All right fellow Outlaws it’s time to assemble a new computer. I had a number of online vendors I used to buy from, but they all went out of business. Service and reliability count more than price. The new machine will have six channel audio, an AMD 64 CPU, and a Raptor hard drive. Any suggestions for online vendors?

I have had good luck with this one...www.newegg.com

I agree newegg!!!

Are you building it yourself or do you want a completed system? A great site that I use for parts is Price Watch . I've found this to be a very good resource for getting pieces when needed, but I've never looked for complete systems.

pricewatch will list the cheapest places to find specific parts from. though if you are looking for the system it is not the best at listing them...

a good thing is that user reviews are included for those sites you havent heard of and might not trust...

it might work out cheaper for shipping purposes if you bought all from the same place, but i doubt that one place will have every part the least expensive.

watch out for OEM or white box parts as they are sometimes lesser quality and/or sometimes not upgradeable (drivers, bios, etc.). a retail box would cost you more, but it may or may not be worth the extra $$$. video card i would buy retail, cdrw/dvdrw drives retail, other than that most things wont matter too much, but retail for the same price is a no brainer...

so you are getting the 64bit processor, are you going to use windows 64bit software or just xp?

I've used newegg several times and had no problems. If you have not installed CPU's before into a MB, you may want to get it pre-installed. I bought a pair of opterons for my box and bent one pin. It was a "challenge" to bend it back.

I'm not sure if the windows world has much in the way of 64 bit software (including windows itself). The linux world has been running in 64 bit mode for around 2 years now with good stability. I have been quite pleased with the 64 bit architectural changes. They added registers which will boost speed more than you'd expect. AMD's built in memory controller has also boosted speeds. I've seen 2X performance over what I expected from clock speed increases. In my case, the 64 bit addressing was sorely needed as well. I and others in the EDA world had ported alot of applications to linux but customers would need to run on sparc machines for the really big chips. If your curious about what might need more the 4GB of address space check out my . web site .

I'd encourage you to set up the machine to dual boot. Surfing the web is much safer under linux/firefox and you will be amazed how many apps there are included.

Enjoy the new box
mike

i am all for software competition and an alternative to microsoft, i only wish linux was a more pratical option.

Hey guys, thanks. I used Newegg to purchase some items for the family last Christmas, and I was happy with their performance. It looks like they’ll get the nod. I have never fooled around with linux before, but have heard some things about it. Who knows, maybe it’s time for a change. I have never been happy with Windows. When I started playing around with computers back in the early eighty’s all that was readily available for PCs was DOS. My biggest problem with Windows is all of the additional overhead that is required to allow someone to use a pointing device. This to me is a waste of resources. In the early ninety’s I worked in a computer store and screwed around with OS2, and OS2 Warp because it was free for us in the store. The problem was that there was very little third party software available for the OS2 family of operating systems. To answer another question, yes I will be building this one up myself from components. This will be the ninth machine I have built, or upgraded, and it has never been a problem. No worries mate. I am going to reuse the nice aluminum case, four hundred watt power supply and some of the other bits to hold the cost down. I’m looking to upgrade the motherboard, and processor to enhance the upgrade path. Thanks again for your input.

Oil Can,

I enjoy building my own computers too and have put quite a few together over the years, having built my first one in 1986. But recently I purchased a refurbished liquid cooled Sony VAIO with Windows Media Center from uBid. I must say, it is a very nice machine and it is quiet. I literally have to put my ear within about 6" of the thing to hear any sound at all coming from it. If you can use a mini-tower in your setup, it makes a very nice HTPC due to its utter silence. It doesn't add any additonal sound to the room.

I was thinking of putting together a 64-bit AMD box, but I think that I'll probably buy a 990 pre/pro instead.

Jeff