[Misfit45]

Hi all,

I’m “thinking” of building a computer. Can anyone suggest what I would need to be able to do this? So I could then cost it up. (I live in the UK, so if anyone has any good sites or suppliers, then I would prefer to buy over here in case there are any problems – sorry to anyone overseas, nothing personal)

I would like something fast and efficient, good graphics and sound and is powerful.
I would like to be able to do the following:

I use Photoshop quite a bit – designing album sleeves, scanning etc,
Maybe recording music, mixing and mastering,
Transferring old records and tapes to CD,
Transferring old VHS to DVD,
Internet (Broadband)
General day to day tasks – Word, Excell etc.

At the moment I am running a Celeron 2.00GHz, 512mb, 40gb system running XP SP2 and this is VERY slow, and crashes quite a bit.

I know I could upgrade, but I wouldn’t be able to afford everything altogether, and I use my computer almost everyday.

Any help would be most appreciated.

Thanks in advance

[etaf]

well you need bascally
A good case and powersupply - get when at least 400W/450W
Motherboard, a lot come with intergrated sound, video, lan, etc etc etc
So you need to decide on what you want intergrated and what you will be as an extra.
Probably 1GB of memory now adays
then some HARDDRIVES - lots of space needed for video etc IDE or SATA

So what part of the UK are you in.
theres some very good deals available through computer fairs - most weekends - just make sure you know the dealer.
i have a local one here and there are at least two very good dealers there that are also local to me. Surrey area - Fair is at tadworth

otherwise some websites are
overclockers.co.uk
dabs.co.uk
microdirect.co.uk

But I have also found that I can get it all made up and tested for just an extra £50 save me the hassel.

whats your budget, I'm sure others will give a detailed breakdown and part numbers

[gotrootdude]

From what your saying you'll use it for, I'd recommend:

1. A Athlon64X2 4200+ cpu - Photoshop is dual core capable, and you'll be able to do other things while video editing. $360 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103547

2. An ASUS A8N5X motherboard - You don't need SLI, but you do need a reliable board with modern sockets/interfaces $83.99 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131569

3. I'd recommend 2gb of memory: 2gb Gskill 2.5-3-3-6 PC3200 $155.99 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231047

4. A Antec TRUEPOWERII TPII-550 $89.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817103931

5. 1 SATA Western Digital Raptor hard drive: $134AR http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822144160
Use for your OS, program files, and workspace. (Raptor drives have been shown to be quicker than two 7200rpm drives in Raid configuration) The drives go sky high in cost the larger they get, so just get one big enough to work on and use a larger cheaper drive for storage.

6. 1 SATA Seagate Barracuda hard drive 250gb or larger. Newegg has them, but you can find them cheaper after rebates at other stores.
Use it for longer term storage of media files.

7. VisionTek XTASY Theater 550 Pro TV Tuner Card PVR MCE with Remote Control $81.99AR http://www.buy.com/retail/product.as...575&adid=17662
use for easy capture. It's based upon the newer ATI theater 550 chipset, with hardware encoding and 12bit digital comb. Also compatable with XP/MCE/and most other third party applications.

8. Radeon X800 128MB 256-bit DDR PCI Express x16 Video Card $99AR http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814127176 A good mid-range video card. ATI cards have been known to be a bit better at 2D than Nvidia cards, and the applications you listed are 2D. Also, it's a great price.