Building a gaming PC to last

[drpootums]

I'd go with:

A64 2800+ retail................$130
Chaintech nF3 board...........$70
Antec Sonata.....................$100
some Value ram (1 GB)......$130
Samsung 80GB SATA HDD..$65
6600GT (AGP)....................$220
DVD-Rom..........................$28
Floppy Drive......................$7

There, a nice system that has overclocking potential. Nice and quiet too!

Originally posted by: Googer
Go with 939, the differance between 939 and 754 is $22 on newegg.com and motherboard prices for the two chips are almost identical. SKT 939 will provide him a better ROI than 754.

Here are some of the bargains I have found

Video Card $112 GeFORCE 6600- (FX5700 AGP is the same price with less performance and no future upgradeablity.)
http://www.newegg.com/app/View...=14-170-084&depa=1

Motherboard 939 -$129 -with nforce4 PCI-e x16
http://www.newegg.com/app/view...=13-152-049&depa=1


RAM- Crucial.com 512mb x1- no dual channel because, too much$$$ and the 754 option you were going with only offerd single channel so here you wont be missing anything. You can always add more later when the price comes down.
http://www.crucial.com/store/P...CT6464Z40B&cat=RAM

CASE
$54 one day sale with a big 350w PSU
http://www.newegg.com/app/View...=11-129-122&depa=1

option #2
$57
http://www.newegg.com/app/View...=11-129-149&depa=1

Hard Drive $63 8mb Cache 7200rpm 80gb Maxtor
http://www.newegg.com/app/View...=22-144-205&depa=1

Total Cost $538 with the PCI-e Motherboard excluding windows home.

Yes, excluding Windows Home AND A CPU!!!!!

BTW, ROI doesnt really mean anything with computers, if you buy something now a year from now it wont be worth anything close to what it did.

 

[drpootums]

oh,nvm, i didnt see u already ordered!!!

 

[SrGuapo]

Originally posted by: TimboAA
Case: Rosewill Black ATX Mid Tower Case with 400W Power Supply, Model "R114A Black" -RETAIL $49


MB: EPoX "EP-8KDA3J" nForce3-250Gb Chipset Motherboard for AMD Socket 754 CPU -RETAIL $69


CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3000+, 512KB L2 Cache 64-bit Processor - Retail $146


RAM: Mushkin Dual Pack 184-Pin 1GB(512MBx2) DDR PC-3200 - Retail $137


Video Card:
SAPPHIRE ATI RADEON 9600PRO Video Card, 256MB DDR, 128-Bit, DVI/TV-Out, 8X AGP, Model "100562L" -Retail $111


Optical Drives: Sony Black 52x32x52x16 Combo Drive, Model CRX320E Black, OEM $40

Sony Internal 16X DVD+/-RW / Double Layer Drive Black, Model DW-D22A-B2, OEM $62


HDD: Maxtor 80GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive, MODEL 6Y080M0, OEM Drive Only $68


Input devices: Lite-On black/silver keyboard $5.25


Logitech optical wheel mouse $9

Other: Coolmax Aluminum 80mm filter $3



About $707 total before shipping costs and this system should work very nicely for him.

Not bad... He should be very happy with that PC, especially with the gaming he does. If you replace the graphics card in a year or so, it will be able to run all of the current gen games (HL2, Doom3, etc.) easily.

Originally posted by: TimboAA
Hey, so I finally ordered everything. It came to $755 shipped. I went with this particular setup because of the type of user he is. He isn't the type to upgrade unless something isn't working, he probably won't get around to playing HL2 or anything else like that for atleast a year and isn't much of a FPS gamer. So since he does mostly strategy and RPG games I didn't think he would the most powerful video card. With that said, that is also the reason I opted not to go with a MB that had PCI-Express. It wasn't worth the extra $40 in the mb and cpu to do that since he won't upgrade anyway. One thing I wasn't happy with was that because I went with the s754 Athlon, I didn't get dual channel memory support. Since he'll be coming from a 1ghz computer, I don't think it'll matter to him.

Very smart.

 

[TimboAA]

Thanks for the follow up guys. I think he'll be pleased with his system. It should be here in either today or monday so I'll get it built and possibly post some numbers. hehe. Just got done hosting a LANParty that started around 3pm and ended a little before 8am... Over 12 hours of gaming...

Incase any of you need ideas...we played:

Half-Life
-TFC
-Science & Industry
Half-Life 2 Deathmatch
Halo
Wolfenstein Enemy Territory


Had we been not trembling from caffiene...we would have also played:
Giants
Tetron
Half-Life mod: Natural Selection and Counter-Strike