I am very inexperienced with hardware. I am looking to buy parts individually from newegg and assemble the computer myself. The problem I am experiencing with choosing the parts is I have no idea which are compatible or how I can tell. I would like to keep the price under $2000. I already have my case picked out, I don't need a monitor, and I would like to have a graphics card better than the ATI Radeon x800. Would someone help me pick these parts? Any help would be appreciated. Thank you
generally if it seems to physically fit then it probably does work, but its not too difficult, be careful selecting the memory (RAM) for a particular M/B & make sure you get a matching CPU & M/B
Compatibility can be a pain in the neck with certain components. But as a general rule: The CPU and motherboard will often determine the performance/component generation of the rest of the system. You seem to have a very high budget, so I'll take a guess that you want to use it for heavy gaming and possibly some graphics/3d editing. At the moment, the best future proof CPUs seem to be the Athlon 64 X2s. However, both Intel and AMD are releasing a new product line in a few months, and Intel's new Conrie/Merom chips are ver promising. You can choose to wait or buy now. The motherboard will then come next, you need to buy a motherboard with the same socket as the CPU. E.g. if you buy a S939 Athlon 64 X2, then you'll need a supporting S939 motherboard. Often in Newegg will tell the compatible CPUs in the specs of the motherboard. A very good, high performance motherboard for an S939 CPU is the MSI K8N Diamond Plus. For the graphics card, for the best performance the nVidia Geforce 7900 GTX is nVidias flagship card. From ATi, the best card would be the X1900XT I believe. Both cards will use PCI-E, which is supported on all the newest motherboards. For the RAM, if you go AMD then you'll be wanting DDR400 RAM minimum (higher ratings will allow you to overclock more). If you decide to go Intel, then DDR2 will be the RAM you'll need. However AMD will also be transitioning to DDR2 in a few months time with their new CPUs. If I were you I'd wait and see what happens.
This might do the job for ya: Motherboard: Asus A8N-SLI $112.99 CPU: Athlon 64 3700+ (2.2GHz) $235.00 Video Card: XFX GeForce 7900GT $329.00 RAM: Mushkin PC3200 2GB kit $174.99 Hard Drive: Western Digital 320GB SATA $124.00 Optical Drive: Pioneer 16x DVD+/-RW Sound Card: Creative Audigy 2 ZS $69.00 Power Supply: Enermax 600W $168.99 Case: Chenming full-tower/server case $61.50 Total: $1,312.46 (+Shipping) (+Tax for CA, NJ residents) This will do the job quite nicely and shouldn't break a sweat playing anything out there right now.
I really like newegg for the low prices and large selections, but I don't like that they don't allow you to swap individual components on the pre-built models while odering. I would like a different case and video card, but I don't want to change everything myself if possible. Is there somewhere else good that allows this?
Yeah, barebone's setups don't allow for that. It's not Newegg---they just sell the products. If it's a barebone's setup, you're going to get what that setup is. To be perfectly blunt, a lot of pre-builts aren't deigned with high-performance in mind. If you want more of a custom built system that you can pick your parts, you might check out Monarch Computer.
