Need your help building my computer!

[sacoops]

Hi. I want to build myself a new computer. At the moment I am using XP however i want to run Vista Home Prremium eventually so a decent graphics card is needed. The card won't be used for gaming but I do a lot of HD photo editing. If the computer is quite quiet it will be an advantage as eventually i will buy a decent sound card to record and edit music too. However I don't want this sound card to be included in my budget which is up to £500 or $1000. Obviously in America that is the equivalent of around $850-$900 in reality. No monitor is required with it

 

[sacoops]

Sorry. forgot to mention that i will not be OCing this machine but i do want it to be able to run fast.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and hopefully come up with some good ideas

 

[sacoops]

Thanks for the reply. Just to clear it up the sound card is on a spearate budget to this and the full £500 can be used on the PC

 

[sacoops]

Are there any more ideas? I really need help with all parts as i have not been keeping up to date lately and things seem to have moved on so much.

 

[nickr336]

First of all, no need for the sound card. With a decent motherboard you get Realtek 7.1 HD sound with digital output (optical/coaxial). I hooked it up to my Onkyo surround sound receiver using optical cable, and the sound is amazing.

 

[nickr336]

In response to the advice given to you by the other person, you can do so much better for $900. He mentioned mid-range AMD X2. No, you can get the top of the line AMD 6000+. Instead, of ATI 2600XT get Nvidia 8800 GTS 320 OC (factory overclocked). It will eat 2600XT for breakfast. Amazing power. As a matter of fact, that's what I used for my new build last week. I also got a 500GB SATA 3 Gb/s hard drive, top of the line SLI motherboard that supports 2 PCI-E cards at 16X, has 2 gigabit ethernet conections and a lot of other cool things like 7.1 HD audio with optical output to hook up to my receiver. I got 2 GB of Corsair 800MHz RAM, 500 Watt power supply, 18X SATA DVD burner with dual layer support, Logitech wireless keyboard and wireless laser mouse, speakerphone (to use with Skype) and headset. And a nice case to put it in. Total is $850 after rebates.

 

[sacoops]

Its not sound playback i am looking for it is to plug in all my existing equipment, and for that i need a decent soundcard. I already have one of the top ones but i will eventually upgrade to a newer model

 

[sacoops]

Can anyone suggest a build for me?

 

[Sickboy32]

Here's the computer build I just built (with sample pricing):
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 - GO Stepping- $299.00
Memory: OCZ 2GB (2x 1GB) DDR2 PC2-6400 Platinum Revision 2 Dual Channel (OCZ2P800R22GK) - $109.00
Motherboard: ASUS P5K-SE - $120.00
Case: Antec Sonata III - $119.00
PSU: Antec EarthWatts EA-500 - $0.00
Video Card: Sapphire ATI Radeon X1950 Pro 512MB GDDR3 PCI-Express - $162.00
Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 SATA 500GB - $121.00
Optical: LG GSA-H62L (Black) SATA LightScribe DVD-Writer 18x - $40.00

This build should cost you just under $1000.00 CDN.