Thread: My first computer build

Originally Posted by EJOUIE

Things to look for in a motherboard besides price:

Front side bus speed - rate of data transfer from processor to memory and graphics.
Slot types - AGP or PCI express. Depends of which card you want to use.
Expansion slots - PCI slots for additional cards such as sound, or network.
USB - number of ports and locations matching to case
Overclocking - yes.
Maximum amount and type of RAM - for gaming, I would choose speed over quantity with a minimum of 6 gb.

LOL do you live in 2001?

FSB hasn't been a bottle neck since HyperTransport came round
and AGP? Its been dead for years.


He wants to go Intel, So I think a 980X or 2600k will be good for him with either an HD 6870 or 6970 will work well.

we've only just begun to optimize for the 4 cores in a processor with software.

I am pushing him to buy an SSD, you have to have one now these days

Originally Posted by Drunkie

He wants to go Intel, So I think a 980X or 2600k will be good for him with either an HD 6870 or 6970 will work well.

Honestly I'd go with the 2600k over the 980X but that's just my personal preference. They are both great, great processors (as is the slightly cheaper and slightly less powerful 2500k). I'd say the difference between the two though would be relatively unnoticeable for the average user unless you're doing some serious stuff like video encoding or whatever.

Originally Posted by Drunkie

I am pushing him to buy an SSD, you have to have one now these days

True that, they are awesome too. I've thought about getting a small one for just the OS and maybe a select few programs to speed things up a bit. Definitely worth it if you've got the $$.