Build your own computer? ...and associated Headaches.

[Dina Lerret]

On 10/28/05, Steve <bboyminn at yahoo.com> wrote:

> If you look at the links I provided, not only do they have 'barebones'
> systems, but they also have motherboard/CPU combinations. That

Yeah, and they also have cases with and without an included power
source.  Though, with barebones, it would defeat the purpose of
learning to build from the ground up. {g}


> intent of a lot of options, I would go for 400w, perhaps even 450w.

It just depends on how many harddrives and optical drives, which I
only plan on having one CD/DVD read/write drive.  I'm leaning more
towards NEC for that job.


> ago. If you are totally Gonzo about video, then you might want to go
> to something in the $75 to $125 range. Anything above that is kind of
> a waste except for professionals and game-geeks.

Aye, I'm not a gamer but I do require a fairly good video card and
other vidders are recommending nVidia with a dual head option to
extend the video editing timeline viewing area.  My generic vidding
computer has a Matrox dual head and was paired up with a Matrox
editing board.  Seems the new fad is PCI express versus PCI/AGP.


> As a side note, I recommend breaking your hard drive into smaller
> partitions, essentially virtual hard drives. If you have WinXP that's

I don't think I'll need the drives partitioned (other than a partition
for operating/program files) because video files are very big (e.g. I
can have a couple hundred files and fill up a 250gig drive).  Speaking
of 250gig drive, that's my external USB drive and it cost me about
$185, including a dual fan enclosure, and I got that puppy months
back.  Was a fairly okay deal and the drive works fine.


> As others suggested, it doesn't hurt to get an external USB or
> Firewire hard drive to back up your data on. Programs can always be
> reinstalled, but once data is lost...it's gone forever. The next step
> is to remember to use it. I just had a hard drive crash and lost tons
> of stuff because I was too lazy to back it up on my USB Drive. A 80Gb
> USB drive is about $150 or less on sale and well worth it.

Heh, ain't that the truth about remembering to back-up. {g}  I've
reviewed over 'ghosting' software and some of them also require the
same amount of 'empty' space (the drive sizes need the same space,
regardless, of actual usage space).

Dina