Noobie needs quick decision help

[alfreddelacruz]

I'm a noob (relatively, I still have an old 450 Celeron with TNT2 graphics with Abit BH6 MB that I will bury to R.I.P.) to all the recent new tech. ALthough I've tried to read and keep up, my job keeps me too busy. So to all you enthusiasts and techies, I need help in making decisions on motherboard, chipset, CPU, and ram brands. I'm looking for relatively high performance at moderate and reasonable cost. I'm definitely sold on Asus MB, quad core, and corsair brand. What chipset should I settle for? 590 or 975 or ATI's (??) Sorry, don't have time to browse the threads (Lunch only 30 mins). I'm also thinking about buying through cyberpowerpc.com. Their combos look reasonable. Suggestions highly appreciated. Thanks in advance. 😉

BTW, which vendors for ready made systems would you recommend?
And I plan to use this for high performance gaming, graphics (Maya, Bryce), noobie video-editing, and ho hum general Office tasks.

 

[Shimmishim]

I'm personally not a big fan of pre-configured builds and prefer to build them myself. Other than that...

For quadcore, the limitation seems to be the FSB on which these chips can run at on most boards.

All boards seem to cap out around 320-330 mhz.

The only board I've seen or read up on that can do moderately high fsb's is the P5B deluxe by Asus which is a 965P chipset board.

I'm not too sure about the nvidia 680i or the ATi's RD600 (only one board).

 

[Markfw]

quad-core and "moderate and reasonable cost" don't belong in the same paragraph. What is the budget ? Are you willing to build ?

 

[alfreddelacruz]

All right, my budget's about $3000. Yeah I realized that after "putting together" a preliminary setup at cyberpowerpc, the quad core, Asus P5N-32 SLI premium, with Raid-0 with 2x 150 Raptors, and 1 8800 GTS, and all the "other" stuff w/o LCd monitor, the cost came to about $3300. Whew!

I'm willing to build...tell me how! TIA🙂

 

[nyker96]

If you are willing to build, I think once past $750 line, building gets you much better component than pre-build systems. At 3000 you definitely should build your own. I done a 2000 build for a friend that mimics about $2500-2700 machine pre-build. Anyways, here's a recommendation for you:
All prices from newegg.com:

case: Antec P180 Performance - $129
power supply: Corsair 620HX - $169
motherboard: Asus P5W DH Deluxe - $225 or EVGA 122-CK-NF68-AR i680 (SLI) - $249
CPU: QX6700 - $998
RAM: Corsair XMS2 2x1GB DDR2-800 TWIN2X2048-6400C4 - $276
g-card: XFX 8800GTS - $460
HD: 1xRaptor 150GB - $219, 2x 500GB Seagate Barracuda in raid 0. - 2x$170= $340
DVD writer: $40 any brand you like. Although Samsung SH-S182M would be nice choice.

total: little less than $2900 + $35 shipping for them - roughly $150 rebates.

 

[Markfw]

I have to agree nyker96, that is a good choice for under $3k.

 

[aigomorla]

Originally posted by: Markfw900
quad-core and "moderate and reasonable cost" don't belong in the same paragraph. What is the budget ? Are you willing to build ?

I was going to say the same thing. Quadcore does not merit anything reasonable. Also i hope your aware the dual core X6800's seem to be a tad big faster then my QX at the same clock speed, so its kinda annoying me on that aspect.

I would go with the EVGA in nyker's post if u want to go NVIDIA as gfx route. The 680SLI board is pretty badass.

If you have no experience with windows, id go single raptor option instead of RAID, becaues setting up a raid system for the first time can get .... FUSTRATING. 😛 Also your gonna need a floppy if u expect to install windows XP on a RAID.

Antec's coming out with revisions on there p180. So i would wait on that until i get a p180. Unless you can find them cheap.

Larger the case, the more forgiving it is on cable management, so id take that into concideration if you have no cable management skills.

 

[Roguestar]

Unless you're breaking the bank for the Corsair Dominator stuff, you can easily get better memory at cheaper. Don't limit yourself to one brand, read some reviews and shop around. If you have limited time online do what I used to, right-click the links to the articles you want to read and just save them all to a USB pen you can read later at home 🙂.

 

[aigomorla]

Originally posted by: Roguestar
Unless you're breaking the bank for the Corsair Dominator stuff, you can easily get better memory at cheaper. Don't limit yourself to one brand, read some reviews and shop around. If you have limited time online do what I used to, right-click the links to the articles you want to read and just save them all to a USB pen you can read later at home 🙂.

But the dominators look uber sexy though the clear side pannel on my TJ-07.

I got it more because of astetics and oc potential then value alone. But my case should of told you that itself.