Building the Perfect PC for Windows

Project: Building a custom PC with one CPU, suitable for running Windows 98, Me, XP Home or a similar OS (Those looking to run Windows 2000, Windows XP Pro or Linux might want to also see our updated feature on building an SMP-capable PC.)

Total Cost: As little as a few hundred, or as much as you care to spend. We spent about C$2500 in Oct. 2000 for the internal components. The cost today would, of course, be much lower.

Pros: Complete control over all aspects of the hardware and software allows better compatibility and optimum performance -- theoretically, at least.

Cons: Complex technical issues. Some assembly (and maybe a little teeth-gnashing) required. Building a PC from components costs 15 to 20 percent more than some pre-built systems.

Our quest was to build the perfect PC. Specifically, we set out to build a PC optimized for the "mainstream" operating system from Microsoft: Windows Me. We aimed to build a computer that took advantage of the latest motherboard designs and hardware innovations, such as a system that could exploit ACPI (advanced configurable power interface, which allows the system to go to sleep in "standby mode") and Windows Me's "Hibernate" feature, which allows it to shut down and return in seconds to whatever task you were performing before it went into hibernation.

We wanted features like high-performance AGP (accelerated graphics port) video, dual-monitor support, blazing hardware 3D graphics acceleration, DVD and more, more, more. But...although our number one consideration was quality, we wanted to "have it all" on a reasonable budget. We set as our target figure $2500, which is often quoted as the amount of money Canadians end up spending on a new computer. Although we had to make some compromises, we did end up with a computer that worked perfectly the very first time we plugged it all in. This is the story of what we installed, what worked and what didn't, and how we did it.

What's it For?

Of course, the definition of "perfect" depends on the qualifier, "for what?" We wanted to put together the best machine for overall multimedia performance, with exceptional hardware and software compatibility -- while spending a reasonable amount of money. We wanted it to be as flexible as possible, and to be as easy as possible to administer and maintain. We wanted stunning graphics performance, killer sound, and blazing speed -- in short, a tall order. We knew we'd have to cut some corners (a "no compromise" machine that supplied all of these items in spades could easily top $10,000), but we wanted the flexibility to be able to add more power in the future.

Here is a short "good/better/best" list of the components we considered, and notes on why various items were considered and rejected. Refer to the end of the article for a list of what ended up in our Perfect PC.

CPU: After considering all our processor options, we narrowed the list down to a few AMD and Intel processors. On the AMD side:

Good: Duron
Better: mid-range Athlon
Best: high-end Athlon XP (Socket A)

And, in the Intel corner of the ring:

Good: Celeron (PPGA), Celeron II (FC-PGA), Celeron 478
Better: PIII or Pentium III "Coppermine"
Best: Pentium 4 1.6 GHz or faster (at this writing, processor speeds in excess of 3GHz are available.)

When we were in the process of putting together our list, we applied the "never buy version 1.0 of anything" rule and discarded the idea of jumping to the then-new Pentium 4, with its limited selection of motherboards, expensive RDRAM and inevitable glitches. Today, these problems have all but vanished, and a P4-based system would be an excellent choice. Of our remaining options, the Athlon (named Product of the Year by PC World in June 1999 and Best PC Processor by Microprocessor Report in Jan. 2000) or any of the chips in the "Better" category are also great choices. Indeed, AMD chips tend to deliver slightly better performance "per dollar" than their Intel rivals, but Intel's products enjoy wider industry support. We also noticed that PIII chips, in more than a few cases, outperformed P4 chips running at similar clock speeds. Clearly, the PIII is no slouch.

For maximum reliability, we went with an Intel chip, but, it should be stressed, AMD is a completely viable alternative. (We subsequently built a second machine, based on an Athlon XP -- see our reports elsewhere in this section for details.) We eventually decided on the Pentium III Coppermine for its overall performance, advanced design (which helps keep the chip cool) and excellent compatibility. We ended up with a 733MHz CPU, at the time of our decision, the chip with the best price/performance ratio of the Coppermine series. We chose a "Slot 1" model, for reasons we'll discuss below. Our total cost, back in Y2K: C$300. Faster CPUs are, of course, available for far less money these days. Oh well! At the time this article was written, models ranging from about 700MHz to more than 1GHz were available, at prices ranging from $200 to about quadruple that.

Motherboard: Our short list had us choosing between Tyan, Asus, Abit and MSI motherboards (sometimes referred to as "mainboards.") There are, of course, numerous other brands. Back in 1995, our "Editor's Choice" for a next-generation Windows NT-friendly mainboard was the SuperMicro P6DLE board with two (slot 1) CPU sockets, 4 RAM slots, 3 ISA slots and 4 PCI slots. (Details at http://www.supermicro.com/products/ .) The company still makes great mainboards, which tend to be expensive, highly stable and somewhat less "tweakable" than those from the above-noted manufacturers. Indeed, we ended up choosing a board by Abit, renowned by hardware enthusiasts as the most "tweaker friendly" PC motherboard manufacturer of all.

However, there some industry watchers see that Abit has suffered significantly in marketshare over the past few years, as its competitors have embraced many of the same sort of "tweaking" options that Abit made famous: software-controlled overclocking options, VCORE voltage adjustments and minute control over details such as the front side bus clock speeds are now commonplace in PC motherboards and companies such as Asus, MSI and Gigabyte are now all ahead of Abit in overall sales figures. Still, the exact brand and model of motherboard is rather less crucial, it seems, than the features and compatibility issues it entails.

To sort out these issues, consider the following:

Do you want to run an AMD or Intel processor?
How upgradeable do you want the system processor to be? (AMD's Althon, for example, at this writing, tops out at about 2.25GHz; the latest P4 designs are already running at 3 GHz and beyond.)
Double Data Rate (DDR) RAM is faster than Synchronous Dynamic RAM (SDRAM). Do you want to use "last year's standard" PC133 SDRAM or pay more for faster DDR RAM -- or go for the less common RAMBUS RDRAM used in certain high-performance Pentium 4 systems.
Do you need compatibility with devices designed for ISA slots? (Our advice: don't bother.)
Any features you definitely do or don't want included on the motherboard? (e.g., SCSI, RAID, Fast Ethernet, audio, video, USB 2.0 ports, Firewire, dual processors, modem, etc., etc.)

Motherboard Considerations:

Perhaps the most important consideration is the chipset on which your motherboard will be based. You must match the board to the CPU you want to use. We've gone on record elsewhere on this site noting some apparent glitches with VIA chipsets, but they remain popular choices. Currently, we're fond of motherboards based on SiS chipsets, which seem to offer a good mix of value and trouble-free operation.

Thinking of buying used or upgrading an existing system? You should probably not bother, if it's based on an older Pentium II or Celeron motherboard using the once-popular Intel BX chipset. Officially known as the 440BX, it was a good choice in its day, but no longer supports the latest specifications in hard drive transfer rates, CPU "front side bus" speeds, AGP graphics performance, etc., etc. In short, it's not a viable option, if you are looking for maximum compatibility with currently available hardware.

The most notable limitation of the BX chipset is its limited support for processors using a 133 MHz front side bus (FSB). Some BX-based boards, such as the Abit BE-6-II, can support PIII processors with a 133 MHz FSB up to 1GHz in speed, but their limited support for ATA100 drives and limited support for newer AGP graphics standards makes them a less than ideal choice for those looking for optimal compatibility with future peripherals. For those satisfied with "only" 1GHz or a lesser processor, however, the BX chipset turns in surprisingly good performance, while managing to be less expensive than most other alternatives. (Update: Honestly, if we were planning on building a similar computer a month or two from now, we'd probably go for a board based on either an Intel 815, 815e or the Via Pro 133A chipset or a comparable equivalent based on the AMD 760 chipset if we elected to go for AMD Athlon- or Duron-based alternatives.

Some people may prefer a board with on-board SCSI, but several of the dealers we spoke to expressed reservations about this and, essentially scared us off the idea. We considered the manufacturer's reputation for quality and reliability (areas in which Asus and Tyan generally excel; both received Technical Excellence awards in the Jan. 1998 issue of Canadian Computer Wholesaler) and excellent documentation (another plus for Asus), but ultimately chose Abit over other strong competitors for its "SoftMenu III" features, which allowed us extensive customization capabilities. You should consider whether you need one or more of the older ISA (Industry Standard Architecture) on your new motherboard: Many recent models lack these older slots entirely, sometimes substituting an extra PCI slot or oddball CNR (Communications Network Riser) or AMR (Audio Modem Riser) slot instead. As well, some motherboards have onboard audio, video or both. We prefer boards without these integrated features, again for flexibility and future expandability; you may not.

Despite the performance and plug-and-play limitations of the ISA design, the bottom line is the fact that if you have an ISA sound card, SCSI card internal modem or other ISA-based adapter you want to use, as we did, you'll want a board with at least one ISA slot. Thus, we chose the Abit BE6-II, compatible with Intel CPUs up to the speed of 1 GHz. This BX-based board has several other nice touches: support for ATA66 hard drives (not a standard feature in most BX-based boards) and a number of features designed to enhance the overclocking prowess of the system.

A notable feature of the Abit board is its ability to automatically sense the CPU temperature. It is possible to configure these systems to automatically adjust their fan speed, sound an alarm or even shut themselves down if overheating occurs.

Another valuable feature of this ACPI-compliant motherboard is its compatibility with the Hibernate feature of Windows Me, allowing the computer to remember its state when shutting itself off, allowing you to quickly return to whatever task you were doing before shutdown. The system also provides good support for and the often-troublesome "stand by" command, including the ability to shut the CPU fan off when sleeping, further reducing ambient noise power consumption. The Abit BE6-II has a street price of C$155.

RAM: We decided to use use a single 256MB DIMM, leaving us with two free sockets to add more RAM in the future. We paid a bit more for PC133 SDRAM, which could lend itself to better use in future systems. Total cost: about C$200 (Oct. 2002 update: Ha! This much memory now sells for about $18.) You may elect to use one two SDRAM DIMMs (PC100) instead, for economy's sake. Hardware tweakers may want to consider two DIMMs for another reason: two memory modules sometimes allow memory interleaving, yielding better performance. Check whether the motherboard you want supports this feature.

Case and power supply: There are a wide variety of case options. Choose one that has the expansion options you require. We chose a good-quality metal case with a deluxe 350W power supply, an extra fan and an easy-to-remove side panel.

While we were at it, we learned quite a bit about power supplies. Basically, it is clear that all power supplies are most definitely not created equal, even if they are rated similarly. We compared three power supplies: a cheapo $35 unit, a mid-priced model ($60) and a fairly deluxe $90 power supply from Enermax (even better PSUs can cost as much as US$375!). We found that the more expensive units have better heat sinks (for better heat dissipation), quieter fans, and better shielding. We'd recommend going for a good power supply. Total street price cost for our easy-open case (YeongYang YY-5240 with 350W ATX power supply): about C$75.

CD-ROM drive: We decided to go for the gusto and installed a DVD/CD-RW "Combo" drive. We chose an LG drive (about $120); once the DVD format wars shake out, we expect DVD writers to supplant these drives as the next "must have" PC gadget. Currently, however, even a mid-range CD writer will outperform the most expensive DVD writer at basic tasks, such as writing CDs, ripping tunes from an audio disk and so on. These fancy drives do more, but they aren't necessarily faster. You will probably find that, whether you choose an inexpensive CD-ROM, a CD writer, DVD-ROM, combo drive or the latest-and-greatest DVD writer, the drive will almost certainly be recognized as a bootable ATAPI device by your favorite operating system. Booting Windows Me, for example, from its boot floppy, presents an option to enable the CD-ROM as a standard IDE device, allowing your boot floppy to access CDs in the drive (indeed, the Windows Me disc is bootable, making it even easier to reinstall the OS if necessary!). When reading CDs, your optical drive behaves exactly like a CD-ROM. It will also be able to read CD-RW, CD-R, and, if it's DVD capable, DVD discs.

Depending on the video card you choose, and your interest in outputting the DVD video signal to a TV, you may wish to add a DVD hardware decoder card, such as the Hollywood Plus from Sigma Designs (about $100). such cards typically use a pass-through cable that routes the output from a standard video card into and back out of the DVD decoder card, Unfortunately, this sometimes produces a small amount of interference in the video display -- barely visible, but definitely present. If your processor is faster than about 500 MHz or so, you really don't need a dedicated DVD decoder card.

Video Card(s): We elected to use a video card with onboard DVD decoding capabilities (and a host of other features): the ATI All in Wonder 128. There are definitely faster video cards, but this one does it all: MPEG-2 or AVI video capture, TV tuning and recording, composite (TV) output, closed caption display, DVD and video playback, and of course, video display tasks, with 2D and 3D graphics acceleration. Movie playback performance is excellent. Total cost: about C$240. (Caveat: when the video capture driver is installed, Windows Me's Hibernate function is disabled. However, hibernation works fine when the standard Rage 128 driver for Windows Me is used.)

This is another area that deserves your careful consideration. There are many video cards faster than the one we chose on the market. Do you need TV output? Do you want to record video? Do you want to spend $400 on a high-end model? For budgetary reasons, the ATI All in Wonder 128 was our choice; you should also consider ATI's newer Radeon-based cards, and those based on chipsets from Nvidia, 3dfx and Matrox. (The Matrox Marvel eTV is another great choice in video capture cards.)

The DVD drive worked very well in our tests. We tested it with both DVD movies and a few of the growing collection of DVD-ROM games that are available. In this latter category, we found a sci-fi action game called Wing Commander 4, starring Malcolm (Clockwork Orange, O Lucky Man) McDowall and Mark Hamill (Star Wars). We also tested a cartoon-style game of swashbuckling pirate cats called "Claw."

We watched a DVD version of the movie Terminator 2 and marveled at the extras on the DVD disc: biographies of the actors, production notes, theatrical trailers and more. The Austin Powers disc has several scenes that were deleted from the movie, including two alternate endings, commentaries on every scene by the director and Mike Myers, plus several extra goodies, including animations, a spy-genre retrospective and "Music to shag to."

There are numerous other DVD-ROM titles, too: Microsoft Encarta, Planetary Traveler, games from Cyan and others; even a monthly magazine from Britain, with a bundled DVD-ROM disc full of shareware and demo programs.

Planetary Traveler, from Third Planet Entertainment, is the first entirely computer-generated DVD-ROM disc we've seen. This disc features animated landscapes built with Bryce3D, a 3D program from Metacreations. Despite its occasionally overbearing music, it is a sightseeing tour unlike anything else.

Another notable DVD title is Microsoft's Encarta DVD Edition, which exploits the enormous capacity of DVD discs to fit more multimedia content than ever on a single disc. Encarta 98 DVD Edition includes an amazing "Virtual Globe" feature that, for example, not only allowed us to locate our home town on the map, but could also zoom right down to street level and locate interesting tourist destinations in a number of metropolitan areas. Alternate views provided us with sights and sounds of the cities, topographical relief maps of the areas, statistics and much more. Very cool.

You may wish to add a second video card and monitor, to take advantage of Windows Me's multi-display support. Because a PC only has one AGP port, at least one of the cards has to be a PCI card for this to work. Be aware, however, that some dual-display configurations don't work, regardless. For example, we could not get an All-in-Wonder PCI card and a Permedia2-based card to co-exist reliably. (We could get them to work together as dual displays by deleting the Permedia driver and reinstalling it. However, after a reboot, it would stop working again, despite the fact that Microsoft's Windows release notes claim that the Permedia2 and All-in-Wonder are "OK" as primary and secondary graphics adapters, respectively.)

As the Windows release notes state, not all video cards are supported as a secondary display. We also tried to use an old Canopus Total3D 128V as our second display with no success. We did, however, have much better success when we configured two PCI adapters (a Permedia2-based Graphics Blaster Exxtreme and an All-in-Wonder Pro, in our tests) for our dual displays. This is, however, a poor reason to sacrifice the performance benefits of AGP graphics card.

Sound Card: In 1998, we would have chosen the Creative Labs SoundBlaster 64 Gold (reviewed in more detail in a separate article) for its then-unsurpassed compatibility. However, it is an ISA card and thus not as plug-and-play friendly as a PCI model. Today, we prefer the SoundBlaster Live series of cards. There are several models, starting at about $70.

Good: SB Live Value Edition (70)
Better: SV Live MP3+ or X-Gamer ($150)
Best: SB Live Platinum or Platinum Dolby 5.1 edition ($250+)

Removable Storage: We considered an LS-120 (120 megabyte "floptical") drive, but its $135 cost made our budget bulge (and besides, the $24 it costs for a 120MB diskette is a terrible price/MB ratio compared to a the 10th-of-a-cent-per-megabyte cost of CD-recordable media). $19 dollars for a standard floppy helped trim the bottom line.

Good: Floppy Drive
Better: Floppy or LS120 and Zip, Jaz, Orb, tape, etc.
Best: CD-RW or DVD-RAM

Hard Drive: We chose a Maxtor 30GB 7200 RPM ATA66 drive. The Quantum LM series of low-noise drives are also a good choice.

Good: 8GB or larger ATA33 or ATA66 5400 RPM drive, preferably with a 2MB buffer.
Better: 20GB or larger ATA66 7200RPM drive with 2MB buffer
Best: ATA100, SCSI or FireWire drive(s), requiring additional controller hardware.

Operating System: We elected to install Windows Me and found it to support our motherboard's advanced features such as ACPI and USB very well, although Windows 98 or Windows 2000 (or even Windows 95 OSR2) would also work well on this system. We did not encounter any compatibility problems when Windows XP was released, in 2001, either. Today, we'd choose Windows XP as our operating system of choice for the best mix of ease and compatibility.

Although we didn't test it on this system, we would expect to encounter some fairly severe problems if we "upgraded" to Windows NT 4.0. NT 4's lack of plug-and-play and large hard-disk support and its incompatibility with USB and some of the other hardware and software components we wanted to use makes it a poor choice. If you want better stability than Windows Me or 98 offer, go for Windows 2000, Windows XP or Linux.

Mouse: We like the Microsoft Intellimouse, however many people prefer Logitech mice, or those from lesser-known manufacturers. The "click-and-roll" wheel on the Intellimouse and comparable models is very useful, for example, to zoom and pan in 3D Studio MAX or to smooth-scroll through web pages in Internet Explorer. We elected to purchase the model that comes with a PS/2 connector and an adapter that allows it to be converted to a serial mouse, to maximize our options. You may prefer a USB model (indeed, some new motherboards don't have PS/2 ports at all!) and/or one of the fancy new optical mice instead. Our total cost: about C$40.

Good: MS mouse PS2 $15
Better: Intellimouse with Wheel (or similar): $40
Best: Intellimouse Optical: $69

Modem/Ethernet:

The way our system is set up, we have several options for adding a modem. We could, for example, use one of the internal PCI slots to add a hardware or host-based modem. Or, with two free serial ports, it is a snap to add an external modem. Or, we could drop an internal modem into our system's ISA slot or plug a USB model into one of the USB ports.

We chose a $25 Acer/Aopen internal 56K modem (supporting the V.90 standard), which Windows Me auto-configured it as a "standard PC modem." It isn't as good as a "hardware" modem, however, it works well enough. As many computer advertisements note in their fine print, a 56K modem never actually delivers 56K worth of speed. You typically get download speeds around 49K/sec at best.

We also added a network card to our system. We've had not problems and good performance from the inexpensive D-Link 530TX model in the past, so that's what we used here. This 10/100baseT Ethernet card can be used for networking the machine to a local area network, and/or can be used to connect your PC to the phone company's ADSL high-speed Internet service or a "cable modem" service, such as the "Wave" system from Rogers or Shaw (etc.). Again, if you know you will be using high-speed internet, you may wish to forego the installation of a POTS ("plain old telephone service") modem entirely.

Software and Details

One of the key pieces of our PC system is, of course, its software. Overall, we found Windows Me to be very little trouble and the All in Wonder 128 worked perfectly as a TV Tuner card when we tested the WebTV for Windows feature. However, we did find a few incompatibilities elsewhere. Some DOS-based utilities, as noted earlier, are known to cause trouble, but the vast majority of the tools we tried worked well.

We had a few other other compatibility problems, which are detailed in our Troubleshooting Windows Me report, but we managed to resolve them all and now have a reliable and full-featured machine that still gives us plenty of future expansion options!

If building your own PC sounds like an interesting project to you (and it is!), a good, albeit somewhat dated, tutorial on the topic is available at dansdata.com. As with the information posted here, the general assembly principles don't change much -- just the names and costs of the components.

IT Library

The Techno Zone

User Account

Building the Perfect PC for Windows

Post new comment

More like this . . .

PowerPC 970

Intel's P4-based Celeron

Intel CPU Upgrades

Intel Pentium 4

IA64 CPU report: Itanium, McKinley, Clawhammer, Sledgehammer, etc.

CPU Report - Q4/2000 to Q1/2001

CPUs - a Roadmap for 2000