New year new computer

[BWMerlin]

I have finally decided to poney up the cash and replace my aging P4 in the new year. Basically all I can play on it at the moment is WOW but I am really looking forward to some newer releases such as Starcraft 2, Hell Gate London and Warhammer Online as well as games I currently have and haven?t been able to play because of system specs such as Supreme Commander and Warhammer, Mark of Chaos.

I am not after a super high end machine but something that we last me a while, be able to play upcoming/current games with reasonable graphics quality as well as handle everyday stuff like media encodings, web, word etc. I will be duel booting with linux and xp/vista (I think I'm going to need to go vista if I want to be able to play newer games).

I am looking to spend about $2000 AU in total for everything including case, monitor, mouse and keyboard (can be stretched a little further). So far the only thing I have my eye on is a Samsung 22 226BW which I can pick up for around $425 AU. My thoughts at the moment are along the lines of quad core with about 4g of ram, single 512 gfx card and was thinking of a small raid set up (don?t really need mass storage space or performance more after data loss prevention).

So what is worth looking at and what isn?t. As a side note could my current radeon 9800 SE 128mb be able to power the Samsung 22 226BW if I was to get one before I got the new computer?

 

[BWMerlin]

Well I thought I would get the ball rolling, this is what I have come up with so far. It comes in at $2501.60 AU (that is assuming I can get everything at the listed price which shouldn't be a problem in the new year) which is about $500 more than I would like but it does also include monitor and keyboard so I don't consider that over run that much of a problem.

Intel ATX E6750 CORE 2 DUO 2.66GHz/4MB CACHE/1333FSB/LGA775 $228.00
Corsair 2GB (2x 1024mb) DDR3 1333 (PC10600 - T3X2048-1333C9) $403.60
Asus P5E3 Intel X38 DDR3 Mainboard $322.00
Albatron GeForce 8800GT 512MB DDR3 $399.00
Thermaltake Soprano DX $166.00
Corsair HX-620 PSU $159.00
Seagate SATAII NCQ 500GB 7200RPM 32mb Cache(ST3500320AS)$185.00 x2
Samsung 22 226BW $425.00
Logitech Media Keyboard 600 $29.00

So what are peoples thoughts on this proposed setup? Is there something I missing or better off getting? Is there something coming out early in the new year that is worth holding out for?

 

[ionoxx]

It looks like a sound build, but i wouldn't go with DDR3 just yet. You could save 300$ getting low latency DDR2 and a cheaper motherboard like the P5K Deluxe or enve a P5E.

Or get yourself a P5N32-E Plus with DDR2 and get yourself a second 8800GT for the same price as your paying now.

 

[BWMerlin]

Thanks, I'll look into those motherboards. Just a quick question why are you recommending not getting DDR3?

 

[mushroom3]

at the moment, its not worth the price, ddr2 is much cheaper

 

[Cheex]

I agree.

DDR3 is still in its infancy and is highly overpriced. It will take a while before it gets 'legitimately' faster than DDR2 and prices come down.

 

[BWMerlin]

The reason I selected the DDR3 was because my computers tend to have long cycles before replacement and I didn't want to put DDR2 in it and then have trouble in a few years finding decent cheap DDR2 ram like I did with this machine trying to find decent cheap DDR400 when I want to upgrade it. Is DDR3 currently "faster" than DDR2 or is it like DDR vs DDR2 when DDR2 first came out?