.....cant decide...

[ILikeElfenLied]

Every different topic I look at people are talking about different motherboards.... and as I have clearly revealed I dont know squat about computer parts... I heard that an AMD Athlon 64 is best for gaming which is almost all that Ill be doing aside from listening to music and web surfing... How do I know what kind of ram my motherboard needs? Sorry for all the stupid questions but I cant find any sites that actually explain the parts of a computer. Please reply if you know of anything that can help me. Thanks.

 

[cmdrdredd]

First off tell us your budget and we can move from there and give you recommendations based on our experiences.

Also would you dabble in overclocking or not? Do you need SLI or not?

I can just tell you to go out and buy the exact components I have if you wanted, but I find it better to base my recommendation on someone's needs firs.

 

[ILikeElfenLied]

Well my bugdet is $2,000. I dont really know about overclocking, what are the cons of it? Yes, I do need SLI, since im gonna be gaming 95% of the time im on my PC.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Well, 2 things I want to mention. 1) overclocking DOES lower the lifespam of the components you run beyond spec. How much is anyone's guess. and your mileage will vary. It's all a crapshoot for getting a stable overclock regardless of brand reputation. There are some things you can do to ensure a good overclock, but stability may still be a hinderance. and 2) you don't necessarily need SLI for a gaming PC. The new ATI x1900xtx and Nvidia Geforce 7900GTX probably will be enough muscle for any game you want to play even at higher resolutions. That being said you CAN go into SLI territory if you feel you want to/can afford it.

Now The problem is this. AMD is changing from the socket 939 to the AM2 architecture soon and Intel is moving to new CPUs soon as well. What does this mean? Well, prices on the socket939 boards from AMD may go down in price some. The downside is that as technology ages and becomes more difficult to find, you may have a tough time finding replacement components or upgrades. Not in the near future, I'm talking say 3-5 years depending how often you upgrade. You can either get a board using the proven technology or buy a new board that may be faster than the one currently available. The new boards may not overclock as high if you plan to do that, and they will probably be more expensive for the time being. The choice is yours though.

I will say this, $2k will get you one hell of a system.

Do you want to go with AMD or Intel and we can start there.

 

[jkresh]

amd has already moved to am2. Though I would wait 3 weeks for conroe (as amd will be lowering prices then anyway and some people will be selling their x2's as they upgrade, myself included). If you are going intel then you will likely have to go crossfire or wait a few more weeks/months for 590 boards to show up for conroe. Right now a pair of 1900xtx in crossfire is as fast as you can go (or maybe a pair of 7950gtx's in quad sli, but that isint realy stable or supported just yet).

 

[cmdrdredd]

Well, what I ment by "moving to" rather than to say has moved. Is that they didn't 100% stop selling/producing 939 boards and CPUs. Soon they may though, and I'm not sure how that works from a buisness standpoint. Meaning, at what point do they stop support of an old platform (i.e. stop making it).

I still would just go with a 939 board. They're really stable, have many bios revisions working out the kinks, people have tested them to no end so you can always find settings.

 

[acegazda]

Hey Ilikeelfin,
If you go AMD...
Lian li pc7b plus II $100
Asus a8r32-mvp $170
opteron 146 $180
enermax liberty 620w $130
320gb seagate 7200.10 $105
saphire x1900xt $370 here
benq dvd burner $33
viewsonic vx2025 lcd $330
OCZ platinum 2x1gb xtc $145
xfi xtremusic $90
logitech g5 laser mouse $40
saiteck eclipse $42
Custom Water cooling system consisting of:
swiftech pump $70
Swiftech tri fan radiator $56
Aquaextreme mp-1 gpu water block $45
Swiftech storm cpu water block $75
Tubing $2.80/foot
TOTAL= $1986

 

[cmdrdredd]

watercooling for first build = NO!

Everything else is good. I'd say go DFI for motherboard if you are overclocking. If no overclock then DFI is expensive.