Thread: Help, computer build

Hey I am new at building computers this would be my 1st build and i would like it to be an Intel SIL system so if you have any suggestions it would really help... I have around $2,000- $2,500
I still need 2X CD/DVD drives/burners and a power supply or anything else like wires or fans & heatsinks I'm all ears to your suggestions

What I'm looking at right now:
Form Newegg:
1X - EVGA 123-YW-E175-A1 LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 750i FTW SLI ATX Intel Motherboard $190

1X - Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 Wolfdale 3.16GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor Model BX80570E8500 $270

2X - OCZ Platinum 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model OCZ2N10662GK $152

2X - EVGA 512-P3-N802-AR GeForce 8800GT Superclocked 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card $350

2X - Seagate Barracuda ES.2 ST3500320NS 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive $200

1X - Antec Nine Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case $120

1X - Logitech Z-2300 200 watts RMS 2.1 Speaker System $106

1X - RAZER Tarantula RZ03-00070100 Black USB Standard Gaming Keyboard $90

Form Dell:

1X - Dell UltraSharp 2408WFP 24-inch widescreen flat panel $600

BTW if you wanted to know I'm getting this as a present for making Eagle Scout so this rig might be made by the end of the year, hopefully


THX
DAVID(GEN)

if its taking you to the end of the year... when are you ordering this?

by then this stuff will be totally out of date

If you're waiting till the end of the year, go with at least the EVGA 9800 so you can play some of the latest games. The 8800 will be behind the times next year.

Also, what operating system are you planning on running? 64 or 32?

And damn, that's one hell of a display. 6ms response time on something at 24in. Wow.

Well I'm not waiting , I'm trying to do it as fast as i can but do to me moving i cant do anything to keep moving forward, so i though i would look at computer parts....

Right now im thinking 32bit vista or maby 64bit so i can get some ram... im not too sure

Price it when your ready to buy, get an idea now, in three months youll have a whole new playing field to buy from.

Tomshardware and techreports.com both have system buying guides that you can reference. Buy off one of those and you wont be going wrong.

cool... thx for the Help Mcstrange

Or you could come back at the end of the year when you're ready to purchase.

Oh and when you're ready take a look at Ati's vid card offerings.

This is just my 2 cents and take it for what it's worth...

I'd go with an AMD rig. CPUs and motherboards are slightly cheaper and honestly... you won't see a difference. Yes, Intel is better at some things and AMD others, but the reality is, that time is measured on the nano/micro second scale.

If your going with an nVidia graphics card, I would go to their site, click shop->nVidia Graphics Cards. THat will pull up all the stats for their cards. For less money, you could go with a 9K series and have better performance. And I'll give you a little heads up as to why some cards are cheaper then others but are the same exact card... warranty! The cheaper ones (Like the ASUS cards) only have a 3 year where as XFX, BFG... etc. have lifetime warranties.

As for HDDs, if possible (assuming you've shaved off some money here and there), I would go with 2 velociraptor (3Gb) drives. They are pricy but having those beasts in a striped array would be scary fast. And at the very least Raptor drives. Don't let the 3Gb bandwidth on "standard" drives fool you. Raptors (1.5Gb) drives blow them out of the water.

As for a monitor, go to a computer store and see if you can test drive a 24" widescreen. You might find it's to big. Also, look for a monitor that is under 5ms. There are tons of them out there and the really pricy ones are in the 2ms range so you could have some bucks there without sacrificing performance. Remember, your graphics card can only go as fast as your monitor puts it on the screen.

I haven't looked at the Razer keyboard, but check out some of the new stuff by Saitek and the G15 by Logitech. At $100 for a keyboard, you'd better love it.

And in closing...

Keep in mind what others have said, what is bleeding edge now will be high end by the end of the year. By then, you'll probably look at a quad core CPU, a completely different motherboard, DDR3 RAM, and probably a 200 series nVidia card (Assuming your going with nVidia) running Vista 64 or possibly keep what you have now and go to the new version of Windows that they might or might not be releasing in 2009 or 2010.

And lastly, I didn't see anything about a sound card. I am assuming you'll be using the onboard sound? It's up to you, but for a high end rig, I'd go with a seperate soundcard. If you decide to go with a seperate sound card, make sure it does everything you could think of as far as sound goes. And don't do what I did and have to learn everything the hard way, you have the time right now to research everything so do your homework and make sure EVERYTHING is compatible. Even down to everyone port and fan on the case.

I wish I had a dollar for everytime I heard someone say "I bought this PC last year and I want it to do "X" and it won't" to save $20.

wow thx guys for the help