So the Toshiba laptop i've been using for the past 3 years decided to die on me, and my newest desktop is a 5 year old Dell with a pentium 4 2.0 ghz and a ti 4200, so I'm planning on upgrading to a new system. Will primarily be used for the typical gaming/web browsing/ basic work, but must also be able to use engineering applications such autoCAD. I need everything except for speakers and printer (even a monitor, mouse, keyboard). I've upgraded computers before but have never actually built one from scratch, so any help is appreciated.
Features I want:
Upgradeability (assume I need a good mobo and PSU for this?)
potential for overclocking in the future (though not immediately)
good (doesn't need to be top of the line though, just enough to have most games on high settings at 1280x1024 for the next year or 2) gaming performance
lots (2 gb+) of ram for engineering applications
Features I don't need:
Vista (will wait)
SLI (its pointless except for huge monitors...I only want a 19-21 inch LCD)
sound card (I can't tell the difference, not a huge audiophile)
Huge Hard Drive (200+ gb should be fine for me)
Flashy Case (i hate the see through lightup cases, they are too gaudy for me....i'd rather have something that was better functionally (heat/space) and/or cheaper)
My budget is around 1500 dollars, but I can go up from that if you really think it will improve the quality of my comp drastically. Thanks for the help.
Features I want:
Upgradeability (assume I need a good mobo and PSU for this?)
potential for overclocking in the future (though not immediately)
good (doesn't need to be top of the line though, just enough to have most games on high settings at 1280x1024 for the next year or 2) gaming performance
lots (2 gb+) of ram for engineering applications
Features I don't need:
Vista (will wait)
SLI (its pointless except for huge monitors...I only want a 19-21 inch LCD)
sound card (I can't tell the difference, not a huge audiophile)
Huge Hard Drive (200+ gb should be fine for me)
Flashy Case (i hate the see through lightup cases, they are too gaudy for me....i'd rather have something that was better functionally (heat/space) and/or cheaper)
My budget is around 1500 dollars, but I can go up from that if you really think it will improve the quality of my comp drastically. Thanks for the help.