I've been on a laptop for the last four years, and I haven't put together a computer since just before 2000. Let me know if I screwed anything up, or if you have any suggestions. I was trying to come in between $1200 and $1500, and by my calculations (w/ shipping) this system can be had for about $1275.

I only used Newegg and Pricewatch to price the system.

CPU - Core 2 Duo 6600
Mobo - Gigabite LGA 775 P965
RAM - Patriot DDR 800 2GB
Case - Coolermaster Centurion
Power - Thermaltake TR2 500W ATX 12V v2.0
Video - Radeon x1950 580Mhz 512mb
Sound - Chaintech AV-512
Hard Drive - Western Digital Caviar SE 320GB 7200RPM 8MB Cache
Optical 1 - LG Black 18x DVD-R w/ LightScribe
Optical 2 - LG Black E-IDE/ATAPI DVD-ROM
Keyboard - Line-On SK1788 wired
Mouse - N/A
Monitor - Samsung 941BW 19" WXGA+
OS - Vista Premium (Academic)

Again, I'm basically a complete nub on this, so let me know what I screwed up. I don't know much about power supplies, but I figured 500W was enough. Also, I'm hoping the 7200 HDD won't slow things down too much.

I don't plan to do any ridiculous gaming on this machine -- mostly strategy games like AoE, C&C, Civ and SimCity. However, any suggestions on TV tuners would be appreciated. I'm definitely going to add one, but I'm completely in the dark on them.

Thanks!

im pretty new to this but i think you might want to look at an 8800gts 640 card. from what i hear the 8800 beat the 1950 in most reviews. also, do you really need vista. there are still alot of bugs that need to be addressed. i would wait even if you get a discount. and also you might want to get a higher psu. it never hurts to have a little extra power. as for the hard drive you might want to look at something that has 16mb of chache. as far as i see that is it. remember i could be wrong.

The reason I am buying Vista is the only OS I have is XP Home SP2 on my laptop. I don't have the XP discs, only recovery discs, so I don't really have any way to transfer.

I looked at HDD reviews on the main page, and I just grabbed a middle-of-the-road, cheap 320MB. I'll probably shop around a little more.

The 8800gts is $100 more than the x1950pro, so that made the decision pretty easy for me.

I don't think Vista is a bad choice if he doesn't have XP already, I don't and I'm getting Vista just to avoid paying more now and later to upgrade. Also, I would go with the 8800 over the 1950 just based on the charts, however I'm not an expert by any means.

Yeah, Vista isn't as bad as everyone makes it out to be. Sure there is alot of extra stuff in it that gamers don't want or need, but that can all be turned off quite easily. I remember having to do the same sort of thing when i first got XP...

Like Tialys said - If you don't have a copy of XP ready to go, i see no value in buying it at this point - you're only going to have to upgrade to vista down the track so you may as well kill 2 birds with one stone.

That is why you should get XP with an upgrade coupon for Vista.

Looks good. I am running vista home premium 32 bit with no problems. I understand that most vista problems come from upgrades which have to cope with residual junk. A clean install should not be a problem. The 2gb of memory is fine. Vista will use it all, but that is not a bad thing. It keeps what it thinks you will want in memory anticipating your use instead of constantly purging memory like XP. I use a hauppauge pvr150 pci analog cable tuner, and it works nicely with the vista media center application. I play civ 4 on huge worlds and max settings with no problems.
On board sound is pretty good. A sound card is easy to add later if you must.

Do look at getting the best monitor you can afford up front. I ordered a samsung 244T for a main monitor, which I loved. I also ordered a smaller 19 inch samsung monitor (940 something?) for an auxiliary diisplay. It looked good by itself , but was clearly not as good as the 244T, so I sent it back. One reason was that the viewing angle was only 160 degrees, versus 178 degrees. The other difference was a lesser contrast ratio which made whites look dingy and not as white.
---good luck---

Simcity 4 works perfectly for me even on integrated graphics (with an X2 5000), so you don't need a top card for it. I don't know about the others, sorry.

I'd consider the 8800 GTS 320 MB rather than the ATI card, but it's more expensive I think. Look at the benchmarks on Tom's main page.

I have a Hauppauge PVR-150 tuner and I love it, major quality improvement over my previous TV Wonder (Theater 200). The more expensive PVR models don't really add any feature I'd call useful, except maybe the dual-tuner (PVR-500). Anyway, make sure you get a tuner with hardware encoding, that's important even if your CPU is dual core and pretty fast.
Stay away from ATI's Theater 650 product, I have one and couldn't get the software to work.

I'm using XP MCE. Don't know about Vista, but from what I heard so far I have no intention to try it this year. Let the brave souls install it and find all the bugs first, then maybe I'll upgrade when the service packs are out. It's not just the bugs in Vista itself, it's also the bugs in drivers made by nVidia, ATI, Seagate and so on.

Good luck

Hi WittyC, Welcome to Tom's hardware forumz and all around geeky place to learn more than you want to know about computers 8O
Let me pick apart your rig, and try to save money and problems.
MOBO I hope you got a DS-3, really nice board for new users, some people said they built the computer with only that manual.
RAM I hope you are buying DDR2-800, other stuff won't fit in the board.
Not sure on the PSU, some of thematake are good and others are not worth that much.
Drop the sound? not needed to start, onboard sound will be better than that.
Drop the second DVD, unless you need to make copy from disk to disk, HD imaging works better.
Unsure on the Monitor, find one you like and fits your room.
hdd look at the Seagate 720-10 320GB, than go for the best price.
Enough for now, feel free to come back and chew the rig

Look into Compro's TV tuners, they had a very good set back when I bought mine.

The 1950's a good card, unless you want to wait for the 2900's. I haven't read much about the lower 8000's (8600), but they too are worth considering.

If you go widescreen you may want a little bigger monitor.

All in all though, that looks like a great setup.

Have Fun!