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Need a new cheap gaming rig

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Well... if you don't OC, here are my brand recommendations:
Gigabyte makes very solid, reliable motherboards that just don't overclock very well (but they do have a good bit of tweaking options, google "gigabyte F10 trick").
RAM, I have gotten to the point I will only buy kingston, they do not OC well, but they have a lifetime warranty and mean it - I recently had to RMA a PC66 stick of SDR SDRAM and it was incredibly easy and quick process, they sent me a PC133 stick of larger size which worked perfectly. They actually mean lifetime warranty!
PSU: People here in the know seem to love Corsair brand, and from my initial research they seem great... but the list of power supplies I trust is extremely short: PC Power & Cooling, FSP (fortron source, which OEMs for a lot of other makers), silverstone, and sparkle LTD. I haven't had personal experience yet with corsair. For my lesser systems I buy the "POWER MAN" supplies which FSP built (not all of them are built by FSP), for my more expensive systems, I always go with PCP&C, buying them direct.
 
^ Gigabyte boards are pretty much renowned for being mid-range solid boards with a good range of overclocking options. Since 965 chipset and the first Core 2 CPUs, gigabyte have been being recommended for the (non-hardcore) overclocker along with Asus and Abit, right up until the P35 and X38 now when maybe 95% of the board recommendations on this forum contain the suggestion for the DS3L or DS3R.
 
From what I've heard, I'll have to agree with Roguestar...

How do I insert links with text? Soon as I find out I'll upload my current picks...
 
just copy-paste the url, it's a quick and dirty method and the forum auto-hotlinks them itself.
There is another method using the [ L = ] and [ / L ] tags but thats optional.
 
[???L=link title goes here?????]http://LinkURL[???/L???]

If you hit Reply instead of quick reply, the little editor window it gives you has an option to put in a link for you if you give it the options into its dialog boxes.

Edit: screwed the escape characters up 😛
 
going off of what Roguester said, if you click Reply, the editor window pops up. if you look to the right of the Underline button, there's a button labeled 'http'. click the button, paste the URL in the box that opens, click OK, then type in what you want us to read.

as for the parts, here's what i'd also consider:
MB: Abit IP-35E. i'd either go with this or the gigabyte you're thinking about.
CPU: E2160. If you're going to overclock anyways, might as well.
HDD: Samsung 250HJ (250GB) or Samsung T166 (320GB). Both are fast drives (not the fastest but definitely no slouches) and are extrememly quiet and cool. best performance/thermal/acoustic/cost balance, imo.
PSU: I would also add the Antec Earthwatts 500w (or less but may not be enough to overclock if you go with 380w) to the mix. >80% efficiency and made by seasonic iirc. i think a corsair psu was mentioned earlier. i'd also second that. if you want to spend $100 on case + psu combined, i'd go with s44's recommendation. the sonata is a solid case, and so is the earthwatts psu.
GPU: 9600GT

just my recommendations, but i'd go with these.
 
I would actually consider keeping the hard drive and case. Those don't really give you any performance boost. Upgrade those later when there is more money. Everything else I would leave the same as you said. 22" monitor is not really that big, the 9400 Gt should be more than enough.

I don't know how comfortable you would be with this, but you could just use your windows vista upgrade in a pinch, or get a cheap copy of windows XP. Vista is not necesary just now, upgrade later. Also, if your a student, you could get a student discount version.
 
Search ebay for similar stuff, add it up. This kind of question is prohibited on the forums because it can lead to bidding wars.
 
Ah. Do you think that if I added $200 to what my current one is worth, I'd have enough for a new rig (around $600)?

I'm picking out some parts now, hopefully I can upload them later.
 
Ok, I'm back to looking to build a new rig. Here are the parts I'm considering getting:

E8500 (after the price drop to $180)
Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3L
AMD HD 3870 (may jump on the best buy deal tonight)
4GB RAM
Barracuda 250 GB HDD
Antec Sonata III
Vista x64 SP1

That mobo was previously recommended here, does it support PCI-E 2.0?
 
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