Originally posted by: rabism7
Stiffy, thanks for your suggestions.
I agree with you that the CPU and mobo combo is probably the best deal that I'm going to get right now. I also agree that the RAM you picked out is better than mine, although I don't exactly know how much better DDR3 is than DDR2 / If it's worth the extra $20. (My guess is that it is worth the extra money, but I would like a second opinion just to make sure =))
DDR3 is just the DDR2 for modern-gen motherboards and such, however DDR2 is still quite strong, but you won't notice any real performance differences (not yet at least). However if you are going to game, there are stronger choices in processor you could go with, namely the Intel dual cores, an E7xxx would probably suit your price bracket, coupled with a board like this Foxconn G31 can give you pretty strong combo, or for the same price as the linked combo from Stiffy you could go up to an E8400 or so.
One concern that I have is with the video card you picked out. It says that it has an HDMI output, but only with an adapter. This brings up another question for anyone who can answer it. Would it be better to hook my PC up to my HDTV by HDMI or DVI?
You shouldn't be able to see much of a difference between the two, aside from HDMI carrying the audio output in the same line (though I've heard most cards are terrible at it).
Another issue to consider would be your case, a $30 case is fine in a lot of situations, however the card you chose is known to be quite a hot one. The Radeon 4000 series of cards, and indeed almost all modern gen cards, put out quite a large amount of heat. If the case you buy doesn't have a good airflow design behind it, since the XFX 4870 that even I was going to suggest will cause some serious problems since all the heat just disperses into the case. Look into some way to divert the hot air out of the case, or just have a front mounted fan for intake, and a rear mounted for exhaust to prevent the majority of the heat reaching your cpu/memory.
One more question, do you think that the extra 100W from the PSU is really worth an 100% increase in price? Saving $50 and sticking with the 550W would really help my wallet.
Now this is where it gets important, PSUs aren't as simple as video cards in that they're all made from the same place and packaged at different facilities for different companies. The components and their quality differ between PSUs quite a lot actually, and a bad/faulty/poorly made PSU can essentially kill your whole system if it decides to act up, since the components in your system don't have measures to really counteract a sudden and powerful spike.
Quality should be your number one concern, and on top of that a well made 400w PSU should be more than enough to power your whole system, look into Seasonic or the Corsair Memory PSUs (several were made by Seasonic). Now MANY of the PSUs sold will be just fine, and people rarely push their PSUs to the limit, but a $50 investment now might save the several hundred you put into the rest of the system, so it's a good idea not to skimp on it. The BFG one you chose though, since BFG did put their name on it, I'm assuming should be fine if you so choose to use it.
Thanks again.
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