final parts list! -- any mistakes you see?

[phantomilk]

Thanks to all your help, I believe I've narrowed things down to a final parts list.
First, a few things:
(1) I wont be overclocking
(2) No SLI or Crossfire
(3) I will use my monitor, HDD, CDRW (40X Hitachi) and DVD (16X Liteon)
(4) Sound is important, but just enough to allow me to enjoy game/mp3 music

Now, the list:

Antec LifeStyle SONATA II Piano Black Computer Case
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811129155
99.99

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103547
357.00

ASUS A8N-E ATX AMD Motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131530
94.99

CORSAIR ValueSelect 2GB (2 x 1GB)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820145579
140.00

SAPPHIRE Radeon X1900XT 100149 Video Card
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102003
449.00

Total: 1140.98

These next two things are if I decide to go a little crazy:

Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic Sound Card
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16829102188
121.99

Western Digital Raptor 74GB 3.5" Serial ATA150 Hard Drive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144160
160.00 / 130.00 after rebate

Me going crazy total: 1422.97 (perhaps too far away from my 1000 budget...)

Finally, I'm not sure if it's a bad idea to be using my old optical drives, so I've been looking into some stuff. It would really put me out of budget, but do you guys think I should add on some new drives? If so, is there one you recommend. I just don't want my old drives hindering performance (if they even have the ability to do that)

Thanks (as always) for you time and suggestions.

 

[michaelahess]

That's solid, get the raptor, just do it man!

 

[MadModMike]

Case: Okay
CPU: Good
Mobo: Good
RAM: Okay
GPU: Excellentay
Sound Card: Rip, use onboard
Hard Drive: Waste of 160 .99 Burgers from BurgerKing, get a $80 160GB SATA drive from Newegg.com, <8% performance difference and you could get 2 and have faster than 1 Raptor. See? That's smart buying :O.

~~Mad Mod Mike, pimpin' the world 1 rig at a time

 

[michaelahess]

Got a point, but if you're going to do a lot of multitasking involving the HD, the raptor will be quicker with higher i/o requests. Like if you run SQL for your cd collection database

 

[MadModMike]

Got a point, but if you're going to do a lot of multitasking involving the HD, the raptor will be quicker with higher i/o requests. Like if you run SQL for your cd collection database

Bah, take that techno garbal and put it inside a box and mail it to LT-Data, he loves that, I call him Mr. TDP. F*ck those "I/O" crap, real-word performance, RAID 0 (of any drives) > Raptor, in everything.

~~Mad Mod Mike, pimpin' the world 1 rig at a time

 

[michaelahess]

Hahaha, and more capacity to boot.

 

[shadowduck]

Nice setup. I would trade in the 4200+ spend $40 and get an Opteron 170. It is 200MHz slower yes, but it overclocks very well, is a server grade chip, and comes with double the L2 cache.

 

[BaronMatrix]

I'd drop the Sound Blaster and the X1900XT. Unless you are playing above 1280 you don't need a $450 card. I have a 7800GT with a X2 4400+ and I can play D3 at 1280 HQ with pretty much all the eye candy. I went for the MSI Platinum cause it comes with a 24Bit Live! It's SLI but who says you have to use the second slot?

These changes will save you $200 probably.

 

[Bluefinger]

Nice setup... the Soundcard is good too, since i have it and really notice the difference over onboard sound with anything to do with audio, though it may seem a bit pricy. An Audigy 4 would be just as good but on the cheaper end. The X1900XT is a very good card, though again on the expensive side, but i assure you, its worth it and would last longer than a 7800GT.

 

[ForzaItalia4]

i can't stress this enough now that i just found out about it today, but get THIS.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814150139

Best bang for the buck. Knocks a 7800 GT way out of the park, and it's only a few bucks extra. it also runs a bit better than the 7800 GTX and it's about 200 dollars cheaper!

 

[Propain666]

Nice setup.

Build for tomorrow is all I can say.


AM2 and Conroe will be great, but not great enough to get me into another CPU.


DX10 Vid cards although will be hard to ignore. Stick with 1 Vid card for now and wait for DX10.

 

[ElMoIsEviL]

x1900XT definatly. Once more shader bound titles start to come out the puny 256MB of RAM on the 7900GT cards and it's inferior Shader capabilities (though patched now with some shader tweaks) will prove to be too much.

Games are moving towards a 7:1 Shader:Texture ratio. So the x1900XT will last you quite a while.

 

[ak47is1337]

Looks pretty good man. I have to agree you should replace the X1900XT with the 7900GT to save some more money and get some more speed. Also, the extra cache of an opteron or a 4400 would be worth it.

 

[FITCamaro]

Looks good to me. I say keep the X1900XT because in a few months you'll want 512MB of RAM instead of 256MB. My next system will have a 512MB video card if not a 1GB card (you know they're around the corner).