Help! Advice needed for building a computer from scratch.

[siratfus]

Thermaltake VA3000 Dream Tower Black Tsunami VA3400BWA ATX Case with 400W PSU & Transparent X type side panel window -RETAIL
$140.50

3 Western Digital 200GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drives

2 Mushkin 184 Pins 512MB DDR PC-3200 - Retail
$140.54

ASUS "P4P800-E Deluxe" i865PE Chipset Motherboard for Intel Socket 478
$109.00

Intel Pentium 4/ 3.2E GHz 800MHz FSB, 1MB L2 Cache, Hyper Threading Technology - Retail
$219.00

ATI AIW RADEON 9600 Video Card, 128MB DDR, 128-bit, CATV/Video Out/Video In, 8X AGP, Model "ALL-IN-WONDER 9600" w/ REMOTE -RETAIL
$159.00

I'll be installing WINDOWS XP PROFESSIONAL
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Okay, above are the pieces I have in my New Egg cart, and I'm itching to click ORDER. I have reservations because I have never put together a computer before, so I need help and advice. I believe I can follow many of the step by step guides on the net. However, I've noticed that many of these guides talk of nothing concerning BIOS. I know this is something I may have to deal with? Putting together a computer is not as simple as plug and play, is it? At what step during the construction will I need to deal with BIOS?

Also, please look at the pieces I have above and tell me what I may be missing. The case already comes with POWER SUPPLY. I don't need an extravagant sound card, I'll go with what's on the motherboard. I see a lot of people who put together computers, add COOLERS or something for the CPU I assume? Now do I need this stuff when all I want to do with my computer is video editing and burning? I'm NOT A GAMER.

Also, I'll be storing lots of video files, that is why I want 600 GB of space, that's 3 200 Sata drives. What is the optimal way to set this up? Have programs and Windows on one drive, and have video files on the other 2? I'll be retrieving video files for burning, so should the files be in the same drive as the burning program?

Any advice is much appreciated!

[videocheez]

The November issue of Maximum PC tells you how. Im gonna follow that guide plus do as your are doing and ask some the smart guys like rallie navy.

VC

[888888]

Don't forget one of these especially this time of year:



More info about this in my post here:
https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=239805&highlight=

Other than that, you should be ok although I would have gone for the AMD option . Get a good heatsink\fan for your CPU and make sure you use some kind of thermal grease or pad. As for the BIOS, your motherboard manual should explain everything in terms of what to do if anything.

BTW, with that system, you will be able to do some gaming too inlcluding DOOM 3 at lower resolutions so don't think you can't.

[Faustus]

DUDE! spend the extra few bucks and get the nVidia 6600 GT AGP.

Also I'd use 2 of the 200gb in a Raid, and replace the 3rd one with a 74gb Raptor as a boot drive.

[siratfus]

DUDE! spend the extra few bucks and get the nVidia 6600 GT AGP.

Also I'd use 2 of the 200gb in a Raid, and replace the 3rd one with a 74gb Raptor as a boot drive.

Boot drive, means where the operating system is right? I'm a newbie. Can you tell me the benefits of your suggestion? Would the boot drive be where I would install all programs too?

Also I feel any advance Video Card is a waste of money for me. I do not play video games, nor do I watch movies on my computer. I need it for storage and editing, that's all. Unless your suggesting it because it benefits my editing/authoring?

[siratfus]

The November issue of Maximum PC tells you how. Im gonna follow that guide plus do as your are doing and ask some the smart guys like rallie navy.

VC

Is this online.. any links?

I guess I'll do a search, If I can't find anything. I'll go and take advantage of Barnes and Nobles.

[Jester700]

DUDE! spend the extra few bucks and get the nVidia 6600 GT AGP.

Also I'd use 2 of the 200gb in a Raid, and replace the 3rd one with a 74gb Raptor as a boot drive.

Boot drive, means where the operating system is right? I'm a newbie. Can you tell me the benefits of your suggestion? Would the boot drive be where I would install all programs too?

Also I feel any advance Video Card is a waste of money for me. I do not play video games, nor do I watch movies on my computer. I need it for storage and editing, that's all. Unless your suggesting it because it benefits my editing/authoring?

Yes, boot drive has your OS on it. Most people put the progs there too. These suggestions are overkill for an editing box. Any modern vid card will be fine, and just make sure you have a separate storage and boot drive, and both should be at least 7200RPM. The Raptor as boot drive will add a little speed. A RAID would also, in SOME applications, but will add greater cost & complexity, and even slows some apps down slightly. 3 drives can sometimes help - you can read a file from one while encoding to another and neither needs to be the boot drive. But that's getting into overkill for most people, too.

[rallynavvie]

Also I'd use 2 of the 200gb in a Raid, and replace the 3rd one with a 74gb Raptor as a boot drive.

Oh my, why? So that if something goes wrong you just shat out 400GB of data? No thank you. If you must use RAID 0 do it on smaller drives for scratch space, but it is not necessary nor would I recommend it for anything but server applications (and then only nested). I do agree with the Raptor boot drive, but with 4 SATA channels you could upgrade later if you wanted to. The Raptor is a fantastic boot drive. Otherwise one of those 200GB SATA drives should be fine for boot, just make sure to defrag it regularly. Large C drives tend to clutter up a lot quicker than storage drives.

Memory, board, and processor are solid. I'd recommend a Northwood P4 instead of the Prescott though. All else is pretty much covered onboard. Asus would rule absolutely if they used better GbE controllers and a TI 1394 chipset instead of whatever they are putting in there, and it's interesting to see good ICH RAID support, but I don't like that the nesting is done through a seperate controller.

[BrainStorm69]

I didn't look at it real hard, but this article seemed to do a pretty decent job of walking through putting together a pc, and it has pictures, which I believe are quite helpful if you're unfamiliar with the inside of a pc.

http://www.motherboards.org/articlesd/how-to-guides/924_2.html

[videocheez]

The November issue of Maximum PC tells you how. Im gonna follow that guide plus do as your are doing and ask some the smart guys like rallie navy.

VC

Is this online.. any links?

I guess I'll do a search, If I can't find anything. I'll go and take advantage of Barnes and Nobles.

I went to Maximum PC's website but could not find any articles in previous issues. I like this magazine a lot but it's kina expensive. $9.00US. I just subscribed to it via my daughter's school for about $25/yr. What a bargain. My December just camen in the mail but you maystill be able to pick up a copy of November if you hurry.

VC

[Solarflair]

dont forget a video card. As for the grounding kit, i use thin rubber gloves. THe kits tend to get in my way and / or get unclipped.

[Faustus]

eh never had much of a problem with drive dying on me. Basicly one ever that I can think of. So I never really considered a raid that bad unless you never backup important files or something

As far as the video I suggested it because its not that much more and its a very very kicking card.

Semi on the subject of mags. I miss Boot.