Looking to build a gaming machine ~$700-800

[juicy]

Hi all, this is my first time building a computer, mostly because I've caught the gaming fever. I want this machine to be a solid gaming machine. Not the ultimate machine, though, I'm not filthy rich.

Anyway, can people suggest motherboards for me? I'm definitely not comfortable with my mobo knowledge. I know a little bit about them, but my head starts spinning when people talk about stuff like bus speeds and sockets and stuff.

Did some research, and so far, I'm thinking of a machine like:

gfx card: ATI X850 XT (alrdy ordered)
cpu: A64 3700+ San Diego (might try out the OC thing)
RAM: not sure yet, 1 GB of some brand (corsair?)
power supply: not sure yet, 400W should be enough?
fans: two in, two out? or is that overkill?
sound: don't care, anything onboard is fine

Already ordered the gfx card today, and already having second thoughts after reading stuff about how it doesn't support a technology called SM 3.0, which is supposed to be important for future games. Is this a big deal? Should I cancel the order?

Any suggestions would be welcome (preferably less than 100 bucks for mobo, but I can spend a lil more than a hundred if value is worth it). I don't need anything fancy for mobo, just want something that'll let the comp run games well. Thanks for reading!

 

[dmantech]

For a Mobo I would go with the asus A8N-SLI Premium even if you are not using SLI. One of the advantages of this board other than sli is it's silent design (copper heat pipe) on chipset instead of a noisy fan. On the IO board you have your normal layout but also additional audio options like coax or optical
if you do not have a add on soundcard. There are more goodies that comes with this board also
Asus A8N-SLI Premium, X2 4400+ 2Gig corsair XMS
Seagate 250 Gig HD, X1900XT 512, Creative XFI,
550 watt PSU. :lol:

 

[PCKid777]

Well, you might want to cancel that order. Check out this link: http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/12/02/vga_charts_viii/index.html
Then compare performances and then look up the price tags for the graphics cards (I suggest a 7800GT or something around there if you want good graphics, depending on your budget) Make sure you look at a PCI-E graphics card too, as they are faster than the old technology of AGP. I would wait though b/c the 7900 series will be out in a couple weeks and should drive down prices.

Also, if you can wait till June, Socket AM2 will be out. If you are a beginner, I suggest an ASUS or MSI Mobo, I personally favor ASUS so you can check out the A8N-Sli. Make sure you get a good PSU, something from SeaSonic or OCZ. As for the case, check out the Tsunami case, though its about $110. Look at these sites: ZipZoomfly.com and Newegg.com

Don't forget, depending on how much you OC and what kind of case you have, you may want to upgrade the stock cooler (about another $30 to $50)
And post how much each item is so we can tell where you're at.

 

[juicy]

Thanks for the gfx card and mobo tips, guys. Damn, I'm going to cancel that gfx card order ASAP. I think the 7800 256 MB will be fine for me, the 250 bucks is about as far as I'll go for a gfx card.

So the estimated price is looking like so far (all newegg prices):

gfx card - 260
mobo (A8N-SLI Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI ATX)- 120
processor (a64 3700 san diego) - 210
RAM 1GB DDR 400 (corsair) - 73
PSU from OCZ (450W ok?) - 89

Yikes, already at ~750. If it results in a decent gaming machine, though, I'll keep the specs as is. Is there any other major thing I'm missing, other than the case?

I'll probably wait for Nvidia to come out with the 7900 series before I buy the gfx card. I'll buy the other stuff though.

Oh also, I can't wait till June. I'm not that patient.

 

[agent14]

I'm waiting till July to build my rig. Not June since I wanna see AM2 reviews and keep saving up. Looking for a $1500 gaming rig. The 7800GT is the card I'm looking at, and since the 7900 is coming out soon it will be cheaper. I may be even able to afford the 7900gt...obviously not the 7900gtx...I'm on a budget. Looking to buy AM2 4200+ X2...if I can fit it into my budget.

Also, I have a Dell 4600(AGP 3.0 -4x/8x) based system, which I'm using now with a crappy Geforce FX 5200 128mb . Question, is the performance between the 6600($125) 256mb and 7800GS that huge? I want to buy the 6600 next month, (and also buy a power supply, stock 250w isn't enough) to suffice my gaming needs till July.

 

[tenaciousleydead]

what games are you planning on playing anyway?

 

[juicy]

I'm mostly into FPS games, right now, I'm playing Call of Duty 2. Right now I play with this nasty old laptop, which has an ATI mobility Radeon card that was cutting edge technology... in 2002! I've never bothered to invest in a decent gfx card because I didn't play games.

 

[dvdpiddy]

dude the proc i would change maybe an opty 144 cause you wanna oc right and the opty's are the best for oc and dude you dont plan on runnin sli get this it has a heat pipe and its cheaper than the premium and if you can go for the corsair ram its nice quality and it lasts

 

[juicy]

thanks for the tip. I don't know much about OC, heard a lot about it, never bothered with it, but now I'm looking heavily into it, it sounds fun. On newegg reviews, I've read that you can OC the 3700+ san diego up to 3GHz with lil problems, which sounds awesome.

It's only 13 bucks more than the opteron 144 too, and I've heard good things about the san deigo core, so I'll probably stick with my choice, but if you got more reasons why opteron 144 would be better choice, I'd like to hear them, I like learning.

Oh yeah, canceled the order for the ATi today. I'll aim to get the 7800 GT when the 7900 series come out.

 

[phonicsmonkey]

If you don't mind waiting for rebates, Radioshack.com has some pretty sweet deals going on:

$29.99 AR - Ultra ULT31845 X-Finity 500W Power Supply

$59.99 AR - Ultra Products ULT31825 Aluminus Blue High-Gloss Case

$49.99 AR - Ultra ULT31664 1024MB DDR Memory

You can check out the reviews for all of these on newegg. Buy 2 of those RAM modules and you'll be running 2 GB in dual channel for under $100! I own that X-finity power supply and have nothing but good things to say about it. They also have that case available in silver for the same price.

 

[juicy]

wow, thanks for the heads up. The power supply especially, because the OCZ one I'd looked at earlier is not SLI certified, woops. The RAM rebate says its limited to one per customer, but I guess I can get a friend to buy the 2nd stick for me.

I'll look into the reliablility reputation of Ultra products, but those prices are nice indeed.

 

[PCKid777]

As a personal preference, I like brands like OCZ and Corsair for memory. As for PSUs, I read a past review on an Ultra PSU and its volts weren't the best when compared to an Enermax and some other brand....sorry that I can't find that link. Check around tomshardware though, they have done some stress testing on a lot of PSU's that you probably want to check out.

 

[juicy]

Yeah I'm going to go for Corsair. Reviews say Ultra RAM is decent, but not quite Corsair. I did order the case and PSU from Ultra though. Case got nice reviews, and reviews on Ultra PSUs overall seem ok. I don't think my comp'll be a power guzzler, so 500W is probably overkill anyway.

 

[PCKid777]

As long as the volts are stable you should be fine. First time I built a PC, I didn't know anything about components and didn't even know about online forums at the time....I bought a cheap $20 500 watt PSU and for a year, I couldn't find out why my PC kept crashing. I decided to look at the ASUS Probe that I installed; my 3.3V began dropping to 2.9V 8O. Needless to say, I bought a new PSU that works with stable volts.

 

[juicy]

yeah I read tomshardware's review on a couple of the Ultra PSUs and at least the 500W model got okay reviews. The 460W model was trash. Luckily for me, I got the 500W model (Xfinity instead of the review's Xconnect), hopefully Ultra's PSUs got better over the year that passed between now and the review. If it dies on me, I'll prolly go with Enermax or Silverstone.