building a pc v's off the shelf pc

[dannydmix]

Hi Macro,
I saw a thread between yourself and 'Rainmaker', and wondered what your thoughts might be on building a PC by components rather than buying straight from the likes of Dell computers etc..
I am thinking of building a 'dual xeon, intel 925, 1200mhz FSB mobo, 2Gb ram(dont know which DDR will give best performance), RAID 0/1 SATA, 1GbLAN WOL or iLO, audio pci I arleady have is a

[emu.com...]

finally at least 4pci slots as have a few other cards!
Goal is to build a pc that has enough muscle to run the likes of Photoshop, CubaseAudio, VMWare.

If only audio was required then the likes of

[carillondirect.com...]

would be do the job fine.
Nwayz, any comment?

TIA
Danny

[Macro]

Nah, I don't think building this is worth the trouble. I don't think it will save you a load of dosh.

dual xeon, intel 925, 1200mhz FSB mobo, 2Gb ram(dont know which DDR will give best performance), RAID 0/1 SATA, 1GbLAN WOL or iLO, audio pci

Doesn't inspire me with a great deal of confidence. The 925 chipset and dual Xeon? 1200 MHz FSB? Wow!

You don't have a choice in DDR. If you're using Xeon CPUs you have to use a Xeon motherboard, you can't use a P4 board - the latest ones are 800 FSB - and they take only DDR2. Not just any DDR2 but ECC versions and they are fussy with makes/models.

You won't know what hit you till you try putting it together. The holes in the case won't match the holes in the mobo sockets and you'll need to screw the CPU heatsinks to the motherboard tray which you won't be able to do on most cases. And, that's just the start. You've got many other problems awaiting you.

No offence, but get someone who knows what they are doing to build your machine. When spending a lot of money why settle for a botch up job by a DIY enthusiast?

I won't comment on the links as I don't believe they meet the webmasterworld TOS.

Welcome to WW.