So What Is The General Rule Of Thumb?

i just want ppl's opinion on the general rules of building a pc. Now this is not a how-to question but rather a guide for ppl who want to do it on their own.

Now my question is...

For average users, does the front side bus (fsb) have to match (cpu, mobo, ram) have to match in order NOT to have bottleneck in sys performance?

For overclockers, does name brand hardware often perform better than a no name brand? and does the fsb of the MOBO has to be higher than cpu and ram to have higher oc potentials?

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Originally posted by james_bond_rulez@5 February 2004 - 05:14
For average users, does the front side bus (fsb) have to match (cpu, mobo, ram) have to match in order NOT to have bottleneck in sys performance?

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Depends on what you want to do with the computer.

General Rule of Thumb? RTFM - READ THE FRIGGIN MANUAL!!!! :rtfm: :)

<_<

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Originally posted by james_bond_rulez@5 February 2004 - 05:38
<_<

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I assume you don&#39;t think the same? If everyone read the manuals there wouldn&#39;t be so much fear about building a computer.

I g2g now... be back at afternoon

good, now we can have a real discussion :lol:

Quote:

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Originally posted by james_bond_rulez@5 February 2004 - 04:14
i just want ppl&#39;s opinion on the general rules of building a pc. Now this is not a how-to question but rather a guide for ppl who want to do it on their own.

Now my question is...

For average users, does the front side bus (fsb) have to match (cpu, mobo, ram) have to match in order NOT to have bottleneck in sys performance?

For overclockers, does name brand hardware often perform better than a no name brand? and does the fsb of the MOBO has to be higher than cpu and ram to have higher oc potentials?

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Fer sher.
Having your chip and memory communicating at the same frequency is an advantage for "regular" users and OCers alike.

"Name brand" components are ofttimes better than no-name parts, but not necessarily. There are a limited number of manufacturers and the no-name unit could be a big time name with a different label. Hard to tell without extensive research.
The advantage of the well known brands is that there is probably an extensive database of experience/knowledge regarding their effective use. This can save you quite a bit of time/agony when it comes to pushing the performance envelope.

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Originally posted by james_bond_rulez@5 February 2004 - 04:14
For average users, does the front side bus (fsb) have to match (cpu, mobo, ram) have to match in order NOT to have bottleneck in sys performance?

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there&#39;s no such thing as a system without bottlenecks, unless it&#39;s something like a pocket calculator or a gameboy that&#39;s just designed to do one thing at a predetermined speed. but a PC without bottlenecks? nah. if your cpu isn&#39;t the bottleneck then the memory will be the bottleneck, if neither of those are the bottleneck then it&#39;ll be the hard drive or the video card and so forth and so forth. the bottleneck just moves around when you upgrade parts, it never goes away completely.

matching the RAM speed and the FSB is a good thing anyway, though.

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Originally posted by 3RA1N1AC@5 February 2004 - 14:02
the bottleneck just moves around when you upgrade parts, it never goes away completely.

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Well put :)

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QUOTE (3RA1N1AC @ 5 February 2004 - 14:02)
the bottleneck just moves around when you upgrade parts, it never goes away completely.&nbsp;


Well put&nbsp;

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Very true try to get as little as possible by getting componets that are similar in FSB etc... for instance it was very bad of me to have a mobo that supported 2100 ram and have 2 gigs of 3200 ECC ram... :lol: Get the speeds as close as possible thats all i can say... but the Ram and cpu are the more important figures, as long as the mobo supports the general paremeters of the mobo/ram then you are set. the rest will most likly work ok without as much research etc...

Most parts can be bought for a lot cheaper than you&#39;d expect. And the quality ain&#39;t bad either. pricewatch.com is one of the sites. newegg.com too.try to get the cheapest you can on everything except memory and motherboard. those two are important. get a motherboard and processor that go at least 1ghz and at least 512mb DDR memory. hard drive space is up to you, and i recommend the very good, and cheap &#036;55 geforce FX 5200 128mb this isn&#39;t any MX junk either. it&#39;s awesome