files from anywhere via a webpage that is automatically made by the OS. You can also remotly manage the computer from any computer with Windows Remote Desktop (i've even done it on a Mac). I've actually sat in my school computer lab on an iMac and began encoding a DVD on the server.

 

I'd go with the first suggestion - just buy an external hard drive. I think last time I checked a 160 gig one was around 100 dollars. If you're set on biulding a custom PC (I just built my own a few months ago) then I would check out newegg.com Pretty much you want at least 1 gig of ram, 120 gigs of hard drive space, a 1.6ghz processor, and as for the motherboard that depends. You can buy a motherboard with integrated video (the cheapest way) or just a mother board and then buy a video card seperately. But that's bare bones in my opinion (My computer is 4 gigs of ram, 200 gig harddrive, 3 ghz processor, 512 mb Radeon video card). I'd go with this if I were you - this set up will be cheaper and still be sufficient for good games and won't bog down

Case - This case has two USB ports on front as well as headphone and mic. Also it has plenty of card slots in the front and rear. Bare bones, sure, but the case isn't very important.

Ram - Brand name of ram isn't SUPER important (I'm not too knowledgable of what's good and what isn't) but this has the best rating. It's 2 sticks, 1 gig each, so adding up to 2 gigs total.

Mother Board - Again, I'm not too knowledgable in what's great brand names for motherboards, but this is best rated. It supports up to 8 gigs of DDR2 ram (the kind above) and it has integrated video, but you can buy a seperate video card later on. It also supports up to 8 USB ports and two firewire.

Processor - It's a dual core, 2 ghz. This should be more than sufficient for mild to medium-extreme use.

Hard Drive - 150 Gig hard drive, should be fine. If you think you need more you can find a HDD with more space.

CD - CD/RW - DVD - DVD/RW - I love ASUS and this Drive has a pretty cool feature - light scribe. You can burn images on to the top of the disc (like a label) while it burns the disc. It read and burns DVDs and CDs.

I can't think of anything else... though I feel like I'm forgetting something. You'll need fans and cables and other random things, but that's it. So tally up how much that costs, plus the fact that you'll have to wire up everything yourself and you won't have a warranty on the whole computer and see if it's more or less than getting a computer from Dell or Gateway. Oh, and like the other guy said, don't get Vista. Get XP. That's one down fall of new computers that are store bought (though if you buy from Newegg they let you choose XP or Vista on most computers), they'll always have to come with Vista on it. It's not the end of the world, but vista is a little weird to get used to and some things aren't as compatible.

- Phew - lol

 

It really just depends on what you want. Until we get some solid feedback from you all these suggestions are worthless. Are you going to be using it solely for storing files or do you want to do more with it?

I mean if the gateway isn't too terribly old all youd have to do is toss a big HD in it and it could be used to store files pefectly fine. You could even toss Windows Home Server or Linux on it for cheap. Tho I'd suggest you build your own cause Gateways are garbage. It probably wouldn't be worth replacing anything anyway.

BTW all the current suggestions are terrible anyway. I mean cmon a 150 GB HD for $170? Good lord. I could get 250 GB HD's for $50 2 years ago. I mean really.. look at this even: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136131 750 GB for $150.

 

well what im mainly going to be using the computer for the editing photos, storing photos, music, and school work. Im not going to play any games on the computer at all. Just a powerful computer to do all the necessary work, since i might be majoring in photography next year. I wouldnt mind buying a mac, its just expensive, im thinking i can build a computer for cheaper.

 

I just priced out a decent machine for someone that had the same intentions as yourself...the only thing you would possible want is a bigger hard drive...but the price is decent and you get everything...while I know when most of you look at this you can see many things that could be faster/upgraded...this build should be more than adequate for what is desired. Plus everything is on the newer sockets/technology so upgrades would be easy down teh road.

https://secure.newegg.com/NewVersion...hine+for+Roger

 

The link that rice eater just posted is a pretty nice setup. Its AMD's newest socket and is still pretty good. If you had a little more cash you could go with an intel setup that is decently faster but will cost a little bit more.

I just built a nice one for a buddy of mine for around 600 but that was just the tower he had everything else already.

I build custom PC's for people on the side so if you need some extra help let me know or if you live in the NYC area i would be glad to build one for you.

If you really not going to be doing anything special on this computer i can probably sell you a used one for like 1-200 bucks and all you have to do is add a large Hard drive and you should be good to go.

 

Yeah, when I put that together originally it was to stick within a small budget...but I still wanted to make sure it was the newer based stuff so that it would be upgradable. Honestly the only thing I would do different if it were my own is the cpu and gpu....but I mostly game so I'd need it. And honestly you could game perfectly fine on that machine too, until I can build my new one I'm gaming on a 1900+(socket a) with 1gb of pc2100 and a 128mb 6600gt (still agp). My crap is old...but I'm stuck between money on the pc...money on teh car... /shrugs

**Edit- ^^^the reason I didnt go intel is 1. I've been using amd forever and like it; 2. to get into a decent intel setup in my build...you're talking at least another 100, probably more.

 

thanks for the input guys. Ill be making my mind up sometime soon and will get back if i have more questions.