Help with a build

[stiefund]

Hi all,

I'm building a new computer and I've never really done it before. I was wondering if you could give me any advice on what to buy. I'll paste below what I've rounded up so far. I have between $1500 and $2000 to budget but if I can build it for less then that's great. I want a good gaming computer that will last me for a good 2 to 3 years. I'd also really like some advice on a motherboard (for example, is crossfire worth it?). Thanks a lot for whatever help you can give me.

Here's my build:

CPU
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 Conroe 1066MHz FSB 4M shared L2 Cache LGA 775 Processor
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819115003


Motherboard
Not sure.

Memory
Corsair Value Select Dual Channel 2048MB PC3200 DDR 400MHz Memory (2 x 1024MB)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820145579

Video Card
ATI Radeon X1900 XT / 512MB GDDR3 / PCI Express / Dual DVI / VIVO / Video Card
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814195002

OS Hard Drive
Western Digital Raptor WD740GD 74GB 10,000 RPM 8MB Cache Serial ATA150 Hard Drive - OEM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144160

Storage Hard Drive
Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 SATA NCQ 3.0Gb/s 300GB 16MB Cache (OEM)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148110

 

[adrenalin]

lol....

The memory MUST be DDR2 not just ddr for conroe systems.

I think you should get a 2gb Corsair XMS2 6400 memory

and as for the mother board,
either a Gigabyte DS3 or a ABIT AB9 Pro

good luck

 

[stiefund]

My mistake, that's what I get for trying to combine two builds. Thanks for pointing that out.

 

[Mondoman]

Great memory on 1-day rebate sale:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820145590
(Corsair XMS2 2x 1GB DDR2-800)

 

[califflash]

I prefer Asus motherboards. A lot of people prefer Gigabyte or DFI but for a first time build Asus would be great. They don't have the greatest customer support but that's because the manuals tell you most everything you need to know and they generally don't cause any problems. Just check the compatibility list on the ram. For a LGA-775 rig I would recommend Asus P5N32-SLI Deluxe. For gaming I generally prefer AMD even though lately Intel has been giving them a hard time. They still slog through the single thread data that a lot of games have better than Intel, but more games are switching to a multi-thread design. AMD is catching up on the price/performance ration on their multi-cores and are still very competitive, not to mention the mobo's are cheaper.

As for your video card you should upgrade to the 1900XTX sapphire has one on newegg for $30 more that what your 1900xt costs and is the same card as sapphire's more expensive ones it just doesn't come with as many "goody" cds.
SAPPHIRE 100150L Radeon X1900XTX 512MB

If you're considering multi-gpu support I would say go with crossfire. Dual 1900xtx's can't be beat even with the release of quad-sli. Note the tom's hardware article http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/08/11/nvidias_response_to_early_diy_quad-sli/
They compare the quad sli to a SINGLE 1900xtx and the ati card lands right in the middle of the field of all the quad-sli set ups they reviewed. A crossfire set up would blow sli away. Granted on the more traditional sli setups it get higher framerates that crossfire, but the image quality is less than that of crossfire. Which could explain the lower frame rates. There's no reason you couldn't tune the set up to get both better frame rates and image quality from any sli setup.

As far as ram I would recommend Corsair XMS 2GB(2x1GB).

Also on your hard drive selection. Those are both excellent drives; however, all a faster drive will do will let you load maps faster. Unless your running at mad speeds through Oblivion you won't need the performance. You won't see any noticable difference when playing movies off the hd or anything like that because current format doesn't stream data fast enough. I would suggest a more conventional 7200 rpm 3.0gb/s sata drive because they are cheaper and few people really need the performance of the 10,000 rpm sata drives. Here's a suggestion: Seagate 7200RPM 320GB 16MB Cache. That's just my take on that.

I hope all that info is helpful and not too overwhelming. Let me know if you have any more questions.

 

[stiefund]

Wow, thanks for all the info. It wasn't overwhelming at all and very informative.

I'll let you all know what I decide on in a few weeks, but I probably will grab those memory sticks tonight while the deal lasts.

 

[Alex_Huck]

It should be noted that with crossfire/SLI most of the benefit is gained at very high resolutions. Indeed you will gain some benefit from CF/SLI even at lower resolutions, though in my opinion, not enough to be worth the price of 2 graphics cards unless you have a monitor which can support great resolutions.