Before we get into this, let me say that my time is /very valuable to me./ So, yes. I'm paying a premium to attempt to keep from wasting it in future. I'm trying to write out as much as I feel you guys will need to help me with figuring out what to build. I completely understand if you just skip to the builds below.
My purpose here is to build a machine that may not be what a bargain hunter / upgrade enthusiast would be shooting for. I want something that will be solid for a good long while as is, then will only need a simple Vid upgrade before I get rid of it and move on.
The time I spend having to read about this and that component, pros cons of this decision, round ups of this and that video card, etc, could be used doing other things that I enjoy far more, so... I'm willing to spend a premium to not have to do this again for a while.
Basically, I'm looking to spend around 2000 (US) dollars for a killer gaming and general media (Photos, music, writing) machine. One that I will basically only have to drop a new video card (or cards) into in the future before I simply donate the whole thing to charity and build again from the ground up.
I'm not too fond of how LOCKED IN RESOLUTION flat / LCD / Etc screens perform at this point, so I'm going to keep my Sony Multiscan g520 CRT. It has great picture quality, and though I feel guilty about the energy consumption, I don't think the time is right for me to ditch it yet. ... I tend to /notice/ the little quirks of non CRT screens. Ghosting. Drives. Me. Bonkers. Odd colour banding, or colour artifacts bother me. I've been to Fry's, Circuit City, Best Buy, etc, wandering around, looking at the monitors and I just can't find an LCD that doesn't turn me off after a few minutes.
I don't need a new mouse, keyboard, or speaker system.
I tend to run several things at the same time. Word, Foobar2000, Firefox, Office, Imaging software, and if I can squeeze it in, City of Heroes. I... have the attention span of a mayfly, and like to go from one to the other. Multitasking is something I do constantly.
I have lots of photographs and music (Building a FLAC library of my music collection), and can always use more HD space. Planning to migrate over two SATA drives from my old system.
These are two builds that I am looking at. They are based on systems I read about on Arstechnica and PCstats.com
The first is based around Arstechnica's most current Performance Gaming Box, which is a 939 system.
DFI LANParty UT nF4 SLI-DR Expert
AMD Opteron 170
Two 1GB PC3200 DDR SDRAM
(Corsair? Which ones??)
(Willing to add more memory.
One NVIDIA GeForce 7900GTX or One 7900GT
(Not sure which brand. Want to stay away from overclocked ones. (HardOCP reported RMA rates and potential issues with various games)
(SLI? Any point besides bragging rights??)
Creative X-fi
Western Digital Raptor 150GB
DVD rewritable/CD-RW
Antec Performance One P180
(I like the way it looks, frankly. My wife won't constantly comment on the looks.)
Seasonic S12-600 600W
The second build is based around PCstats' June Shopping List Assistance. This system is like their AM2 High End Performance Part List.
AMD Athlon64 X2 4000+ Socket AM2 Processor
(Use a different Processor?)
Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe Motherboard
2GB Corsair Twin2X2048-6400C4 DDR2 Memory
(4GB? Does the board handle EPP now?)
One NVIDIA GeForce 7900GTX or One 7900GT
150GB Western Digital Raptor Hard Drive
DVD Writer
Sound Blaster X-Fi
Seasonic S12-600 600W ATX Power Supply
Guys and gals, any suggestions, critiques, etc are welcome here. I just need to hear ideas and thoughts on these builds to give me an idea of what to go for.
My purpose here is to build a machine that may not be what a bargain hunter / upgrade enthusiast would be shooting for. I want something that will be solid for a good long while as is, then will only need a simple Vid upgrade before I get rid of it and move on.
The time I spend having to read about this and that component, pros cons of this decision, round ups of this and that video card, etc, could be used doing other things that I enjoy far more, so... I'm willing to spend a premium to not have to do this again for a while.
Basically, I'm looking to spend around 2000 (US) dollars for a killer gaming and general media (Photos, music, writing) machine. One that I will basically only have to drop a new video card (or cards) into in the future before I simply donate the whole thing to charity and build again from the ground up.
I'm not too fond of how LOCKED IN RESOLUTION flat / LCD / Etc screens perform at this point, so I'm going to keep my Sony Multiscan g520 CRT. It has great picture quality, and though I feel guilty about the energy consumption, I don't think the time is right for me to ditch it yet. ... I tend to /notice/ the little quirks of non CRT screens. Ghosting. Drives. Me. Bonkers. Odd colour banding, or colour artifacts bother me. I've been to Fry's, Circuit City, Best Buy, etc, wandering around, looking at the monitors and I just can't find an LCD that doesn't turn me off after a few minutes.
I don't need a new mouse, keyboard, or speaker system.
I tend to run several things at the same time. Word, Foobar2000, Firefox, Office, Imaging software, and if I can squeeze it in, City of Heroes. I... have the attention span of a mayfly, and like to go from one to the other. Multitasking is something I do constantly.
I have lots of photographs and music (Building a FLAC library of my music collection), and can always use more HD space. Planning to migrate over two SATA drives from my old system.
These are two builds that I am looking at. They are based on systems I read about on Arstechnica and PCstats.com
The first is based around Arstechnica's most current Performance Gaming Box, which is a 939 system.
DFI LANParty UT nF4 SLI-DR Expert
AMD Opteron 170
Two 1GB PC3200 DDR SDRAM
(Corsair? Which ones??)
(Willing to add more memory.
One NVIDIA GeForce 7900GTX or One 7900GT
(Not sure which brand. Want to stay away from overclocked ones. (HardOCP reported RMA rates and potential issues with various games)
(SLI? Any point besides bragging rights??)
Creative X-fi
Western Digital Raptor 150GB
DVD rewritable/CD-RW
Antec Performance One P180
(I like the way it looks, frankly. My wife won't constantly comment on the looks.)
Seasonic S12-600 600W
The second build is based around PCstats' June Shopping List Assistance. This system is like their AM2 High End Performance Part List.
AMD Athlon64 X2 4000+ Socket AM2 Processor
(Use a different Processor?)
Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe Motherboard
2GB Corsair Twin2X2048-6400C4 DDR2 Memory
(4GB? Does the board handle EPP now?)
One NVIDIA GeForce 7900GTX or One 7900GT
150GB Western Digital Raptor Hard Drive
DVD Writer
Sound Blaster X-Fi
Seasonic S12-600 600W ATX Power Supply
Guys and gals, any suggestions, critiques, etc are welcome here. I just need to hear ideas and thoughts on these builds to give me an idea of what to go for.