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Building a gaming rig...

S

ShardZ

Junior Member
-Primary use will be gaming, as mentioned
-Budget is $1000 or less for the system, $500 or less for the monitor
-Buying from the U.S. (probably newegg)
-Prefer Intel + nVidia
-Planning on using my current mouse, speakers, and sound card (unless there's a reason to upgrade from an SBLive value for a 2.1 speaker system)
-I won't be doing any OCing, as long as my system is stable & running cool I'm happy

Power supply - whatever's adequate.
Case - again, whatever's adequate. USB ports on the front are nice, but not a must.
Motherboard - Something that works with lower end dual cores but can later be upgraded to a quad core. Again, I don't plan on doing any OCing.
CPU - lower end dual core, something $200-ish. I'm unfamiliar with the differences between the allendale & conroe series.
Heatsink/fan for the CPU - Granted I'm not doing any OCing, but my room can get rather warm and as a result I've had some issues with cooling in the past.
Memory - I know I want 2gb, but beyond that...
Primary hard drive - I hear WD Raptors are pretty sexy. Already have a secondary drive.
Primary optical drive - Need a DVDRW drive, already have a secondary DVD drive.
Video card - mid/upper midrange nVidia card, $200~300. I could care less if the card comes with any games or anything, I just want it to run fast. Free warranties are always nice, too.
Monitor - ~$500 or less, 21-24" LCD. MUST have 16ms or less input lag. looks like I'll probably settle on the Samsung 245BW but if there's a good alternative I've missed, please let me know.
Operating System - WinXP. 0% chance of me going to Vista.

Thanks so much for any help, I've been subsisting on a 2.4ghz P4 with 1gig RDRAM and a depressingly bottlenecked 6800GT which is starting to get kinda unbearable. lol
 
$200 these days is approaching the high end of the CPU market, not the low end. (At least the high end of the mainstream market.)

At any rate, for that amount of money what you want to look at is not Allendale or Conroe but the new 45nm Wolfdale chips. The E8400 will run you somewhere between $190 and $220 depending on what kind of deal you can find. It's 3.0GHz stock so you won't need to overclock it.

Motherboard - Gigabyte P35-DS3L is a good choice if you don't need much in the way of bells and whistles. That'll run you around $90. Abit IP35-E is on sale for $60 at Newegg, but I'm not sure whether it supports 45nm processors out of the box. Someone around here ought to be able to tell you for sure.

RAM - Any decent DDR2 will do, but as cheap as RAM is you might consider going for 4GB.
2GB: http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16820211066
4GB: http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16820231122

Case - Personally I'd recommend something like the Antec Solo. Pretty good cooling and very quiet. A lot of people like its larger cousin, the P182. The Cooler Master Centurion 5 and Cooler Master 690 are popular choices around here as well, and both are solid cases. The case is one of the most subjective parts of a PC, so pick one that you're going to like looking at every day.

Power supply - You'll be looking at something in the 400-500W range. There are a lot of good choices, including Antec's Earthwatts 430 and 500, Corsair's 450VX, 550VX or 520HX models, as well as Seasonic and other well known names. Corsair's PSUs are known for being quiet and the 520HX's modular cables will make keeping your case tidy easier.

Hard drive - The Raptor doesn't have the advantage that it used to over 7200RPM drives. For the money a Raptor would cost you you can get a 750GB drive that will perform almost as well. Or you could save a little cash and get something in the 320GB to 500GB range which again would perform nearly as well. (500GB is the sweet spot for hard drives right now.)

Video card - All I can say is I wish the 512MB GTS had been this affordable when I built my computer.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814130325

As far as a heatsink, Intel's stock cooler is pretty good if you're not overclocking. If you're looking for something more, a lot of people around here like the Tuniq Tower and Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme at the high end, and the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro for a budget cooler. I'm using the ZeroTherm BTF90 and I'm very happy with its noise level and cooling ability. I got it on sale though...I wouldn't pay more than about $30 for it, because once you cross that $30 mark, you might be able to find a deal on something like the Tuniq Tower or a Scythe Ninja.
 
Awesome, thanks!

DSF - one question, for the video card were you recommending the EVGA specifically? and why that one over any other GTS?
 
evga is great because of their step-up program, you have 90 days from the date of purchase to upgrade with them (so if a 9800 were to come out in the next 3 months you could just send you card in and pay the difference). Its a great way not to get burned if you buy right before a new release.
 
edit* found the answer to my question elsewhere.

looks like I'm mostly set, gonna be a couple weeks until I can buy the parts though. Can't freakin wait. 😀
 
Originally posted by: ShardZ
Awesome, thanks!

DSF - one question, for the video card were you recommending the EVGA specifically? and why that one over any other GTS?
Click to expand...

I chose that one for two reasons. First, all things being equal (like price and clock speeds) EVGA is one of the best Nvidia partners. XFX is another very good one. Second, it's the least expensive G92 8800GTS on Newegg. Combine lowest price with best quality, and it's a no-brainer.
 
Hokay, nothing overly exciting here but I believe this is what I'll be buying:

Power supply - Corsair 520HX $115 after MIR
Case - CM Centurion 5 black/blue $65 shipped
Motherboard - Gigabyte P35-DS3L $95 shipped
CPU - Intel E8400 ~$240, where I order it from depends on who has it in stock when I actually place the order.
Memory - G.Skill 4gb DDR2 800 $90
Primary optical drive - Samsung Black 20X DVD+R $30
Video card - eVGA 8800GTS 512MB $266 after MIR
Monitor - Samsung 245BW $420 after MIR
Keyboard - Logitech G11 $65 shipped

~$1285 altogether. Higher end than I expected too, good shtuff. 😀
 
It's not in stock and hasn't been in the last couple weeks. You have to actually click "Add to Bag" to check on that site for some reason. Plus I don't get the impression that that's the most reliable/trustworthy site.
 
Hm, one last question.. the 8800GTS vid card is listed as a PCIe 2.0 card and it doesn't look like the P35-DS3L mobo has a 2.0 slot. I'm guessing the regular PCIe x16 slot is fine considering this combination is repeatedly recommended, I'm just wondering what different this makes, if any, as I've had some trouble finding that info.

edit* oops, that wasn't really *that* hard to find.. from what I gather the difference with a gfx card like this is entirely negligible.
 
Originally posted by: ShardZ
Hm, one last question.. the 8800GTS vid card is listed as a PCIe 2.0 card and it doesn't look like the P35-DS3L mobo has a 2.0 slot. I'm guessing the regular PCIe x16 slot is fine considering this combination is repeatedly recommended, I'm just wondering what different this makes, if any, as I've had some trouble finding that info.

edit* oops, that wasn't really *that* hard to find.. from what I gather the difference with a gfx card like this is entirely negligible.
Click to expand...

PCI-E 2.0 is backwards compatible and today's top-end graphics cards haven't yet saturated PCI-E 1.0.
 
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