800 comp no monitor

[PeteRoy]

Check my wishlist

this is what i have so far. i got a budget of $800 or so. anything i should add or remove or anything you would change for me? i dont know much about comps

im not looking to play many games. mostly cs and maybe war3
i want a good stable/fast comp
to play poker

 

[imported_bum]

Hmm. I would try to away from a cheap case and PSU unit, and maybe somebody can recommend a different brand optical drive? Don't know much about that brand... I'm assuming people will start suggesting amd systems, and since I put together a wish list for a friend last night, I'll link you to it. It has no case or optical, but if you want to save money I would go with a 3200+ and that 6600gt.

http://secure.newegg.com/app/W...submit=VIEW&ID=1256206

Eh, it doesn't wanna share. Let's see...

 

[Tostada]

You want a GF6800, but you're not looking to play many games? You're on a budget but you're choosing an Intel CPU that's twice as expensive as a comparable AMD one?

If you want to play poker, why not just invest the money in a better monitor and a fast hard drive? I four-table on an ancient Athlon XP1600 with a 22" Diamondtron, and I might as well be using a P3-500 if it weren't for running Poker Tracker, but even if you've got a 5GB PT database churning, it's still more important to have a fast hard drive and 1GB RAM than it is to have a badass CPU.

 

[Tostada]

What I would be looking at for $800, if you actually want a good video card, I'd say:

$124.00 Athlon 64 2800+ http://www.newegg.com/app/View...description=19-103-452
$84.49 Biostar K8NHA http://www.newegg.com/app/View...description=13-138-240
$275.00 256-bit GF6800 http://www.newegg.com/app/View...description=14-145-096
$61.18 Samsung 80GB http://www.newegg.com/app/View...description=22-152-010
$144.17 2x512MB Corsair http://www.newegg.com/app/view...description=20-145-440
$42.00 Liteon combo drive http://www.newegg.com/app/View...description=27-106-932
$76.49 Antec 1650 http://www.newegg.com/app/View...description=11-129-150

That's $807.33 delivered, but it's pretty biased towards gaming. For most people I think you'd be better off spending more on a big hard drive, DVD burner, maybe a nicer CPU or a more exciting motherboard.


Things to consider:

You can save $5 by going with Mushkin memory, which is just fine.
The WD SATA drive you listed costs $7 more but isn't going to make any difference (and many argue Samsung is more reliable).
There's no need for a floppy drive if you slipstream your SATA drivers, and there's no need for SATA drivers if you don't get a SATA drive, and there's no need for an SATA drive unless you're getting a Raptor or one of the nice Maxtors with NCQ.
If you're going to get a GF6800, I would certainly recommend one of the 256-bit ones. If you're not going to get a 256-bit one (i.e. you want to stick to the $200 range), I would recommend a 256-bit Radeon (R9800 XT?). Maybe this has changed in the last few months, but I think the 128-bit 6600 may not be the best deal at $209.

Seriously, I fail to see how a computer upgrade is even relevant to play poker. If that's your main concern, and you really want to upgrade, you might as well get a nice silent fanless $100 - $150 video card and spend your money on other things. The real question is:

1) what are your actual gaming aspirations?
2) how many tables to you play and what site do you play on?
3) do you run poker tracker?

 

[PeteRoy]

1) i wanna play cs and maybe war3 and maybe a new game if it comes out or something

2) i bought a dell 2001fp thats 20inch and 1600x1200 so i can 4 table with no overlap and i play on empire

3) yea i have pt open and importing hands constantly

 

[Tostada]

Originally posted by: PeteRoy
1) i wanna play cs and maybe war3 and maybe a new game if it comes out or something

2) i bought a dell 2001fp thats 20inch and 1600x1200 so i can 4 table with no overlap and i play on empire

3) yea i have pt open and importing hands constantly

The perfect display for 4-tabling party skins, so I guess you already have your priorities in order.

I would be focusing on making sure your system can handle 1-minute updates with a 5GB+ database. Your CPU is largely irrelevant. Most people report having CPU utilization around 50% on a P4 3GHz or just about any A64 while importing massive amounts of data into PT.

The best thing would be to get several 15K drives, a server board and a 64-bit Ultra320 SCSI card, but I don't suppose you want to spend that much. It would be good to at least get a separate drive that you ONLY put the database on. I'd say get either a Raptor or one of the Seagate SATA NCQ drives for the database.

Maybe something like:

124.00 Athlon 64 2800+ http://www.newegg.com/app/View...description=19-103-452
84.49 Biostar NF3 250 GB http://www.newegg.com/app/View...description=13-138-240
105.99 Radeon 9600 256MB http://www.newegg.com/app/View...description=14-102-320
64.48 WD800JB http://www.newegg.com/app/View...description=22-144-122
184.58 Raptor 74 http://www.newegg.com/app/view...description=22-144-160
138.00 2x512MB http://www.newegg.com/app/View...description=20-146-219
42.00 Lite-on combo drive http://www.newegg.com/app/View...description=27-106-932
76.49 Antec 1650 http://www.newegg.com/app/View...description=11-129-150

That's $820.03, and you get a $25 rebate on the Raptor.

With such a fast drive, it'd be interesting to see if things were faster leaving hhdb.mdb on the 800JB or just putting it on the Raptor with ptrack.mdb.

I'd like to see if anybody else has ideas on an $800 database server...

 

[stevty2889]

If you are sticking with the intel sytem, you definatly want a better PSU, a good 400w psu you cost more than that case by itself, so I would certainly not trust something like that. Also even if you get the intel system, I would not go with an Intel motherboard. They are usualy more expensive while lacking in features that you can get from elsewhere, such as Asus, Abit, or Gigabyte.