Help building a computer

[SG44]

Looking for help building a computer. My budget is $2000 but the cheaper the better. I want to get the most performance for the money. Any help is very appreciated.

 

[italian]

what do you want to do with your computer? are you partial to AMD or Intel?

 

[pmr]

Edit

 

[SG44]

I want to use it for gaming on as high of settings as i can. I probably want to go with intel because it seems they are better right now.

 

[pmr]

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819115003 - $315

Kingston 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) (cheap arse RAM)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820134045 - 2x$69.99

EVGA 122-CK-NF68-TR LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813188010 - $209.99

EVGA 768-P2-N831-AR GeForce 8800GTX 768MB 384-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Video Card
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814130072 - $539.99

OCZ GameXStream OCZ600GXSSLI ATX12V 600W Power Supply
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817341001 - $129.99

HITACHI Deskstar T7K500 HDT725032VLA360 (0A33435) 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822145129 - $84.99

Tuniq Tower 120
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16835154001 - $64.99

Thermaltake Armor Series VA8000BWS Black Aluminum / Steel ATX Full Tower Computer Case
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811133154 - $124.99

Total - $1609.92

 

[SG44]

Hey thanks for the reply. I had the same processor, graphics card, and case picked out so thats a good sign. I had a cheaper motherboard. I'm a noob when it comes to this could you explain to me what makes motherboards good. Also what is the Tuniq Tower used for?

 

[pmr]

Well, for the mobo I picked this because you might want to get another gfx card to run in sli. But let me show you another good option:

Open Box: ASUS P5N-E SLI LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 650i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131142R - $119.99

It's a good OCer also but not like the 680i. But hey, it's on pair with the others in stock performance And you can push up to 3.4Ghz no prob.

I assumed you wanted to Heavy OC, so I picked the Tuniq cooler along the first mobo.

 

[SG44]

Don't really know anything about OCing, but i guess i'll try to OC. You seem to really know what you're doing. I want an opinion on this monitor.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16889234001 I want to use it for comp and xbox 360. Seems like it would be great for both.

A lot of people seemed to like this harddrive http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16822148140

Also what would be a good sound card to get?

 

[pmr]

For the specs, the monitor looks good. But to be honest, when you buy a monitor, you want to look at it first or look for a good and professional review. You never know how it will display the colors, real vision angles etc. But anyway, it looks good for the price.

The link you gave me has several hdd, which is it?

 

[SG44]

Edited it link messed up for some reason.

 

[pmr]

Sorry, the mobo I wanted to point is this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131142

It's the same but is not open box, it comes with all the components.

 

[pmr]

The new hdd are basically all the same, so you're good with the one you choose.

 

[SG44]

How about a sound card. Do you need one? And which one is a good one?

 

[pmr]

I don't understand much about gaming sound cards, but I can assure you that for the average music listener and gamer, on board audio nowadays is pretty good. I just tried two soundcards in my life, and for gaming, I'm sorry but I'm not the right guy to tell you.

 

[SG44]

Could anyone help me out with sound card or what dvd drives are good?

 

[pinkcaddy]

Soundblaster X-FI are good cards. you can get the gamer or the audio for around US$75.00. I've never heard of good on board audio, but then again, I'm replacing a 5 year old PC. Don't spend more than $100 US on a sound card unless you are a true audiophile or a musician.

As far as DVD burner, check into this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16827106045

Also, for your HDD, you may want to consider 2 Seagate 7200.10 80GB in Raid 0 for your OS and apps. Faster than a Raptor, quieter, cheaper, and more disk space. Plus, you can store all of your data on a 320GB drive.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148231

 

[SG44]

Hey thanks for info. I'm really a noob to this what is RAID 0 and how would all these hard drives work.

 

[pinkcaddy]

RAID (Redundant Array if Inexpensive Drives) is a means of utilizing multiple hard drives for speed and/or mitigating hard drive failure. There are multiple levels of RAID:

Level 0 - Data striping across multiple disks. This RAID level provides a performance increase by "striping" data across multiple hard drives. It offers no protection from hardware failures.

Level 1 - Data Mirroring - this level doesn't provide any performance increase, but should you lose a hard drive, you won't lose your data. The con is you lose half the total disk space because of the mirroring, hence it is more expensive per GB.

Level 5 - Multiple disks with parity protection. This level offers a similar protection from hard drive failure to RAID 1, but doesn't cost you the hard drive overhead. i.e. 4 disks in a RAID 5, only one is used for parity protection, so you have the storage space of the remaining three disks. RAID 5 only "costs" you an additional hard drive, but the biggest drawback is the performance loss because of the type of protection.

Level 0+1 - combines the attributes of level 0 and level 1. Provides the performance increase with level 0, but the mirroring protection in level 1. Best alternative, but most expensive. Minimum # of indentical drives is 4.

A couple of things about RAID - it is meant to provide hardware performance increase and/or protection from hardware failure. You still should do backups of your data - RAID is designed at a hardware level, not at the data level. When using multiple drives in a RAID array, your chances of a hardware failure increase because you are using more than one drive. For OS and Apps (which don't change very often), using RAID 0 is benfitial for load/access times. You can use Norton Ghost to create an image of your partition and if you experience a failure, you have a backup image.

For your personal or gaming data, pictures, music, etc, if put into a RAID array, it should be either level 1, 5, or 0+1 for the reason that you don't want to lose your data because of a HDD failure. Regardless, you still want to back up this data in the event you have a virus or data corruption - something RAID cannot prevent from happening.

There are additional levels of RAID, but they are designed for enterprise use with specific disk usage strategies. Most home PC RAID controllers don't support other levels of RAID simply because they are not needed or benficial to a PC user.

 

[SG44]

Ok I think I see what your saying. So would that allow the computer to start up faster or where would the performance gain be?

 

[pinkcaddy]

You would definitely see a performance gain in loading Windows or applications/games.