Did you purchase your computer or build it from scratch?

[96 GTS]

Title says it all. I've been looking at LFS rigs, and it seems to me that the vast majority of racers are playing on computers they built themselves. So, I'm wondering what percentage it actually is.

I built mine, btw.

[NetDemon01]

Bought a Dell, but it's not stock anymore. Just recently bought and installed a 500W power supply and an ATI x800gto vid card, and an extra gig of ram.

[Gabkicks]

built it :D

[indo420]

built my sucker always have always will.

three words

cheaper,better,faster

here are some specs.

those photos are quite old.

I have upgraded so far since teh pics

7800GS CO edition

2048MB of DDR400

another 250GB SATA (stuck in the HDD bay)

computers are like a crack addiction for me lol!

that last pic of the guts..it was quite messy i just installed the psu btw :)

[zeugnimod]

I bought it and didnt change anything.

Im too stupid to do this and am afraid, that it will break, if I try to change anything. :shy: :D

[shim]

got 3 computers, all custom built by my own hands..

(file server, game server, game b0x)

[spsamsp]

It's actually quite suprising that a big amount of people have built their "rigs" themselves...

But the question i ask is - is it really worth it? What are the pros? What are the cons?

[spsamsp]

I bought it and didnt change anything.

Im too stupid to do this and am afraid, that it will break, if I try to change anything. :shy: :D

You could just update your video and sound cards... if your'e not sure how then you can just google it and you will get step-by-step instructions on how to do it.

[Tweaker]

I've always built computers for friends and stuff, but never for myself. I actually end up buying a really expensive Dell every so often. Dells are actually quite good systems if you max all the options out and choose the highest model... doing so makes them last a long time until you need to upgrade. About 4 years ago I ordered this full spec laptop and bought it all with my own cash, was around $2,700 :doh: Was a great laptop back then, but the reason I did it was because I was always going to LAN parties and I was mobile a lot. I got tired of moving my desktop and my big big monitor around, it was a pain. So I got the laptop, and I am still using it right now. But now gaming is becoming more intense, and I need to get a new system. I no longer 'lan' or move around a lot, so this time around I wont be buying a system from a company, I will build one.... probably this summer. It won't cost as much as the laptop I bought at least :) (Crap I could've bought 2 systems with that kind of money!) But the laptop was worth it, and still is.

[spsamsp]

I've always built computers for friends and stuff, but never for myself. I actually end up buying a really expensive Dell every so often. Dells are actually quite good systems if you max all the options out and choose the highest model. About 4 years ago I ordered this full spec laptop and bought it all with my own cash, was around $2,700 :doh: Was a great laptop back then, but the reason I did it was because I was always going to LAN parties and I was mobile a lot. I got tired of moving my desktop and my big big monitor around, it was a pain. So I got the laptop, and I am still using it right now. But now gaming is becoming more intense, and I need to get a new system. This time around I wont be buying a system from a company, I will build one.... probably this summer. It won't cost as much as the laptop I bought at least :) (Crap I could've bought 2 systems with that kind of money!)

Me too... I have 2 dells, i did have one but it broke (BSOD!!!!!!!:jawdrop: )... After my parents bought a new one, i had decided to see what was wrong.
It turned out it was the HD, so i bought and fitted a new HD and wallah, i've got myself a computer to myself :)

[Greboth]

I bought mine from novatech just cause i needed a half decent comp and no time to get all the parts and build it etc. So only basic one i bought will upgrade it etc over time so will eventually be a built one.
I do prefer to build my own though, my last was.

[Matrixi]

I built my first PC by scratch in around '94 (good ol' 486) and still build them all by scratch. If I would be rich I would propably go apeshit and buy a Alienware or something, but building by scratch saves money and "you get what you give". :)

[Becky Rose]

A significant proportion of my life is spent sat at my computer, lets say 20% of every day. 20% of my life, at (lets say) 30 years old is 6 years. If 10% of my time is spent waiting on the computer to process something, or with the busy pointer, that's .6 of a year, over 6 months spent waiting for the computer. That is life wasted.

I never make compromises on my hardware, I buy the best that I can possibly afford. Manufacturers always make a compromise somewhere for cost - whether it's using RAM with a CAS timing of 5, or having a processor with a smaller L2 cache than I would use.

Right now i've got a system that's as high end as I could make it, I will be upgrading the processor at the end of this year or start of next, I already upgraded my screen and mouse since the last major upgrade a few months ago, and I will upgrade the keyboard shortly.

Compromise is waste of life. It should be illegal!

[AndroidXP]

Always built from scratch.

I rather invest some time selecting the parts and putting them together to get a system that is 100% what I need, instead of buying a package that "works" immediately but you find out two months later that some not so compatible parts cause stuttering in games and/or that the memory is shared with a low CAS and/or that the HD is a slow piece of junk and/or that the DVD drive has problems reading some of your favourite movies/games and has roughly the loudness of a helicopter start *gasp* and/or that the cooling is insufficient, causing the graphics card to overheat resulting in weird polygon glitches or causing the HD's to die early or causing the CPU to downstep itself, making the system run at half the performance it was intended to or................. :schwitz:

As you can see, I'll always build my PCs from scratch :nod:

[mrodgers]

Ok, let's see. My first PC was in 1995. Had no idea anything about them other than simple BASIC and FORTRAN programming classes in high school. It was a Compaq 75 MHz Pentium upgraded with a whopping 8 mb RAM and 2.1 gig hard drive. That was my first PC, and the only one I purchased up to this one I'm using now purchased in January. Between 1995 and 2004, I took home 4 throw-a-ways from work, 2 Penium 125's, a K2 233, and a K2 266. Had these PC's for years.

With the Compaq P-75, I found the original NFS. That was really cool! Bought myself a joystick and had some fun. Shortly later, a good friend and coworker bought Indycar Racing 2 and told me I NEEDED to get it. AWESOME! Bought my first wheel, a Thrustmaster T2 and ran it offline for 9 years or so running 8 full 100% race length 36 track seasons with track downloads.

Wife's Aunt called me up one day at the end of 2004 saying she was getting a new PC, would I like her old one? Sure! Don't know what it is, but I'll take it. Celeron 667 with WOW! 64 mb ram. Yanking all the ram I had laying around from the work PC's netted me 512 mb for this one with 64 left over to network 2 of them and create a file server out of the K2 266. The Celeron was good enough to roughly play Nascar Racing 2002 until I found LFS S1 demo. It ran S1 online Ok, didn't have the best framerate, but I didn't think I'd run it that long. S2 demo was released April of 2005. S2 was awesome compared to S1, but I found the Celeron 667 couldn't run it.

About a week after S2 demo came, someone at work told me he wanted rid of his old PC that was hit by a power surge. Insurance bought him a new one and he said the old one was mine to see if I could get it working. A P4 2.5 GHz with 512 mb ram and onboard gfx. I messed with it for a week, found the modem was fried, disabled, got windows booted and was back in business playing S2. It only had PCI, no AGP or new PCI-e, so I picked up a dirt cheap Radeon 9250 pci card. I finally tossed the P-75 and K2 PCs in the garbage after gutting them for some of the stuff that still sits in a drawer.

The P4 ran for 6 months until something finally fatally crashed either on the motherboard or the chip. I searched out my options of new MB and chip, as well as figuring out building a complete PC from scratch (the better option). I saw an add in Best Buy for an Athalon 64 3500 with 1 gig RAM for $500. Being as poor as I am and having a nice chunk of the income tax return left, I couldn't touch that price with building from scratch with that CPU, so I picked it up and that's what I'm using now. All it needs now is a cheap but decent graphics card and broadband and I'm happy!

[Bob Smith]

Never bought a PC in my life, it's cheaper (used to be loads cheaper, now there's not a lot in it), more fun, and you can specifiy exactly what you want.

I've rarely go out and build one from scratch either though (unless it's for a client), my own one just evolves over time, every now and then you realise you've replaced everything.

[Forbin]

Same here, Bob. I've been building my own computers since I was 13, right around the time the K6-2 came out. :)

As a matter of fact, my father has only ever bought 1 pre-built computer: Gateway with a Pentium 100, 16 MB of RAM, and a 1GB hard drive. That was back in December of 1994, and was top of the line at the time. He ended up paying a ton of money for it and decided never again. Like me, he's built them himself ever since.

[zeugnimod]

You could just update your video and sound cards... if your'e not sure how then you can just google it and you will get step-by-step instructions on how to do it.

Ok, I'll try that, when LFS doesnt work anymore with the current system. :p

I fear, that will happen with S3. :x

[Shotglass]

built from scratch ... and ive gone a bit mad with the specs but after all i built it to rund simulations on and depending on what topic im going to do my diploma thesis on it might come in handy

[NotAnIllusion]

Purchased it almost new and it was outdated already back then, several years ago. Thankfully it got damaged in airfreight from Finland to the UK so I had a good excuse to rebuild it myself. It's still outdated :p

[vladimir]

built it totally by myself with np help and hardly andy prior knowledge (okay, exchanged some parts, cards, power supply, drives.) even if i was a bit sceptical whether it would all work out, i have now got a PC that was a lot cheaper (well, it wasn't actually, because i put the money in quality and fast parts instead of someone too assemble it) than those i had before and even more importantly one that is a lot more stable...:thumb:

[sgt.flippy]

I bought a dell. My dad has worked for X years at the factory, and he got a cheque to buy a computer at Dell, too bad we weren't alowed to lay more money on. So I just configured the computer that was durable, high performance, and I just saved on things like CRT monitor, simple keyboard (I had a better one already), no support, no special sound stuff... You get the idea, and they gave me a 3 in 1 printer, that one went to my sister, and we bought an extra scanner for me.

[Tooby]

Can be hard to upgrade your "Dell" after a few years, lots of special parts. A scratch build you can upgrade as times goes.

[sgt.flippy]

What special parts? I have a different 3d card in it, put some extra ram in it, and installed an old cd writer into it... Untill now not very much problems with "special" parts... I don't really know what you're talking about,maybe there are upgrades I don't think of buying.

[Stellios]

Dell have a tendancy to use back to front parts, or they used to. Thier power supplies were specifically designed for their motherboards as the connections were reversed on the 20 pin connector. I used to read a lot of people eplacing thier Dell motherboard and wondering why their new one fried, because they didnt know Dells PSUs were back to front. Dont know whether its still the case.

My PC is totally built by myself, and always will be as its cheaper and a PC is relatively simple to set up, and its a lot cheaper. I cant help but laugh when i walk into PC World and the guy says than an X400 GFX card will run any game on full settings, show the Crysis and they will retract that statement :p

My PCs:

-486, bought for £80 from my mams work
-AMD K6-2 550MHz, built by my dad as i was about 14 at the time
-AMD 2000, 512mb 2100 RAM, GeForce 4 MX420 GFX, built by me, my first PC i ever built
-AMD XP 2400, 1GB 3200 RAM, GeForce 4 Ti4200 128mb Done by me
-AMD 2800 Sempron, 6800, 1GB 3200 RAM, my 2400 fried and this was the only readily available chip
-AMD A64 3200 Venice, 1GB 3200, 6800 GFX Card, current rig, probably get a new GFX card when i start uni in Sept.

[J.B.]

Like Bob, just exchanging parts now and then.

"Building from scratch" makes it sound a bigger deal than it is, it's not like you are actually building a custom design or something.

You just buy the parts, stick the stuff in the places where they fit and use a screwdriver to fasten everything. I don't think it's a lot more complex a task than connecting all the cables of monitor, mouse, dfp etc. to the back of a prebuilt computer.

Advantages are price and being able to select the parts you want, f. ex. a quiet PSU.

[Jakg]

its very easy (hey if a 14 year old can do it (ie me!) then you can!) plus, theres nothing quite like looking down at that "l33t machine" and thinking "I built that!" plus, you wil be able to make a pc that isnt Beige!

[Shotglass]

Like Bob, just exchanging parts now and then.

"Building from scratch" makes it sound a bigger deal than it is, it's not like you are actually building a custom design or something.

You just buy the parts, stick the stuff in the places where they fit and use a screwdriver to fasten everything. I don't think it's a lot more complex a task than connecting all the cables of monitor, mouse, dfp etc. to the back of a prebuilt computer.

some people like to design their own motherboards in mentor :)

[rabidmaddog]

I've built all of mine. I've seen roughly the same configurations retail for nearly twice the price of what I pay for the parts, which is insane. I like being able to use the specific components of my choosing. My machines also seem to run much better than many pre-built retail machines. I like to assemble things, so I rather enjoy it as well.

[rabidmaddog]

Like Bob, just exchanging parts now and then.

"Building from scratch" makes it sound a bigger deal than it is, it's not like you are actually building a custom design or something.

You just buy the parts, stick the stuff in the places where they fit and use a screwdriver to fasten everything. I don't think it's a lot more complex a task than connecting all the cables of monitor, mouse, dfp etc. to the back of a prebuilt computer.

Advantages are price and being able to select the parts you want, f. ex. a quiet PSU.


Except locating some of those little power leads for the HDD LED, Power switch, reset, etc. Especially when the MB markings are ambiguous and the locations don't match what is depicted in the manual. That can be a bit of a puzzle sometimes. Otherwise, I completely agree :nod:

[Kajojek(PL)]

I built it, I mean not quite eeemmmm my brother did.:)

[J.B.]

some people like to design their own motherboards in mentor :)

If you say so... :pillepall

Except locating some of those little power leads for the HDD LED, Power switch, reset, etc. Especially when the MB markings are ambiguous and the locations don't match what is depicted in the manual. That can be a bit of a puzzle sometimes. Otherwise, I completely agree :nod:


Yeah, forgot about that. I used to do that part by trial and error until once something started smoking when I wired up an USB port wrong. No major harm done though. :schwitz:

[SHIFT_]

I used to always buy my computers, but as of late they all seem like utter rip-offs, so I build my own. Not being a cheapskate or anything, I really like working on computers, the savings is just a big benefit.

My last two computers have been self-built, the first one had a 3ghz P4 and an ATI AIW 9800PRO. The one I'm using now has an AMD Athlong 64 3500+ @ 2.47ghz, 1gb g.skill pc3200, and an ATI AIW X800XT. All designed to be overclocked, now if I could just work out how to increase my overclock some more. :p

I'm quite into the style aspect of my computer as well, most computers you get buy retail are just too ugly, and often poorly-build using cheaper parts.

Anyway, now onto some pics of my supposedly beastly rig. :tilt:

[TagForce]

All designed to be overclocked, now if I could just work out how to increase my overclock some more. :p
Anyway, now onto some pics of my supposedly beastly rig. :tilt:

General rule of thumb for all things electrically powered:

The colder it gets, the less resistance the current will get, the faster the operations can perform.

So, looking at your pictures, I'd say, dump all the fans (who needs airflow?) and stick in some liquid cooling with peltier elements for the videocard, and a phasechange deepfreeze for the CPU... That should get it to about -15 celcius and able to overclock a lot further... Oh, when you do that, make sure you insulate the whole part you place a coolblock on, or it will get wet from condensation and fry. Also, the hottest part of your PC will be the RAM, so you might want to consider cooling that a bit too (passive liquid blocks would do the trick), and make sure the PSU is OUTSIDE the case (as that thing will always blow hot air into your case, heating up the "apparently-not-so-useless" ICs on your MB.

[der butz]

...and make sure the PSU is OUTSIDE the case (as that thing will always blow hot air into your case, heating up the "apparently-not-so-useless" ICs on your MB.

errm... the psu usually sucks the hot air out of the case. Never had any blow-psu.

BTW I built almost every computer from scratch, except my c64, bought this thing with my father and modded it into a nice wooden kb-frame without touching the guts :-)
Since then I always bought the upgrade I needed, atm I have a 3200+, 512mb ram, 160gb hdd, a completely modded 400w psu, and a 9800 pro in an old throwaway server bigtower. Enough to play lfs i think.

[Marty502]

I've had 2 computers, both built from scratch. A 486 DX4 back in 1997 and a Celeron 633 back in 2000, which I've modded. Now it has a Pentium III 900, 512 RAM, Radeon 7500 DDR, DVD writer and a nice, silent case. :)

Still, it's beyond outdated, more like a dinosaur! But I'm not so sure about upgrading it, I have no reason to do it besides LFS, since I only do the basic Word-Firefox-Windows Media Player-Messenger thing and my budget isn't too good.

If I do it, I'll do it from scratch. Cheaper, and I get to see every single component that will go inside, so I don't end up with a crappy memory or something like that. :)

[KeMoT]

I have purchased mine but I am still rebiulding it :D changing its parts :D

[MR_B]

I bought a Fujitsu Siemens, why did I buy instead of build? So I can blame someone else if it breaks! :D

[mrodgers]

Still, it's beyond outdated, more like a dinosaur! But I'm not so sure about upgrading it, I have no reason to do it besides LFS, since I only do the basic Word-Firefox-Windows Media Player-Messenger thing and my budget isn't too good.
Er, I believe both of those were "beyond outdated, more like a dinosaur" when you say you built them :tilt: . My Pentium 75 mhz was outdated in 1995 when I bought it.

[BWX232]

http://img209.imageshack.us/img209/6994/p3060032custom5kv.th.jpg (http://img209.imageshack.us/my.php?image=p3060032custom5kv.jpg)http://img209.imageshack.us/img209/1807/p3060033custom8lp.th.jpg (http://img209.imageshack.us/my.php?image=p3060033custom8lp.jpg)

That should answer the question-- "during the build"



http://img489.imageshack.us/img489/5703/p5070001croppc9lq.th.jpg (http://img489.imageshack.us/my.php?image=p5070001croppc9lq.jpg)

[TagForce]

errm... the psu usually sucks the hot air out of the case. Never had any blow-psu.

Yeah, that's what I said and thought, until I got one that managed to blow air into the machine, even though the fans were supposed to suck it out... PSU aren't the most perfect boxes for airflow, especially the bigger 600W+ PSUs... And if you're not careful, it will make the machine slower... It's not like it manages to overheat the components, but it's noticable.
I took the PSU out of the case, and it saved me some 12 degrees celcius inside the case (with absolutely no fans in sight).

[BWX232]

Yeah, that's what I said and thought, until I got one that managed to blow air into the machine, even though the fans were supposed to suck it out... PSU aren't the most perfect boxes for airflow, especially the bigger 600W+ PSUs... And if you're not careful, it will make the machine slower... It's not like it manages to overheat the components, but it's noticable.
I took the PSU out of the case, and it saved me some 12 degrees celcius inside the case (with absolutely no fans in sight).

Must have been a crappy PSU.:shrug:

[SHIFT_]

Yeah, that's what I said and thought, until I got one that managed to blow air into the machine, even though the fans were supposed to suck it out... PSU aren't the most perfect boxes for airflow, especially the bigger 600W+ PSUs... And if you're not careful, it will make the machine slower... It's not like it manages to overheat the components, but it's noticable.
I took the PSU out of the case, and it saved me some 12 degrees celcius inside the case (with absolutely no fans in sight).

I have a hard time believing the PSU causes a 12c heat increase. At worst, my rig has a case temp. maybe 6c over room temp. while playing a game; normally it's 3c over room temp. Even if I removed the PSU, it's still not going to be room temp, since all the other components create heat as well. PSU maybe contributes 1-3c (depending on PSU fan set-up) to overall case temp..

[Marty502]

Er, I believe both of those were "beyond outdated, more like a dinosaur" when you say you built them :tilt: . My Pentium 75 mhz was outdated in 1995 when I bought it.

Probably right. :)

I've never had much of a budget to deal with, so that's the best I've been able to do. Still, my 486 ran Duke Nukem 3D, and even Age of Empires! And that was good enough for me. :D

[BWX232]

I have a hard time believing the PSU causes a 12c heat increase. At worst, my rig has a case temp. maybe 6c over room temp. while playing a game; normally it's 3c over room temp. Even if I removed the PSU, it's still not going to be room temp, since all the other components create heat as well. PSU maybe contributes 1-3c (depending on PSU fan set-up) to overall case temp..
Not if the fans suck (or don't as it may be)

[Rob76]

I've always bought a fully built PC and then upgraded it as the price of the highest end components that fit come down in price. Once I can't go any further with upgrades without a motherboard change (which usually means new CPU, RAM and possibly video card anyway) I buy another ready built PC and donate my latest reject to my Dad.

I never buy a 'brand' PC, but rather use a company that build with components I specify. I've never managed to source all the components cheaper to build it myself - the closest I got, the OS would have tipped the balance. So to have it built and get it all warrantied for a year has always (so far) made sense. As I work with electronic equipment and PCs during the week, it's nice just to get stuck in with a fully built PC rather than have the ball ache of building one. Or maybe I'm just lazy :D