1. What YOUR PC will be used for. That means what types of tasks you'll be performing.
Flight Sims and Racing Games:
MS Flight Simulator 2004 (Looking to start playing FS-X and/or X-Plane 9.0 as well)
Richard Burns Rally
GTR-2
IL-2
Occasional Audio Ripping and Editing
Mathematica, MATLAB, PSPICE
Day-to-day college word processing and web
2. What YOUR budget is. A price range is acceptable as long as it's not more than a 20% spread
Up to $1500
3. What country YOU will be buying YOUR parts from.
USA
4. IF YOU have a brand preference. That means, are you an Intel-Fanboy, AMD-Fanboy, ATI-Fanboy, nVidia-Fanboy, Seagate-Fanboy, WD-Fanboy, etc, etc, etc, you get the picture.
Definitely going with Intel; except for back in 2004-2006, never had any incentive to buy AMD. Know more about NVidia cards than ATI's stuff, but open to both brands for GPU's. Definitely WD for hard drives.
5. If YOU intend on using any of YOUR current parts, and if so, what those parts are.
Have an extra Antec NeoHE 430W PSU, but I doubt that will cut it for the type of system I'm planning on building
6. IF YOU have searched and/or read similar threads.
Yes.
7. IF YOU plan on overclocking or run the system at default speeds.
Won't OC CPU. Probably will end up OC'ing the graphics card.
8. WHEN do you plan to build it?
Sometime in the July-August time frame. I've read a bunch of threads about Nehalem, but I've decided to go ahead and build it when I have free time this summer since I want a faster PC.
So, my main PC right now is my Dell Latitude D620 laptop with 2GB of RAM, a 2GHz Core 2 Duo CPU, and an NVidia Quadro NVS 110M CPU. I bought it for college thinking that I would be using it all the time, but it mostly stays in my room collecting dust. The CPU is sufficient for most daily EE tasks, but the system is definitely not cutting it when it comes to games. Flight Sim and IL-2 get 35 FPS max, which is very playable, but it doesn't do 35 FPS consistently (dips down to 20-25 quite often when around AI's and airports). Richard Burns Racing feels sluggish and GTR-2 is completely unplayable.
So here's my part list so far and I greatly appreciate your feedback (particularly if certain parts are overkill for my tasks or are underpowered). One note- I absolutely won't consider any case with a door since from my experience, case doors are stupid and will only break off.
Case- Lian-Li PC-7B
PSU- Seasonic M12 700W
HSF- Scythe Ninja Mini
Case Fan- Scythe S-FLEX SFF-21F
Mobo- ABIT IP35 Pro
CPU- Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 (I don't think a Quad Core will benefit me, but I'm not sure).
RAM- Kingston HyperX 2GB DDR2-800 SDRAM (An exclusive Crucial RAM user for many years, but if there's cheaper stuff of comparable quality, I'm all for it.)
GPU- EVGA 512MB GeForce 9600GT
Optical Drive- Asus 20X DVD-RW
HD- Two WD 150GB Raptors
Card Reader- Lian-Li Reader to match the caseLian-Li 20-in-1
Floppy- Samsung Floppy (old school I know, but I still have some floppies I like to access).
Flight Sims and Racing Games:
MS Flight Simulator 2004 (Looking to start playing FS-X and/or X-Plane 9.0 as well)
Richard Burns Rally
GTR-2
IL-2
Occasional Audio Ripping and Editing
Mathematica, MATLAB, PSPICE
Day-to-day college word processing and web
2. What YOUR budget is. A price range is acceptable as long as it's not more than a 20% spread
Up to $1500
3. What country YOU will be buying YOUR parts from.
USA
4. IF YOU have a brand preference. That means, are you an Intel-Fanboy, AMD-Fanboy, ATI-Fanboy, nVidia-Fanboy, Seagate-Fanboy, WD-Fanboy, etc, etc, etc, you get the picture.
Definitely going with Intel; except for back in 2004-2006, never had any incentive to buy AMD. Know more about NVidia cards than ATI's stuff, but open to both brands for GPU's. Definitely WD for hard drives.
5. If YOU intend on using any of YOUR current parts, and if so, what those parts are.
Have an extra Antec NeoHE 430W PSU, but I doubt that will cut it for the type of system I'm planning on building
6. IF YOU have searched and/or read similar threads.
Yes.
7. IF YOU plan on overclocking or run the system at default speeds.
Won't OC CPU. Probably will end up OC'ing the graphics card.
8. WHEN do you plan to build it?
Sometime in the July-August time frame. I've read a bunch of threads about Nehalem, but I've decided to go ahead and build it when I have free time this summer since I want a faster PC.
So, my main PC right now is my Dell Latitude D620 laptop with 2GB of RAM, a 2GHz Core 2 Duo CPU, and an NVidia Quadro NVS 110M CPU. I bought it for college thinking that I would be using it all the time, but it mostly stays in my room collecting dust. The CPU is sufficient for most daily EE tasks, but the system is definitely not cutting it when it comes to games. Flight Sim and IL-2 get 35 FPS max, which is very playable, but it doesn't do 35 FPS consistently (dips down to 20-25 quite often when around AI's and airports). Richard Burns Racing feels sluggish and GTR-2 is completely unplayable.
So here's my part list so far and I greatly appreciate your feedback (particularly if certain parts are overkill for my tasks or are underpowered). One note- I absolutely won't consider any case with a door since from my experience, case doors are stupid and will only break off.
Case- Lian-Li PC-7B
PSU- Seasonic M12 700W
HSF- Scythe Ninja Mini
Case Fan- Scythe S-FLEX SFF-21F
Mobo- ABIT IP35 Pro
CPU- Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 (I don't think a Quad Core will benefit me, but I'm not sure).
RAM- Kingston HyperX 2GB DDR2-800 SDRAM (An exclusive Crucial RAM user for many years, but if there's cheaper stuff of comparable quality, I'm all for it.)
GPU- EVGA 512MB GeForce 9600GT
Optical Drive- Asus 20X DVD-RW
HD- Two WD 150GB Raptors
Card Reader- Lian-Li Reader to match the caseLian-Li 20-in-1
Floppy- Samsung Floppy (old school I know, but I still have some floppies I like to access).