whats do you guys think?????

[Cappy]

of this for my new rig,, gona build it in Feb.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...763&CatId=2405

gona add anoth gig of ram

if price comes down ill go with 2,, but right now only 1.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...570717&CatId=0

want to go water cooled but have never dealt with it before. can anyone suggest a good make for both cpu and vid cards????

gona have to upgrade the power supply so am going to go with this 1

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...181001&CatId=0

if anyone has anything to add please do so,, this will be my first time building my own

ima gona have between $1500-1800 dollars to build this soooooooooooooo im ,limited as far as that goes, but im going to leave room to improve....

please if you guys can add anything for this first time builder please do so,,, Thank You

[experiment626]

Originally Posted by Cappy

of this for my new rig,, gona build it in Feb.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...763&CatId=2405

gona add anoth gig of ram

if price comes down ill go with 2,, but right now only 1.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...570717&CatId=0

want to go water cooled but have never dealt with it before. can anyone suggest a good make for both cpu and vid cards????

gona have to upgrade the power supply so am going to go with this 1

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...181001&CatId=0

if anyone has anything to add please do so,, this will be my first time building my own

ima gona have between $1500-1800 dollars to build this soooooooooooooo im ,limited as far as that goes, but im going to leave room to improve....

please if you guys can add anything for this first time builder please do so,,, Thank You

First, congrats.
Second, not sure if this is the right forum. Try Technical Support & FAQ one step up, but hey....I could be wrong
Third, do your research.

[sordavie]

$1500-$1800 is a lot to build your own computer. That's really not limiting at all.

[Cappy]

Originally Posted by experiment626

First, congrats.
Second, not sure if this is the right forum. Try Technical Support & FAQ one step up, but hey....I could be wrong
Third, do your research.

ya i see that now sry admin can you move it please,,, ty

ty Admin god of all forums

[Melee]

1. Price each of the components out individually using Newegg to verify whether this is a deal.

2. Read reviews on each component to ensure it is of good quality. For example, I've never heard of a manufacturer named Ultra. Are Asus cases any good? Just because BFG makes good video cards doesn't mean their PSUs are good. Do your homework to find the best quality/price balance.

3. Does a 8800 GTX make the most sense? That's a third of your budget. I personally buy a little further down the curve - maybe a 7950GT for less than half as much.

I usually begin my research at HardOCP. Just reviewing the users autosigs gives me an idea of the popular equipment and vendors being used by the members.

Good luck!

[=Sarc=]

$1500 is enough to build a pretty good system if you don't need a monitor. I spent about $1400 CAD for my August Core 2 build. Although, I reused my optical drives, harddrives, case, and sound card. With the extra $300 and difference in currency exchange, you can build something similar to my rig.

A bare bones system isn't really necessary unless it's a good price. Bare bones may come with some parts that you don't want. The PC4200 RAM in that ASUS bare bones isn't great. You want at least PC5400 for stock speeds and PC6400 for overclocking.

Here's what I built back in August at the prices I paid then. Prices are in Canadian dollars.

Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 $299.99
EVGA 7900GT $319.98
Scythe Mine Heatpipe CPU Heatsink $50.57
Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 $188.10
Corsair XMS2 2GB 2X1GB PC6400 $280.44
Seasonic S12-500HT 500W $119.60

The total was about $1300 CAD, which is about $1100 USD. I also bought some extras like a 120mm fan to replace the 100mm fan on the heatsink and converters to use my IDE harddrives on SATA ports (The 965 chipset has one IDE channel). So that's about $1400 CAD after shipping costs. The 7900GT is much cheaper now so you can optionally replace that with a 7950GT or similar. Move up to a faster CPU if it fits your budget.

Throw in a ~$100 case, depending on your preferences (go for one with rounded edges on the inside), a water cooling kit (~$250), new harddrive, and maybe a sound card to round out your system. A good idea is to save some cash for a video card upgrade in 12-16 months.

My plan is to sell the 7900GT and move to a DX10 card as early as August (12 months for me). It's more likely I'll upgrade when lower priced DX10 cards are on the market. I've overclocked my E6400 to 3Ghz from 2.13Ghz. It's stable and I haven't bothered to push it more because I'm too lazy. 3Ghz is more than enough power to encode audio/video. BF2142 runs smooth (~50FPS) on high settings. I even accidentally recorded a 4GB video while playing CoH (latest RTS) and didn't notice. It stopped recording because of the file size limit.

[Acreo Aeneas]

If you decide to go with that ASUS barebones, make sure you get the make and model of each component in the barebone.

Presuming the description on it is accurate, the mobo is a ASUS P5NSLI, which is a good mobo (also my mobo for my next build).

Hmm, I'd check reviews from several sources on the BFG PSU you chose, just to see if there were any problems encountered during review stress testings, etc.

I can't comment on the RAM, but if it's similiar to Ultra's PSU lines, then I'd replace that as well. And since it is an ASUS mobo, check to manual to see which brand and model RAMs are supported. And get supported RAM from the list, it'll leave you with less headaches down the road.

Like Melee said above, I don't recommend going for the 8800 line of cards just yet. It's expensive, and not all the bugs have been worked out. Personally I'd go for one of the 7900 series of cards (7900, 7900GT, 7900GTX, 7950GT, 7950GTX, 7950GX2, etc). They are fairly well priced for your build price range, and they still offer very good performance.

[Cappy]

ya i waz thinking about the 7950 GX2's but i waz looking ahead toward the dx 10... lol i wont have this kida money again for awhile to dump into a computer wanted to try to do it all now so i would have to worry about it later :P

its not etched in stone yet , i got some time to debate so like i said any help anyone can provide is welcome.

[sordavie]

Well, can you save the difference between an 8800 and a 7900 for a dx10 card sometime down the road?

[xTYBALTx]

You're building in February? Don't buy anything yet, and come ask us the same question next month. The components will have changed and you'll get more for your $.

[Acreo Aeneas]

Well if you want to settle down pretty evenly on parts now for a future purchase, go with something like the 79xx series, not the newer 88xx series. The newer series has not has it's support issues worked out yet, drivers aren't fully compatible with most builds, and a lot of bugs have yet to be reported.

Like Melee said, you need to read up on every little bit about each piece of hardware before deciding to go with it. Usually the longer reviews by trusted sources especially those that perform stress tests show if the hardware choice is good or not.