New computer

[villman420]

well i guess i can give you guys an idea of what i want.
i prolly want to spend $800 at the most.

i really dont play online or computer games in general besides tribes when i have time, so an above average but not the best video card would be good.

i do download a lot of music and movies so a hard drive with good space and longevity would work (300 gig?).

dont know anything about motherboards so cant tell you what i want there.

not sure if what tier said is true or not about core duo going down in price with the quad coming out? but a really good processor would be nice.

not sure if i want a badass looking tower or not. id rather have enough money for other parts and worry about the case last with how much i have left. usb's in front of tower would help.

i might need a new flat screen monitor soon so a price on those that are 19" would be nice. are sound cards a big thing anymore? 1 gig of ddr2(is there ddr3?) ram enough?

if i forgot anything, just ask and ill tell you what i want

[villman420]

this is what someone told me to try. please tell me if this is a good idea or not and why if it is not. thanks. i also thought about buying a part every couple weeks so i might be able to spend more on some things

ASUS P5NSLI Motherboard ~$100
Intel Core 2 Duo E6320 Conroe 1.86GHz 4M shared L2 Cache LGA 775 Processor ~170
XFX PVT84JUDD3 GeForce 8600GT 256MB XXX 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card x2 ~140 each
Western Digital SATA Hard Drive 300GB ~100
2GB DDR2 RAM ~70
OCZ GameXStream OCZ700GXSSLI ATX12V 700W Power Supply 100 - 240 V ~140

Advantages of this setup:

SLi: I don't know if you are familiar with SLi, but basically its like dual video cards. They split up the work load of graphics rendering making it potentially twice as fast.

SATA and DDR2: For some reason these items are getting hella cheap. SATA and DDR2 are way cheaper than IDE and DDR.

CPU: Probably the cheapest and slowest of the Core 2's but it is very easy to overclock. I've heard of people running them at 3.0GHz with stock cooling.

Put it all in a malarkeyty case for about $20 for a total cost of about $880. Some of that stuff has rebates too so you might level off at like $800 if you send that in. If your budget is strictly $800 you could drop one of the video cards, and your system will be ready for an SLi upgrade at a later time.

Anyway there you have a badass gaming PC, capable of playing any game on the market smoothly. Wont soon be obsolete and you can keep upgrading in the future, more ram, better hard drive, better graphics cards and even CPU if you need to in the future. In fact, you might even have the best PC out of all TFB'ers if you built this.

You can buy them all at http://newegg.com

[Lidge Farkley]

With the size of the cache on that chip and the fact that it is multi-core, you will not need to overclock it at all.. in fact.. overclocking on some thing like that kind of defeats the purpose of buying some thing like that for convenience.

I didn't look at the rest of the specs, but I think you could easily put together a system for less than $800 but that processor base.  I tend to stay away from the cheaper "budget" ASUS boards.. they have always cause my friends and my self to have troubles.

Get at least 1 GB of RAM, I think 2 would suit you well.

What are you doing for your operating system?
After using Vista, I can't see a reason to use it; it is a piece of bloated malarkey. Give it a few years if you are even thinking of buying it.  If you get Vista, get at least a GB of RAM.. though.. 2 tends to be much better.  Windows XP should suit you fine; extract your key from your current machine (if legal, of course) and use it for the new machine.  There are a host of extraction tools out there; example.
There are better ones which will also tell you any Microsoft key on your machine, but I can't find the one I use... and can't remember the name.

So.. yeah.. I think you should aim for this stuff:
-2 GB ram (1 GB minimum)
-XP for your OS (or linux if you have a ported version of tribes)
-Firefox for your browser (the new IE really doesn't do it for me; the only thing I know I like is the convenient print icon.. but that's about it!)
-don't overclock.. waste of your warranty and takes away from the convenience of the processor in the first place.. but that's my opinion here.


I have been out of the hardware loop for a while.. so I am not as informed as I usually am; I would wager my advice is better than most, though.

Peace!

[RedneckNoob]

I pretty much agree with lidge, except for the Vista comment.  The only way for Vista to get better, like it will, is for people to use it.  I remember dreading the upgrade to XP because it was "buggy", yet it was a more solid OS than my previous one.  Sure, you'll have problems, but those problems will only get fixed if you find them for Microsoft so that they can fix them.

I think going for Vista is a wise investment if you can afford it.

[JayJay]

Corsair XMS Ram Good price for a 2 gig kit. $107($67 after rebate)
Gygabyte motherboard Nice low cost board, one of Gigabyte's best P965 boards. $109.99
DVD burner 20x I have this one and it's pretty nice, burns quickly and with no errors. $32.99
250Gb HD I have this drive, and it's fast, cool, and I have enough space for games, and 4500 MP3's.  not even at 1/3rd capacity. $67.99
Intel core 2 Duo E6750 Best Core 2 for the money.  $204.99
EVGA GeForce 8600 Good bang for the buck DX10 card.  $114.99($99.99 after rebate)
OCZ GameXStream 700 Watt Power Supply Good brand, good powersupply, good price. $139.99
Total=$$777.94 without a case 722.94 After rebates :>

[JayJay]

My brother has this case.  It's pretty nice, it's a full tower, it has big window (if you're into that kind of thing), very light(made out of aluminum), and keeps everything very cool.  Almost forgot, it's very very glossy, you can make it even glossier with some 2000 grit sandpaper and rubbing compound.

[Lidge Farkley]

JayJay;
That case looks like a radiator.. eww.. hah!

Of course.. the case I have is this one:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6811156011
Which is also not too pretty.. hah!

Make any decisions yet?