advice on building a good h9igh end pc

here's my 2 cents....

Mobo: Asus A8N32-SLI

CPU: AMD Athlon X2 4400+ (if this ends up over budget... nothing wrong with moving down to a 4200+)

RAM: OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR400

Video: XFX Geforce 7900GTX (grab 2 of these for SLI.... budget permitting of course)

Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda 320GB 7200.10

Power Supply: Aerocool Zerodba 500W (someone else may recommend that you get a higher wattage or a different brand, or possibly both. I'm recommending this one to you because i've put it in a couple of systems for other people and they loved it.)

i recommended nojoy the seagate drive because even though i've always used Maxtor drives, the aquisition of Maxtor by Seagate will be taking effect soon. I didn't recommend a WD drive because i've never had anything but problems in dealing them and found them too loud...

1Tanker, I have to agree with you that you have a potential risk of data loss but personnaly, I have never had seen/had a single hard drive fail (mostly Maxtor...).

Also, I went down the RAID road 8 months ago and it makes your life totally different. RAID0 is incredibly faster then a single HD and I am not talking about benchmarks, I have never benchmarked my RAID nor my other HD's. I am talking about feeling. All the games load REALLY fast, when I played BF2, I was always the first one spawning.

RAID0 really goes faster if you're willing to take the very small risk of data loss (I have yet to see a HD die and I have mistreated quite a few pretty badly...)

Edit: Going back to the original rig, I agree with what has been suggested except I would get a MSI board, just because I have set up 8 in the last 3 years and none has failed me (or even done something strange).

That may be true but I have mistreated some so badly and they still work today after 10 years of loyal services (in my IPCop firewall )

Maxtor has always been very loyal to me and to the people I have recommended them to. May just be that I'm lucky again but I've bought like 15 and they have yet to fail...

I would suggest something like this:

https://secure.newegg.com/NewVersio [...] er=3219506

If you plan to OC go with a DFI UT nF4 + Opteron 165 or better.

You might want to wait a few days or a week or two after the AM2 launch.

Good Luck :-D

AM2 vs 939 with chips of the same rating, the performance will be pretty much the same.

Now X2 vs FX, their is a performance difference but a bigger price difference

X1900 Crossfire > 7900GTX SLI

I'll assume you have a monitor, keyboard and mouse. Prices are approximate Newegg. You might be able to fiddle about and get their current $50 combo discount.

DFI LP nF4 mobo -------$120
Opteron 165--------------325
OCZ 500 MHz 2x1GB----190 afer MIR
Gigabyte X1900XT-------435
3:WD 250GB KS HD-----240
Zalman 9500 HSF--------64
Acer 19" AL1916---------180 (2nd monitor)
XP Home SP2-------------90

That adds up to somewhere around $1700 shipped, leaving you ~$300 for the case of your choice, an optical drive, a floppy, etc. You might even have a few bucks left over for a new game or two. I recommend an extra monitor because it can be a great efficiency tool for a programmer, especially one doing graphics-intensive work. You certainly want a dual core if you're going to run more than one game at a time (not sure I get your intent there). That Opty will OC like a mofo with that RAM and mobo and the video card will OC easily too. I have 3 HDs so you can dedicate one to OS + programs + games and the others for the programs you're developing and plenty of backup space. You'll use it.

If you want to know what I think, look at my signature. That's as high end as I could afford. I haven't started to OC yet, the MX-1 on my heat sink isn't cured yet.

The meat and beer are novel approaches. Gives all new meaning to the phrase "Killer Rig".