help with budget gaming system please

[eddiebravo]

1. What YOUR PC will be used for. That means what types of tasks you'll be performing.

gaming.

2. What YOUR budget is. A price range is acceptable as long as it's not more than a 20% spread

im looking to build this as an interim machine before putting together a serious system in another year or so. so, for now im going as cheap as possible. $500 or less would be awesome if that is even possible.

3. What country YOU will be buying YOUR parts from.

USA

4. IF YOU have a brand preference. That means, are you an Intel-Fanboy, AMD-Fanboy, ATI-Fanboy, nVidia-Fanboy, Seagate-Fanboy, WD-Fanboy, etc, etc, etc, you get the picture.

dont care, whatever gives best bang for the buck

5. If YOU intend on using any of YOUR current parts, and if so, what those parts are.

BFG has an awesome deal where you can send in your shitty old AGP card(in my case, a 6800gt) and for $50 they will send you a 9800gt! so i will be using the 9800gt.

6. IF YOU have searched and/or read similar threads.

yes

7. IF YOU plan on overclocking or run the system at default speeds.

default speeds

8. WHEN do you plan to build it?

now.


right now im using an athlon 3200+, geforce 6800gt, 1 gig of ram...its old and since i just got a new monitor, im looking to upgrade to something that can handle the now higher resolution i like to play at(1680x1050). i dont need bleeding edge because i really mostly just play WoW and source engine games which run pretty well on average hardware. the purpose of this system is just to give me a little boost for the next year or so before i shell out some big bucks for a really nice machine.

basically i am set on using an athlon x2 6000+ since newegg has it for $72, and the 9800gt because i can get it for only $50. so that is $122 for both processor and video card. as for harddrive, anything around 250gigs is plenty. i want 2gig of ram. 2 disk drives(dvd rw and the other can be just a cdrw). im fine with onboard sound and onboard network card if it is a gigabyte card, but im clueless as to which motherboard and powersupply to choose. as for case, i dont care about looks, something cool and spacious enough for future upgrades would be nice. i think that about covers it. thanks for the help.

 

[DSF]

For this BFG deal, I assume it has to be a BFG card that you send in, right?

 

[eddiebravo]

yep. see here: http://www.bfgtech.com/freeupgrade.aspx

its a great deal for me since i was going to buy an hd4850, but now i get a basically equivalent card for 1/4 the price.

 

[eddiebravo]

ok, i just realized i can re-use more of my old parts. i think i really only need to replace the cpu, motherboard, videocard, ram, and powersupply. so i just need help picking out a motherboard, powersupply, and decently fast ram. i thnk the 6000+ is about the best processor i can get for under $100, am i right?

 

[theAnimal]

No, E5200 for $76.
Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3L $88 AR
Antec Earthwatts 500W $50
Corsair 2x2GB DDR2 800 $25 AR

 

[Kraeoss]

Originally posted by: theAnimal
No, E5200 for $76.
Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3L $88 AR
Antec Earthwatts 500W $50
Corsair 2x2GB DDR2 800 $25 AR

+1

you cant go wrong with this budget list here but you can overclock this and get better value for your money. and is almost always totally easy :thumbsup:

 

[eddiebravo]

ok, i just ordered. i went with a slightly better mobo and ram just because i dont want to deal with any problems...just want to plug and play.

ended up with this:

bfg 9800gt oc (after trading in my 6800)
e5200
gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P P45 775 R - Retail
OCZ Reaper HPC 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1150 (PC2 9200) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory
antec earthwatts 500w

total for everything is $323, which i think is pretty damn cheap considering the substantial upgrade ill be getting from my current system.

i have a few questions about installation of all the new parts:

is it ok to put the new cpu+heatsink in the mobo, stick the ram in, stick the videocard in, plug everything into the powersupply and connect whatever needs to be connected to the mobo, and then just power it on? or do i need to do something with the mobo before installing the hdd and everything else?

i will be using my current harddrive which has windows xp installed, and also the drivers for my geforce6800. before i install the new 9800gt, do i have to first uninstall the videocard drivers i currently have installed? if so, how do i do this?

if someone could lay out a step by step plan that i can follow to complete this upgrade and get everything running(just at stock speeds, no overclocking), that would be much appreciated. this is my first time doing any building on my own beyond simply installing a new cpu heatsink. thanks.

 

[krnmastersgt]

Due to the new chipset your hard drive might not work when you plug it into the new mobo, it'd be a good idea to back it up if possible before putting it in.

If you have time, see if you can order some nice thermal grease to go along with that bundle since otherwise you have no idea what you'll be using. Otherwise the "plug everything in and power on" should be fine. You'll definitely need new drivers for the vid card so uninstall the old ones before the upgrade and you should be fine.

 

[eddiebravo]

no problem on backing up the harddrive. i actually just reformatted and backed everything up to an external 250gig drive, so my main is basically empty(only things on it are windows xp and WoW...havent even installed microsoft office yet). when you say it doesnt work, do you mean it might need to be reformatted, or do you mean that it will just never work?

as for thermal grease, the reviews on newegg said the stock heatsink comes with some thermal compound pre-applied. since i wont be overclocking, im guessing this will be fine, right? if not, its not a big deal to pick up a tube of arctic silver for a few dollars...

 

[krnmastersgt]

Originally posted by: eddiebravo
no problem on backing up the harddrive. i actually just reformatted and backed everything up to an external 250gig drive, so my main is basically empty(only things on it are windows xp and WoW...havent even installed microsoft office yet). when you say it doesnt work, do you mean it might need to be reformatted, or do you mean that it will just never work?

as for thermal grease, the reviews on newegg said the stock heatsink comes with some thermal compound pre-applied. since i wont be overclocking, im guessing this will be fine, right? if not, its not a big deal to pick up a tube of arctic silver for a few dollars...

Adequate is how I would describe it, but if you ever feel like lowering your temps you could just go buy the AS5 for a few dollars like you said, no real necessity if you aren't overclocking I suppose.

As for the hard drive, I'm not saying it just stops working but more the OS and other files on it will fail to load with a new chipset, some people end up corrupting all the data when they just try to change the mobo. Then again sometimes it's a flawless transition so you might get lucky with that. Haven't seen anyone with the corruption problem as of late.

 

[eddiebravo]

ah got it. if the hdd is a problem, im guessing i just need to reformat, is this correct?

ill probably go ahead and buy the arctic silver. i can clean the stock stuff off the heatsink with rubbing alcohol, right?

thanks for the help

 

[eddiebravo]

thanks to everyone for the suggestions. this new machine is SWEET! plus, for my first build, it was fairly headache free. im having a minor issue with my dvd drive being treated like a cd drive, and i cant install the audio drivers, but other than that i have had no major problems. as for performance, its a huge upgrade for me...the starting area for death knights in WoW was like a slideshow on my old machine...now it runs flawlessly at 1680x1050 with everything maxed(including shadows).

 

[jae]

That ram is more likely to give problems than the Corsair, because it uses 2.0-2.1v I believ; and its not going to give you any performance boost. Also, you wouldve gotten 4GB instead 2GB.

 

[eddiebravo]

the ram was $20 after rebate, and its not giving me any problems. i dont know anything about voltage so i just set it to auto on the motherboard. runs great, so i dont see what the problem is

 

[zerocool84]

Originally posted by: jae
That ram is more likely to give problems than the Corsair, because it uses 2.0-2.1v I believ; and its not going to give you any performance boost. Also, you wouldve gotten 4GB instead 2GB.

This

I would rather go with RAM that takes less voltage and easier timings that is 4GB since 4GB is pretty much the new standard when building a new system and it would help you in WOW with all those people on screen.

 

[eddiebravo]

i have windows xp, i thought it wont recognize 4 gigs. anyways, whats done is done so i cant change it now. WoW runs significantly better than it did before, im sure source games will run amazing since they ran beautifully on my old machine, and i dont really use my pc for anything else that requires any real power, so im happy with the upgrade. im sure it will be more than enough to hold me over for 12-18 months.

 

[yh125d]

Yes, 32bit XP will only recognize 3.25 gigs, but still buying an extra 2 gigs of that ram would be frugal

 

[zerocool84]

Originally posted by: eddiebravo
i have windows xp, i thought it wont recognize 4 gigs. anyways, whats done is done so i cant change it now. WoW runs significantly better than it did before, im sure source games will run amazing since they ran beautifully on my old machine, and i dont really use my pc for anything else that requires any real power, so im happy with the upgrade. im sure it will be more than enough to hold me over for 12-18 months.

Yea you'll have no problems at all running WoW or Source games. Now get on that L4D and turn up the setting cus the lighting effects in that game are awesome.