New to the board and new to PC building. Please help me with a gaming rig.

[Comandante Iago]

Hello all,

I?ve been lurking on this site and others for a couple of weeks now researching computer bits. I want to build a new system. I?ve never done it before, but think it could be a lot of fun and yield a bitching setup. I have always been a mac guy, but I?d like to game, I?d like to build it myself, and I?d like to save myself some money. I decided to post on here because I?m really impressed with what I?ve read from you guys. You seem very knowledge, helpful, and civil (something all too lacking on a lot of other boards). Here are answers to the critical questions.

-I want something that will be good for gaming (I?m not overly concerned with super-high framerates and not too hardcore, I just want something quick that?ll play anything out now well), moderate photo-editing, watching movies, internet, occasionally ripping DVDs, ect

-I?ll willing to go higher if the performance will significantly improve, but with my research it seems like $1,200 is a pretty sweet spot. This will include a 22? monitor and every bit going in the computer. All that I?m recycling will be a mouse, keyboard, a 2.0 set of speakers, and a fairly recent 17? running at 1280 x 1024 (it?s collecting dust, I see no reason not to use it as a second monitor.)

- I live in the USA. I?ll probably order everything or nearly everything from Newegg

-I?d like to use an Intel processor. And I?ll be running 64-bit Vista. I?m not picky about anything else.

-I may decide to overclock in the future, but for now, with what I want to do I don?t see a need.

-I?d like to build it ASAP. If I could have all of the parts and build this sucker by next weekend it?d be fantastic.



So, after hours upon hour of reading and researching this is what I?ve come up with. I think it makes sense, but before I go ahead and buy stuff I thought I?d ask you guys, as you know much better than I, to please take a look. Anything weird stand out? Any potential issues? Problems you foresee that I?m unaware of? I really appreciate the help. This is my first time.


Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 Wolfdale 3.16GHz 6MB L2 Cache LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor - Retail
<a target=_blank class=ftalternatingbarlinklarge href="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115036
">http://www.newegg.com/Product/...m=N82E16819115036
</a>

ASUS P5Q Pro LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16813131299

Western Digital Caviar SE16 640GB 3.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...px?item=N82E1682213621

SAPPHIRE 100242TXSR Radeon Toxic HD 4850
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814102760

SAMSUNG 22X DVD±R DVD Burner with LightScribe Black SATA Model SH-S223Q
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?item=N82E16827151173

G.SKILL PI Black 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16820231209

Antec NeoPower 650 Blue 650W Power Supply
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16817371010

Antec Three Hundred Black Computer Case
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16811129042

(The case and power supply are a combo for $140)


I?ll also throw in a wifi card. Any suggestions for that? For sound I?ll try on-board initially. If it gets to be on my nerves I?ll upgrade to a dedicated soundcard later

 

[sonnygdude]

Seems like a pretty solid build to me, but I'm biased since I'm running a pretty similar setup. The RAM looks kind of bells and whistly, but for the sales price it doesn't seem like it's that bad

A 4870 might give you a little more longevity, but probably isn't necessary at 1680x1050

 

[akugami]

Spring for the 4870, you can get one for about $220 to $230'ish after rebate. I got an HIS 4870 for $225 after rebate and there was a deal for a $200 after rebate 4870 in the hot deals section but I'm not sure if that is expired or not.

Look for prices on Zipzoomfly.com as well. They are a good company and are sometimes a few bucks cheaper. The only thing is they ship items slower. While it might take exactly 3-4 business days to get your items to your doorstep from Newegg and it might take 5-7 business days from Zipzoomfly. If you're not in a rush and saving $10 bucks on an item or two, why not?

Also have you considered springing for a Blu-Ray drive that can also burn DVD's and CD's? They're down to about $100. You get to be able to play Blu-Ray movies on your computer and still be able to burn DVD's and CD's.

 

[Comandante Iago]

Thank you guys.

Sonnygdude: You say that you're running something similar. May I ask what? And would you do anything differently?

Akugami: I didn't realize that the 4870 was down that low, thought it was closer to $300. I'll take a look. And I will check out zipzoomfly.com

As for blu-ray, I'm not interested yet. I may upgrade to it at some point.

Any suggestions for monitors? I was thinking about an Acer. Thoughts?

 

[Roguestar]

Originally posted by: Comandante Iago
I have always been a mac guy, but I?d like to game, I?d like to build it myself, and I?d like to save myself some money.

Welcome back, prodigal son!

Take a look at the sticky at the top detailing mechBgon's guide to sticking it all together; it's still largely relevant. There are other guides aplenty on building a PC.

Your build looks pretty good, well researched and picked, and I hadn't noticed that RAM is new on offer; I'll start recommending it to other people .

Good luck with your build!

 

[aclim]

your build looks really good.

As far as the GPU is concerned, look at the 4870 1gb model. With rebates you can get one for just a little bit more and have much better performance.

Acer has a nice 22" for a good price right now.

 

[Comandante Iago]

Thank you for the encouragement. Everything seemed to make sense to me, but I wanted a reality check. I'm glad that it does. Once I get all of my parts I will no doubt be back on here asking for some more help.

 

[sonnygdude]

Originally posted by: Comandante Iago
Thank you guys.

Sonnygdude: You say that you're running something similar. May I ask what? And would you do anything differently?

Akugami: I didn't realize that the 4870 was down that low, thought it was closer to $300. I'll take a look. And I will check out zipzoomfly.com

As for blu-ray, I'm not interested yet. I may upgrade to it at some point.

Any suggestions for monitors? I was thinking about an Acer. Thoughts?

I've got an E8500 (got it on sale with a P182 case!)/P5Q Deluxe/8GB G.Skill RAM/Visiontek HD4870/Corsair HX520 PSU/Samsung 20x burner/74 GB Raptor OS Drive/WD 6400AAKS application and data drive

If I had to do it differently, I'd probably go with the P5Q Pro and ditch the Raptor for another 6400AAKS (but still no RAID). I'd also spring for a 1GB 4870 instead of the 512 since I'm running at 1920x1200, but they weren't available when I built.

At the time, the Deluxe was just so sexy though (you have to say "sexy" with kind of a lisp to get the effect right) and I was under budget so I said what the heck. Now I've got a board with sexier heatsinks than a Pro which probably behaves exactly the same as a Pro and which I can't even see inside the case! Hindsight is 20/20

 

[Comandante Iago]

Sonnygdude: Thank you. Running at 1680 x 1050 do you still think it'd be worth a 1GB 4870 instead of a 512? I've pretty much sure I'm going for a 4870 instead of the 4850 I have listed up there. I won't regret having too much power... Also, is it worthwhile to go to 8GB of RAM like you have?

 

[sonnygdude]

Well, I would say you probably don't need the 4870 - 512 or 1GB - at 1680x1050. But the extra power might allow you to play new games longer than you would with a 4850, and keep higher settings. I agree, if it's not a price issue you can never have too much power, right?

That being said, I'm not sure that the 1GB HD4870 would have any real benefits over the 512 at that resolution. The review here at AT noted some surprising perfomance gains, but it seemed more appicable at higher resolutions. My impression is that at 1680x1050 you won't really see too much benefit from the larger frame buffer of the 1GB. But hopefully a graphics card guru will weigh in about that.

You certainly don't need 8GB RAM, but if it's cheap it couldn't hurt to have. Vista will use it for superfetch, thereby speeding up how fast applications open, or you can play with using it as a RAM drive, which I can tell you is very cool. It's a luxury, but a very nice one considering the price of RAM these days!

 

[akugami]

Doubt you'll see much of an improvement from a 1GB 4870 and a 512MB 4870. There is an improvement but unless you care about playing all of your games with all the bells and whistles then you'll be fine with a 4870. Heck, my last video card was an 8800GTS and that lasted me until my purchase of a 512MB 4870 and I was playing Crysis on my 8800GTS.

I think for the average player, setting a game at moderate visual levels is more than good enough and you seem to fall into this category. Let's face it, if you have to do minute by minute comparisons between screenshots to see the visual difference between medium and higher visual settings, there gets to be a point where it doesn't really matter. To a large degree all modern games will look great and perform fairly well on a Radeon 4850, 4870 and nVidia 260 or 280.

I'd agree with sonnygdude on the 8GB RAM thing. Unless you do a lot of video encoding or graphics editing the 8GB of RAM won't help much. 4GB on a Vista x64 OS will be sufficient. If it's cheap then I say go for it. Personally I have 8GB of RAM on my system.

 

[sonnygdude]

And just to clarify, when he says "sufficient" he means "smoking" (if you're not doing video encoding or graphics editing) . Seriously, Vista x64 with sufficient resources is niiiice.

 

[DSF]

I'll be the first to admit I really can't tell the difference between 1024x768 and 1600x1200 in most games, at least on my 19" CRT. If you snuck onto my computer and turned some of the settings down to medium I'm sure I wouldn't notice during the game. (With draw distance being about the only exception to that. I can't stand low draw distances.)

 

[Comandante Iago]

Thank you guys. I'm going to go ahead and order my parts. You have been most useful.