As said I am planning on building a new rig for the first time, I was to make sure everything is combatible, I also want to make sure im not buying any over priced items.

Budget $720 max, im actually trying to lower that as much as I can and still have a boss gaming rig, thats the current total of what I plan on buying. If possible I want to be able to only spend 550-650$ and still be able to play any game on max settings smoothly. Hmm im guessing my mobo doesnt come with a sound card , any chance I can rip the sound card out of this dell dim 2400?

My res 1680x1050
Windows Xp

Current PSU 600 watt
http://www.ocztechnology.com/product...m_power_supply

Tower 79.99 $ ( I love the way this tower looks)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811215006

Hard drive ( i just want over 150+ gigs, hard drives cant really slow you down?)
$39.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136075

Mobo 124$ (cheaper one of greater or equal value? Its has 1 pci-e x16 and 1 pci-e x16(8)?)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128378

Video Card 139.99$ (cheaper one of greater or equal value?)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814121291


3 gig ddr3 ram 57$ ( I know there has to be a better ram deal out there, do I need more then 3 gigs?) 4 ram slots
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231224

Cpu 245$ ( This cpu looks sick, but hey im far from a expert)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103674

Rear fan 5$ (hey why not)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835200049

I hate mail in rebates.

ok the only problem i see is the case, it doesn't have much of anything for cable management. yea it looks cool as hell but in my book cable management is first

Cable management= Plastic tywraps or velcro wraps. Simple and no real concern

It makes almost no sense to purchase a 160GB Hard Drive. I speak from experience.

The drive costs $40.00, the shipping will cost you close to $10.00! Better you should buy a 250GB HDD, they start about $50.00 and any one of them comes with free shipping! In fact, I think all drives @ Newegg 250GB or more, come with free shipping.

I say no, as does Tom's Hardware. Lost the link though.

To properly utilize 3GB of RAM, you would actually need to buy 2 512MB sticks, and 2 1GB sticks, that's the only way it will run fully in dual channel. With 1GB each in sockets 1, 3 and 4 you would make "flex" mode. At least that's what happens with Intel dual channel capable chipsets.

The memory set you're considering is actually intended for the Intel X58 chipset (triple channel memory) with a core i7 CPU (!) or (?) The board you've picked out is DUAL channel.

With 32 Bit XP you would only be able to utilize 3 GB out of 4 anyway. But with 4GB installed (2 X 2GB) you would be able to run in full dual channel mode. This is of course assuming that that particular will boot with the excess RAM. With a 64 bit OS all this becomes moot.

I was considering Vista, my only concern is that it will bog me down. I have a bunch of plastic straps in my garage, I'll work something out, I'm to in love with that case to let that get in the way. Ok as for ram then 2x 2gig is the way ill go, if I do decide to get vista at any point ill have that gig sitting there. New question then to vista or not to vista? 64 bit looks pretty? Vista looks like a big pain in the neck.

Ram 65$
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231193

New Hard Drive Same price with free shipping (500GB yay)
[http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822145215

Yea, I've dealt with Vista for almost 8 months now on my personal laptop. At work I deal with XP only. I prefer XP over Vista. XP is so much easier for me to work with. Networking makes more sense to me in XP. I've made a home network and my laptop is the only Vista machine connected to it. Who knows, you might have a friend who can load up some XP on your computer.

On the hard drive matter. Dude, I've seen deals for 1TB Hard Drive for about 80 dollars on newegg.com. Strangely, I am a big hard drive nut and Im actually going to build my own PC with a SSD hard drive. Faster and cooler from what I've learned. Look it up if you want to know more about it. (google "SSD" or "Solid state drive")

Well if there's one around 50$ you can recommend to me I'll check it out. I am really just going to use my computer for gaming, college and watching movies, networking is not a concern, but I constantly see people saying they have problems with vista.

Just run your XP until "Windows 7" is up and stable, and ignore Vista altogether. Supposedly the drivers for Vista will work in Windows 7, so you may not have to wait very long to be up to date with them. I think there'll be less driver problems with W7 than there were with Vista. (That's only a hunch, don't bet the ranch on it).

Just for the sake of conversation, I've had really good luck with the WD160 "Caviar" SATA150 drive that came with my computer. It's 4 1/2 years old and still kicking. I suppose if it died tomorrow, it wouldn't owe me a thing.

I don't know anything about Hitachi good or bad.

For better or worse I think any drives I purchase in the near future will be in the WD "Black" series.

There are no SSDs with anywhere near enough capacity anywhere near $50.00, get that out of your head. You would still need to buy a HDD for file storage anyway.

Welp as soon as i get my left over grant money ill be buying this beast thanks for the help.

OPPS!!! I forgot to mention that SSD are quite pricey and low in storage. I plan to have either a 1TB SATA HDD along with that, or I may go with some raid configuration with 250GBs SATA HDD.

Once you buy it and put this beast together, could you send me a PM with how well it went together and how well it plays your games?

Thanks D

I would recommend these parts instead for your budget:

• AMD Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition 3.1GHz Dual-Core CPU with 6MB of L3 Cache - Retail - $108.99 + free shipping
• Gigabyte GA-MA770-UD3 AMD 770 Chipset ATX Motherboard - Retail - $69.99 + free shipping
• G.SKILL DDR2 1066MHz 4GB (2x2GB) Dual-Channel Memory Kit - Retail - $49.99 + free shipping
• XFX HD 4870 1GB GDDR5 PCI-Express 2.0 Graphics Card - Retail - $144.99 + free shipping
• Western Digital Caviar Black 640GB 7200RPM SATA HDD with 5-year warranty - OEM - $74.99 + free shipping
• Cooler Master Centurion 5 Silver\Black Mid-Tower Case - Retail - $49.99 + free shipping
• Scythe Ultra Kaze 120mm Case Fan - Retail - $8.95

Grand Total = $500 approximately. Shipping is free on everything but the fan.

Thanks a lot for that option rage, depending on how much extra grant money I have after enrolling for college this fall will be the determinate in which rig ill get. Ill probably have a system up n running within 2 weeks ill post back with a lot of smiles on how its running. How much of a difference will 32 mb cache compared to 16 mb cache make on a hard drive?

The larger cache will bring a nominal increase in performance, but the real reason to recommend that drive was for the 5-year warranty on it. You can also go for the cheaper 500GB WD5001AALS, but it's just $5 cheaper than the 640GB model I've recommended.

Also, if you think you can go all the way upto 700, grab a Phenom II X3 720BE and this video card instead of the 4870.

The hard drive is actually 44.99 after mail in rebate. But it only has half the cache. And no warranty, yeah a 5 year warranty would be nice.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822145215

So its the Memory Bandwidth 448bit and ramdacx2 400 that makes that video card so good? It has less core clock, memory clock, stream processors and ram.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814121291

That is one smokin cheap mobo, I had no clue that its better to scrap all that pricey stuff and pour your money into your video card.

woops double post

Besides the higher memory bandwidth, the GTX 275 has more TMUs and ROPs, which translates to higher pixel and texture fill-rates. It is slightly better than the HD 4890, which itself is essentially a higher-clocked HD 4870 1GB that has a 10-15% performance advantage over a vanilla 4870 1GB.

That particular ASUS card will obviously run cooler, but the XFX card has Double Lifetime warranty coverage, provided you register the card within 30 days of purchase. The warranty will cover you, and also any other person you sell the card to later, hence the name.

XFX also have an HD 4870 1GB that has higher core and memory clocks than the ASUS card, and the Double Lifetime warranty will also apply to it as well. You can get it here for a great price, cheaper than anywhere I've seen.

The more you know . Yeah that is a great deal on that xfx. I tend to overlook warranties, ill read 10 pages of reviews and forget to even glance at the warranty. But yeah warranties are the way to go. After seeing my bros computer die out there hard to ignore.