First Time Builder - Help!

[Nobody au]

Hey all, I've been thinking of upgrading my computer for awhile now, but everytime I have the money something unexpected happens (Car getting broken into, Car needing new brake pads and machining and car needing new tyres).
Maybe the gods are trying to tell me something?

Probably that I need to upgrade my computer and not worry about my car.

I'm from Australia (Western Australia) so prices are a fair bit different to those in America. I'm using the site Static Ice for finding the cheap prices for parts and I'm narrowing it down to State:WA as well.

First up, a little about me and my (lack of) knowledge.

I've never built a computer before, but I have friends who can do it for me. My last computer I got a mate to help me choose parts for but I've moved and need to find guidance elsewhere. I don't plan on overclocking at all. I don't know enough about computers to fix anything that goes wrong. I need my warranty!

With that out of the way, let's get down to business.

I'm willing to spend $1500 AU on parts.
I need:
Case, PSU, M/B, CPU, Ram, GFX, HDD.

The list I've come up with at the moment is:
Case: Gigabyte Poseidon Mid Tower $128

PSU: Antec Truepower 550W $142

Mobo: Asus Mainboard P5K-Deluxe $325

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 $244

Ram: Corsair 4-4-4 EPP PC2-6400 Dominator 2Gb Kit DDR2-800MHz $265

GFX: Leadtek nVidia GeForce 8800GTS Extreme 320Mb $425

HDD: Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 250GB $105

Total: $1634

As you can see I'm a bit over my budget but I don't know what I should be sacrificing or changing to get better quality for the money I have. Any help would be appreciated. Some parts here are outdated (I'm pretty sure the case is). But that's because I kept getting set back by my fiendish car.

Also, I don't mind if I come in $100 over budget if the part I'm getting is going to be well worth it. I don't want to scrape in under $1500 just to have a low quality part that slows everything else down.

Thanks for any help.

Oh, any information regarding buying online/buying the parts from the cheapest dealer or buying everything from one store would be appreciated as well. Pros/Cons/Personal Experiances etc. Thanks.

 

[LightningRider]

Do you really need the P5K Deluxe version? It seems to me that the regular P5K will suit you fine. I just installed one for a friend yesterday and it's a nice board.

The P5K can be found for under or around $150.

EDIT: Oh didn't see you were from Australia, but the P5K regular will still be a lot cheaper.

 

[Ruptga]

First, we need to know what this is going to be used for, right now it looks like a very good gaming machine.

Secondly, your memory is overkill, any 667mhz valueram will do you just fine since you're not overclocking. If you were overclocking, the memory would need to be faster to keep pace with the FSB, but since you're not all extra bandwidth above 667mhz will be wasted since that's as fast as your FSB is.

Also, I don't know that you need a superclocked GTS, if the price difference is small then why not, but a stock GTS 320 will handle pretty much any game out today up to a 1920x1200 resolution, past that you'll want tthe 640MB version.

Which leads me to the question, do you have a monitor already? How about a keyboard/mouse?

edit: oh yeah, lightningrider reminded me, your motherboard is probably overkill as well, since you're not overclocking. Did you pick it because of reputation, or because it has a feature set you really want?

 

[Nobody au]

Thanks for the help guys, sorry I forgot to explain that I only really want this machine to play games on. I don't need anything else because I already have parts from this computer that I can use (Such as monitor/keyboard/mouse).

Being mostly computer illiterate I just go off reviews of parts, I don't look at it as a whole because I don't understand a lot of what certain components can or can't do. If I don't need the deluxe then I don't need it.

So basically your saying get the P5K Motherboard (Is there anything that has the same features but is better? I read that Gigabyte and MSI make comparative models?) and drop my RAM down to 667MHz models?

Anything else?

How about this instead?

RAM: Crucial 3-3-3 PC2-5300 Ballistix MICRON 2GB DDR2 Kit (2x1024Mb) DDR2-667Mhz - $199.
Motherboard: Asus P5K-SE S775 QuadCore P35 FSB1333 - $149

 

[Ruptga]

I'm saying the motherboard you've picked is overkill, a budget 945 based motherboard should do fine for you since you're not overclocking. As for features, I don't know what the P5K has, but most of the extras are overclocking related, and you don't know how to tune it anyway (heck, I don't know how to tune it either).

And on memory, the Australian dollar is about 80% of an american, so 200 dollar memory compares to 160$, which is still insane. What you've picked is very low latency memory, but latencies don't have a noticable impact on performance, so there's no need to get that. I know this is newegg and you don't get it in Australia, but for reference' sake look here. Two of these modules would cost about half of the memory you've already picked, and the performance would be very similar.

If you trim back your memory and motherboard you should easily be able to meet your budget and still have a very nice gaming rig

Almost forgot, you don't have an operating system listed here, I assume you're transferring your current license over? XP is still preferred for gaming, it's just more refined than Vista, but Vista is an improvement over XP (with supercache and all that) and is better for general use.

 

[Nobody au]

Yeah I'm just going to be using my XP OS.

Thanks for your help LightningRider and ADDAvenger. It's good to beable to come here and get some good information. I never realised that the latency didn't make a big difference so if I can get cheaper RAM that is of similar performance then I will. Thanks.

So the general consensus is:
Cheaper Motherboard that dosn't have all the extras that I won't be using and cheaper RAM to lower the price.

My last question is: What type of case should I get? I don't mind the look of the poseidon but I'm not really digging the blue glow thing on the front. (My Altec Lansing bass box has it and it annoys the crap out of me).

I need something that will fit everything in, I will probably get another HDD sometime in the future as well. Something that will allow good airflow throughout the machine. Should I be getting any extra fans etc?

I was looking at the Gigabyte Triton but it has a lot of larger bays that I will probably never use. Any help?

Thanks again.

 

[Ruptga]

I'm not so knowledgeable about cases, Antec's P180 is one I see talked about a lot, but I really don't follow cases and can't really make any recommendation there. But, we now have a forum dedicated to them right here, try browsing through there and see if you find what you're looking for, if not just start a thread about it.

 

[SerpentRoyal]

Originally posted by: Nobody au
Thanks for the help guys, sorry I forgot to explain that I only really want this machine to play games on. I don't need anything else because I already have parts from this computer that I can use (Such as monitor/keyboard/mouse).

Being mostly computer illiterate I just go off reviews of parts, I don't look at it as a whole because I don't understand a lot of what certain components can or can't do. If I don't need the deluxe then I don't need it.

So basically your saying get the P5K Motherboard (Is there anything that has the same features but is better? I read that Gigabyte and MSI make comparative models?) and drop my RAM down to 667MHz models?

Anything else?

How about this instead?

RAM: Crucial 3-3-3 PC2-5300 Ballistix MICRON 2GB DDR2 Kit (2x1024Mb) DDR2-667Mhz - $199.
Motherboard: Asus P5K-SE S775 QuadCore P35 FSB1333 - $149

Only game? No RAID? No SLI? Best deal is Abit IP35-E, E4300/E4400, brand name 1GB x 2 DDR2 800 rated at 1.8V, and Antec Earthwatts 430.

This combo should hit 3.0 to 3.2GHz with ease while still leaving you under budget. Put the $ saved in the band and wait next year for Peryn. Your bottleneck will be the GPU.

 

[Ruptga]

Originally posted by: SerpentRoyal

Originally posted by: Nobody au
Thanks for the help guys, sorry I forgot to explain that I only really want this machine to play games on. I don't need anything else because I already have parts from this computer that I can use (Such as monitor/keyboard/mouse).

Being mostly computer illiterate I just go off reviews of parts, I don't look at it as a whole because I don't understand a lot of what certain components can or can't do. If I don't need the deluxe then I don't need it.

So basically your saying get the P5K Motherboard (Is there anything that has the same features but is better? I read that Gigabyte and MSI make comparative models?) and drop my RAM down to 667MHz models?

Anything else?

How about this instead?

RAM: Crucial 3-3-3 PC2-5300 Ballistix MICRON 2GB DDR2 Kit (2x1024Mb) DDR2-667Mhz - $199.
Motherboard: Asus P5K-SE S775 QuadCore P35 FSB1333 - $149

Only game? No RAID? No SLI? Best deal is Abit IP35-E, E4300/E4400, brand name 1GB x 2 DDR2 800 rated at 1.8V, and Antec Earthwatts 430.

This combo should hit 3.0 to 3.2GHz with ease while still leaving you under budget. Put the $ saved in the band and wait next year for Peryn. Your bottleneck will be the GPU.

That would be a winning solution, except he doesn't want to overclock

 

[Nobody au]

CASEAntec Sonata III 500W Earthwatts PSU - $187
MOBOAsus P5K-SE Intel P35 - $168.25
CPUIntel Core 2 Duo E6750 2.66 Ghz - $245
RAMCorsair Value Select PC5300 667Mhz 2Gb Kit - $110.70
GFXLeadtek Geforce 8800GTS 320Mb Extreme - $425.30
HDDSeagate Barracude 7200.10 250Gb Sata II - $109.00

Total1245.25

Also, I noticed some of the Seagate harddrives had PATA next to them while others had SATA II, what's the difference?