Finally, i am looking forward to building my first pc, i am in budget and willing to spend it $600-700. the main purpose of this is to surf the net, using adobe photshop illustra, play little games and enconding i guess. Here are the thing i picked out please give me some opinnion on it. thanks. i have a few question about building the pc. 1. i want to put my old harddrive which is ATA . am i able to do that?
2. do i need a after market cpu cooler ? not planing to overclock
I recommend going with the Antec Sonata Case ($120)
This includes an excellent Earthwatts 500W PSU so it might also be cheaper than getting the case you selected and a Corsair PSU. It also has an eSATA port of the front and is quiet. You can often find it on sale for about $80.
The mobo you selected is good. Note that you will be limited to 4 SATA connectors (which might be more than enough for your requirements). It also has one IDE connector which would allow you to use two devices. So, for instance, you could use your old HD and DVDRW if it is IDE (same as ATA) too.
The processor is a good choice - and very fast - probably much more than you need. Or you could wait for the coming release as you mentioned. Or you could step down and save a little here.
The memory looks good.
The HD looks good.
For a video card - I suggest looking at the THG list and figure where your budget/performance preferences put you.
One cheap but decent option (although not for even mainstream gaming - not sure what your "little games" are - you might want to list them as this is probably the part most affected by personal preferences and budget) of the list would be the 8600 GT - if you go with this one go for one with 512MB of GDDR3 memory such as this MSI one for $99 after rebate.
That puts you right at $650 before tax and shipping if you stick with the E6750 CPU. And will actually give you a very strong mainstream system for general use and with just a video card upgrade a good gaming sysem.
If you needed to trim on this, I would cut back on the processor rather than the other components. If you could spend a little more, get a better gaming card. For about $100 more you can get a card that might meet your needs for several years without upgrading. Just need to understand a little more about your gaming requirements.
Message edited by rockyjohn on 01-18-2008 at 07:19:30 PM
Thanks for input guys, would you know how much will E8400 will cost ? one thing u mentioned that if i do wana cut back on something, it would be rather processor. but later on i would have to change it and this will be a waste of money. worried abut that fact.
sorry about not being specific about playing game. i would like to play call of duty 4 , companys of heroes and need for speed. i haven't played game in pc for awhile. so, for graphic card, geforce 8600 gt is decent one. by the way MSI is a good brand to go with ? cz i haven't seen so much review of this. Evga or xfx are good one from what i know.
