Great, ANOTHER one - System building

Well, hello everyone! First post time. Exciting, isn't it? I'll be honest.. I love this site and I love how helpful everyone on here seems to be. So, I'm hoping you can extend that to me as well. So here's the run down. Already have a monitor, keyboard, CD/DVD drive, a gig of RAM, and what, as far as I know, is an acceptable case. So I'm just looking at, essentially, an entire overhaul of the insides. I'd prefer to keep the budget in the range it is in already $1200-1300, and even that might be pushing it a bit. We shall see.

It will, of course, primarily be used for gaming. I'd like it to be a general multi-purpose system as much as possible however. In addition, I would prefer upgradability if I want to in the future. I'm also relatively new to this thing, but I really want to try and build this system by myself/with a buddy. So, any advice you have will also be greatly appreciated. I'm not an idiot to turn down sound advice. So, thank you so much beforehand! Lemme know if I'm forgetting anything important!

1. Processor: Intel core 2 duo e6700
2. Graphics Card: 8800 GTS (640) (EVG)
3. Motherboard: Asus P5N32-E SLI Plus Motherboard ??? (Will this be a good motherboard?)
5. Hard drive: Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3500630AS 500GB Hard Drive
7. Power: Antec True Power Trio TP3-550 ATX12V 550W
8. RAM: Kingston 1GB PC4200 DDR2 SODIMM Memory

Alright, I'm not entirely sure if I have everything I'll need.. Probably not. Do I need a new cooling system as well? A fan? I don't know, anything at all I've forgotten.

Thank you!

Booj,

Seems like you're merely a week or so behind me, as I also just joined and started posting. In fact, your build is very similar to mine:

With all of this fresh in my mind, let me throw a few thoughts your way. First, that list of parts above (plus a few small odds-and-ends like case fans, DVD/CD lightscribe) ran me about $1500, just for your $$ planning.
[*:f81f343c80]The motherboard is great as far as I'm concerned. I did quite a bit of research online for all of the components in my build, and settled on the ASUS MB.
[*:f81f343c80]The E6700 is a good choice, but you can trim some fat from the budget by going with the newly released E6420 -- it has the same size L2 Cache, and you can overclock it for more speed. Overclocking is so dreadfully easy with the ASUS MB, that you won't be able to resist.
[*:f81f343c80]The graphics card sounds like a Hoover in your case. Small rodents struggle to escape the intake vents of your computer with this thing in here. But it's fast, fast, fast.
[*:f81f343c80]The HD is good -- it's SATA, right? Might as well make use of the 6 SATA ports on that MB. Be warned -- there is only ONE IDE connection on the board, and one floppy connection. If your CD/DVD is IDE and you have any other components in there that are IDE as well, you'll want them close together as you can only use one cable.
[*:f81f343c80]The power supply is the minimum spec for that MB. They recommend at least 550W. Somewhere in these forums is a great review of PSUs -- search, find, read. If you plan on going SLI later, you may want a bit more juice.
[*:f81f343c80]Kingston RAM. Kinda like the Harley-Davidson of memory. You pay a lot just for the name. Have you considered the Patriot mem? There is currently a mail-in rebate for it on Newegg that brings the price down to $105 for TWO gig. How's that compare to the Kingston?
Some final considerations for you -- if you're leaving in an old hard drive that is IDE, don't connect it until after you have put the whole thing together and installed your OS on your new drive. Make sure you change the jumper on it to Slave (don't leave it to Cable Select). I had some weirdness with mine that wasted a few hours; I probably could have avoided it by not connecting the IDE until after the build was complete. What case fans do you already have? What cooler do you plan to use for the CPU? That should be enough for now to get the brain working.

EDIT: *shakes fist at alcattle* Darn you and your speedy fingers!

1) Many 2x1GB RAM can be had in the $100-$150 range now, just look a little harder on Newegg. Gskill, Geil, there are lots of good brands (because they're all pretty much from the same factories anyway)

2) Definitely go with the E6600, save your money for something else, if you are willing to try a little overclocking (not very hard anymore these days, look up the excellent guides on this forum) you might even consider saving even more and going for an E6420.

3) The resolution of your monitor is ?? If it's 1680x1050 (ie a 20-inch widescreen lcd) or below, I would suggest the GTS 8800 320MB video card as the better buy.

4) Motherboard is good, even PSU is ok but you might bump the wattage up a notch to give you some headroom for later on. Again, check the forums for the great guide on PSUs to be found here.

5) Forget about SLI, while it tweaks the performance enthusiast in all of us, it's pretty much utterly worthless for just about everything. But don't take my word for it, have a look around and you'll see most everyone agrees with that.

Thanks a whole bunch guys. That guide was really helpful, not just for cases. And the PSU guide was informative as well. So, now, I'll try this again. Be gentle.

- Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo e6600
- GPU: 8800GTS 640 MB (Though I was wondering, mythos, why would you suggest the 320 MB one if I had a smaller resolution? I don't, I have a nice fat monitor, but I was just curious)
- Motherboard: Asus P5N32-E SLI Plus Motherboard
- RAM: CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory (In addition to a GB of unknown DDR2 RAM already in system, for a total of 3 GB)
- PSU: Antec True Power Trio TP3-650 ATX12V 650W (Enough power?)
- HDD: SAMSUNG SpinPoint T Series HD501LJ 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM (Just to verify, OEM means I'll have to buy connector cables and whatever else myself, correct? Any idea what those run, price point wise, and where?)
- Case: NZXT Apollo BLACK NP Black SECC Steel Chassis ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

Alright, tear it apart. Go crazy. Sorry for having so many questions in there! I may not be the best, but this is all interesting to me.

Alright then! Thanks a lot Findail! You've been a great help. Is there anything wrong with the updated system? Acceptable to everyone? Should last me a while and have some room for upgradability, right? Awesome.

Will the two 120mm (One in rear, one on the side) fans of the case be enough cooling so everything doesn't start over heating? Especially because there isn't a side air duct. Even if I overclock? Questions questions questions!

Um... Patriot is the memory that I have. In fact, I have the exact stuff that you linked. Perhaps I should have enclosed my Harley comments about Kingston in [sarcasm] [/sarcasm] just to be clear.

Actually, if you read it, it does sound like you're being serious.

I do as well.. but you have to work on your delivery. When you make bulleted lists in a factual response, you need to pronounce your humor slightly more, as it can easily get lost by someone skimming to pick up "facts."

In this way, one can assume that you were being serious, thus creating a need for you to explain yourself, and the person to re-read and understand what you said... leading to the root of all assumptions, that it makes an ass out of both "u" and me.

*fixed

Hell... there's been "leaks" ever since it was supposed to be released at the end of last year...

Leaks are only indicative of a sinking ship.


(what a great analogy )

Chances of it coming out next week are *honestly* very high.

I'm just poking at it's very poor PR track record. However, keep in mind that it's going to be at a high price for awhile... so chances of you seeing any market changes in time for your bday to hit (may 18th + 3 business days for shipping = may 21st) is highly unlikely.

Also, I cannot take all the credit for the patriot suggestion as it's already been suggested (but at least I gave a link ).

You can overclock the standard GTS so easily you should save yourself the 20bucks.

So would the fact that its a factory OC'ed card place more limitations on its future OC'ing then a base card? For whatever reason, would the fastest it could get be slower than a base card?

Any input on the other questions?