Computer Stores in Calgary

[Slick Fork]

Hi there,

I know some of you guys out there are into computers, I'm looking to build a new system and was wondering if there are any recommendations for parts shops in Calgary, or online. I will be building from scratch and am also open to suggestions as to Motherboard brand and whether or not I should go with an E8400 Core 2 Duo or a Q6600 Core 2 Quad processor

Cheers

[Pan]

Memory Express. Best store in town for computer related.

[Slick Fork]

Where are they at? Do you find their prices are comparable to online?

[Brent F]

They have 3 stores in Calgary and one in Edmonton
http://www.memoryexpress.com/Company...Locations.aspx

[DanG]

I've ordered my last 3 systems worth of parts from www.ncix.com in Vancouver. Great prices.

Are you gaming with the system?

IMO, one of the best boards out there now is the Gigabyte DS3L. Pair that up with 2GB of OCZ ram and a Q6600. Or wait for next week if you're willing to spend a bit more, the new Q9450 is supposed to be out this coming week. It's the new 45nm core, 2.66GHz, 4 cores and 12mb of cache.
If you're gaming, either the G92 based 512MB 8800GTS or the new 9600GT. Nvidia is supposed to be releasing their new 9800GX2 this coming week as well.
If you're not gaming, something like an 8600GT will be fine.
For HDD, I'd go with either Western digital or Seagate. I love the seagate drives, but if you ever have warranty issues, you have to ship the drive to the US while WD has a repair centre in Canada.

[Slick Fork]

I will be doing some gaming with the system, the most resource intensive games played on it are the total war series, oblivion, and IL-2.

It seems lots of people recommend the gigabyte boards, I've had 2 Asus boards that I liked, 1 gigabyte board that I didn't. My knowledge level and desire to tinker with computers is extremely limited. After I set a system up, I just want to use it and the gigabyte board seemed to need a lot of babysitting. I just want plug and play, the extent of my overclocking has been limited to fiddling with the FSB, or using the handy ASUS percentage based overclock!! I have also heard good things about the eVGA based MB's.

I was considering the ati hd3850 for a video card, always had ati but I suppose it wouldn't kill me to look at NVIDIA. A question on cards, have ATI and NVIDIA gotten completely out of manufacturing these cards? I've always had a genuine ATI card and now I feel lost as I don't know how an ASUS branded ATI would stack up against a saphire, or an eVGA would stack up against a BFG.

I agree on the Western Digital HD and I'll start out with a matched pair of 2x1gb DDR2 800 RAM

[ElGuappo]

Originally Posted by Brent F

They have 3 stores in Calgary and one in Edmonton
http://www.memoryexpress.com/Company...Locations.aspx

1 of these is behund the Taj Mahal isnt it ? my best friend is a comp science major and went there and thought he got a good deal when ordering his from scratch.

[DanG]

Originally Posted by Slick Fork

I will be doing some gaming with the system, the most resource intensive games played on it are the total war series, oblivion, and IL-2.

It seems lots of people recommend the gigabyte boards, I've had 2 Asus boards that I liked, 1 gigabyte board that I didn't. My knowledge level and desire to tinker with computers is extremely limited. After I set a system up, I just want to use it and the gigabyte board seemed to need a lot of babysitting. I just want plug and play, the extent of my overclocking has been limited to fiddling with the FSB, or using the handy ASUS percentage based overclock!! I have also heard good things about the eVGA based MB's.

I was considering the ati hd3850 for a video card, always had ati but I suppose it wouldn't kill me to look at NVIDIA. A question on cards, have ATI and NVIDIA gotten completely out of manufacturing these cards? I've always had a genuine ATI card and now I feel lost as I don't know how an ASUS branded ATI would stack up against a saphire, or an eVGA would stack up against a BFG.

I agree on the Western Digital HD and I'll start out with a matched pair of 2x1gb DDR2 800 RAM

Stick with the Intel P35 or X38 chipsets. The nVidia chipsets (the ones that eVGA uses on their motherboards) are great if you want to run SLI (dual nvidia video cards), but they run noticibly hotter than the Intel chipsets.
If you're planning on overclocking, step up to DDR2 1066 ram. If you get it on sale, it's not much more than DDR2 800, but will also give you a bit more headroom if you're overclocking. Be careful with overclocking on the stock Intel heatsink. It's great at stock speeds, but once you take something like the 2.4GHz Q6600 past 2.8 or so GHz, things get a bit warm.

[Slick Fork]

Thanks for all the tips. I went down to memory express today and to be honest I've never recieved better service anywhere.

I ended up getting the antec sonata 3 case with the 500watt power supply, gigabyte p35-ds4 mb, 2x1gb (matched set) of patriot ddr2 800 ram, intel core2 quad q6600, western digital 160 gb sata hdd and the evga 9600gt ko edition.

I was really impressed, they put the processor and ram onto the mb for me and tested it before I took it home. Got it home, put it together and I've got vista ultimate loading as I peck away on the laptop!!

This'll be a big change from my athlon 64 3200+ with an AGP ati x800!!

[banditpowdercoat]

I was just thinking about placing an order to ncix myself. Time to get back my desktop. Sound card fried last year, took out Mobo, Vid, etc. basically the PCI buss. I game too. BF2 mostly.