Descent Gaming System for about $800.

[matthewkris]

Hello,

It has been along time since I've build my last systems so I am trying to get back into the loop. Boy how things have changed. I'm hoping to land the final price somewhere between $800-900. I already have a case, dvd drive, keyboard, mouse and monitor to reuse.

Here is my list as of right now that I am looking to update with your suggestions. Prices all based on Newegg.com.

Motherboard: I bet I could shave off some $$$ here. Suggestions?
ASUS P5N-E SLI LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 650i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail - $149.99

CPU:
Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 Conroe 2.13GHz LGA 775 Processor Model BX80557E6400 - Retail - $222.00

RAM: I'm not sure about the ram.
G.SKILL 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Standard System Memory Model F2-6400CL5S-1GBNQ - Retail - $114.99

Video Card: If I can save $$$ elsewhere i'd like to upgrade this.
SAPPHIRE 100176L Radeon X1950PRO 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Video Card - Retail - $189.99

Hard Drive: 120 gigs is plenty for my needs right now.
Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 120GB 3.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM - $54.99

---------
$731.96

Thanks in advance as I hope to have my tax return back any day now and can't wait to get this thing built.

 

[akhilles]

Change hdd to Seagate Barracuda 7200.10. The rest look good.

 

[prezb11]

Are you planning on overclocking at all? Because with your mobo, you could save about 33$ get an E6300 and then overclock it to at least 6400 speeds no problem. Its not much and if you wont overclock then dont do it.

 

[matthewkris]

Change hdd to Seagate Barracuda 7200.10. The rest look good.

Could you please explain the advantages other than the obvious disk space?

I'm also thinking about this mobo to save a few $$$:
GIGABYTE GA-965P-DS3 LGA 775 Intel P965 Express ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail - $132.99

Any thoughts?

 

[ch1ckench0wme1n]

Hello,

It has been along time since I've build my last systems so I am trying to get back into the loop. Boy how things have changed. I'm hoping to land the final price somewhere between $800-900. I already have a case, dvd drive, keyboard, mouse and monitor to reuse.

Here is my list as of right now that I am looking to update with your suggestions. Prices all based on Newegg.com.

Motherboard: I bet I could shave off some $$$ here. Suggestions?
ASUS P5N-E SLI LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 650i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail - $149.99

CPU:
Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 Conroe 2.13GHz LGA 775 Processor Model BX80557E6400 - Retail - $222.00

RAM: I'm not sure about the ram.
G.SKILL 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Standard System Memory Model F2-6400CL5S-1GBNQ - Retail - $114.99

Video Card: If I can save $$$ elsewhere i'd like to upgrade this.
SAPPHIRE 100176L Radeon X1950PRO 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Video Card - Retail - $189.99

Hard Drive: 120 gigs is plenty for my needs right now.
Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 120GB 3.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM - $54.99

---------
$731.96

Thanks in advance as I hope to have my tax return back any day now and can't wait to get this thing built.

If ur willing to spend 900 that means u have another 170 dollars to spend. I would recommend u get a 8800gts.

Once u come up with another 114 dollars buy another gig of ram 2.

 

[matthewkris]

Are you planning on overclocking at all? Because with your mobo, you could save about 33$ get an E6300 and then overclock it to at least 6400 speeds no problem. Its not much and if you wont overclock then dont do it.

Would I benefit more by keeping the 6400 and overclocking it?

 

[matthewkris]

I forgot to note that I need a PSU. Something quite but not too costly.

 

[akhilles]

Change hdd to Seagate Barracuda 7200.10. The rest look good.

Could you please explain the advantages other than the obvious disk space?

I'm also thinking about this mobo to save a few $$$:
GIGABYTE GA-965P-DS3 LGA 775 Intel P965 Express ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail - $132.99

Any thoughts?

I don't want to plagiarize. D/l the pdf.

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/desktops/barracuda_hard_drives/barracuda_7200.10

http://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/content/pdf/marketing/po_barracuda_7200_10.pdf

DS3 is a very good budget overclocker. If you don't sli, get ds3.

Bare minimal psu:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817104954

May not be enough once the rig is overclocked or upgraded to 8800. Take your pick. Anything over 450w.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?Brand=1400&N=2010320058+50001400&Submit=ENE&Manufactory=1400&SubCategory=58

 

[spet3r]

On the motherboard... I found an ABIT board that is $85.

Abit IL9 PRO 945P LGA Socket

Its a 945 verses a 965 or 975 board (and only runs the memory at DDR 667)... but its definitely cheaper and will do the job. If you want to run DDR800, keep the board you have or go with this $109 Gigabyte Board It'll a trick to get the ram to work at DDR-800 in the BIOS...

That ram you picked is a good choice... It has the 1.8v standard (but I think it actually runs at 1.9V at default?)... you may still have trouble getting it to work at DDR-800... Its Intel's way. Its something that I hope Intel fixes when DDR-1066 is more mainstream.

The nForce board will be a top performer and isn't as fussy with ram and its built for overclocking... you share the same frustration, its expensive. Seems like nForce boards are more common in AMD's world now...

For power supply... I have a Coolmax Powersupply. Picked it for the 120mm fan and the 3 SATA connectors. if going for SLI, not a good choice. It'll get more expensive...

 

[Syntonic]

They have some Corsair xms2 2x1gb ddr2-800 cas5 for about 208 after rebate on Newegg at the time I checked. Zipzoomfly has some 2x1gb OCZ platinum revision 2 ddr2-800 for about 190 after rebates I believe. Check out other online stores yourself and do some comparisons on prices etc. as anything not of the higher rated d9s are getting cheaper again it seems. This should prep you if ever decide to go Vista next year or later this year. More importantly, you won't have 512 modules taking up precious space if you ever decide on 4gb total for Vista. You can get the good micron d9s for around 300 USD but honestly, it's not something I'd consider too closely at the moment on your budget or any budget for that matter unless you are going top of the line. DDR2-800 should allow for a bit of OC room without taxing the memory much and keeping to 1:1 (also depends on your processor and mobo though.) EDIT: Just keep in mind not to spend too much money on RAM as ddr3 is coming. Of course, that doesn't really apply to you unless you upgrade as soon as they switch but prices for ddr2 may grow cheaper with demand lower.

I'm not sure you should grab anything more than that for your video card till you find a DX10 only must have game. Games with DX10 code paths should come out around next year I believe so you might want to adjust your budget accordingly. You might even want something slightly cheaper to just tide you over until dx10 games go big.

I don't think Coolmax is a recommended PSU brand unfortunately but the Fortron mentioned is considered entry level these days on enthusiast boards and a lot of people link to it. You might consider getting a bit more expensive PSU than the Fortron if you plan on updating this system later on for more juice. I'm sure someone has the recommended PSU link somewhere.

For the motherboard, you can step all the way down to a Gigabyte S3 depending how strapped you are. People don't like it because of it's lack of solid state capacitors and a few other issues but I feel it's one of the better entry (enthusiast) level boards for the c2d platform. There was also a Biostar mentioned but honestly, I've never encountered it and none of my friends have that board so you'd have to read the reviews. If you stick with the p5n-e (which isn't a bad choice), you have to realize that it does have it's fair share of issues in terms of memory etc. Bios revisions for this board are somewhat sparse and it's not nearly as stable as p965 chipset (on average, intel chipsets are much more stable compared to the nvidia ones at the moment for the c2d but that will hopefully change over time.) On the flipside, the p5n-e is still rather cheap for the performance and offers SLI and a hd IDE for those older hard drives in case you have any lying around. Perhaps even more importantly in your case, it also offers some async memory overclocking if you decide on cheaper memory that can't cut it. Every board does have it's quirks though and the p5n-e has more than it's fair share in my opinion. The 401 bios is supposed to be great but I've yet to try it out. Other things of note: You should probably buy a chipset cooler of some sort or attach a fan to the north bridge if you are going to do any serious overclocking. Any dinky heatsink will work on the southbridge but make sure the heatsink isn't too large/tall or you can't do SLI in the future. Very good airflow might be enough but not recommended - at the very least, it'll cost you 5-7 dollars without shipping for additional cooling. You could go all out and change the northbridge entirely but it doesn't seem necessary to me.

You would benefit from an e6600 since it's clocked higher and more importantly, has 4mb of l2 cache instead of 2 so an e6400 might be harder to justify the cost with the impending price decrease. You could go for an e4400 or an e6300 at the moment and overclock that. Both are at similar prices right now so it's up to you what you want to get there (people would probably say the e4400) but you could skimp right now and simply wait for a better processor to get cheaper and buy something better later when it's also cheaper (like quadcore... right.) By the way, you can get a decent overclock with the stock intel heatsink. Otherwise, you should probably go with the arctic freezer pro 7 since it's cheap but I'm going to write this off as an unnecessary expense for your build at this time. You can always go back and purchase this later.

Hard drive is up to you but seagate 7200.10s sport perpendicular recording to my knowledge so you might want to consider a .10 release of similar size.

Uh, possibly you might want an floppy drive. Maybe not as you can flash from the USB for the p5n-e but it's something to consider especially since some recovery programs and the like still use floppies.

Disclaimer: The above is my complete opinion and I could be and more likely am 100% wrong.

 

[Featherstone]

I would get one of these and then get a DX10 card in 6 months when games start coming out...


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814142085
X1900XT for $200 after MIR


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814161047
X1950XT for $220

 

[spet3r]

I'm sorry, what is wrong with Coolmax? I've had this powersupply for a while and put it in 3 other machines without any trouble. There are models which are bad... but the one I linked to is fine.

The thing with the .10 release is that the hard drive capacity is so big, its almost impossible to use it all... starts at 200 GB... A .9 is just fine if all you want is 80 to 120 GB of space. The .9 has perpendicular recording technology also... so no gain there. The big advantage with most of the .10s is the cache size of 16mb. For $30 its up to the builder.