bsd
hi, shalom..

I need an advice, I have a pretty average budget to upgrade my current pc ..

the components I need are:
CPU
Motherboard,
Memory,
Graphics adapter,
harddisk
Power supplier ( mine burnt )

I thought of this graphics adapter:
Radeon 3850 512MB, it is pretty average in price which is 190$

DDR2 memory , 1024mb

I have no clue what motherboard or cpu should I purchase
what's best for about 180$ ?

and what are the preferences of motherboards for the price of 180? what could be the best for that price, and for that matter, for any of the hardware I mentioned I need, thanks very much

I also need some external hardware, such as a CD\DVD burner etc.

also I have heard that PCI express is better than AGP...
I don't need anything fancy, but I was hoping I'd be able to run games who require high graphic performance... thanks again for the help

Please visit the homebuilt forum, people post same questions everyday and get answer all the time.

get Abit P35e, flash its bios to the latest version, stick e8400 quad core onto it

thanks a bunch

Since when was this CPU a quad?

salaam,
I would recommend you ditch the ATI Radeon 3850. Get the Geforce 8800GT 512MB. It is better than the 3850. This is not just from my experience, look around on Toms Hardware or Google and you will find the Nvidia 8800GT 512MB does better than the ATI Radeon 3850.

For the processor, I would get the E8400. I just built a brand new computer using the E8400 processor, 8800GTS 320MB (slower than the 512MB 8800GT but I got this cheap and I was low on cash). Pair that up with this motherboard:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813128059
This is the Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L motherboard.

I just built my first computer. Don't be fooled by the low price. Again, do some research on these forums if you want to. This board is only $90. If you have $180 to spend on a motherboard and you spend $90 on this board, you have $90 left. Use that money wisely. You could use it to get the 8800GTS 512MB over the 8800GT 512MB because the GTS version is even better than the GT version.

Oh and the guy who said the E8800 is quadcore is wrong. It's a dualcore CPU. You don't want a quadcore if you're gaming for quite some time. Quadcores are more if you want to do a lot of CPU intensive work like video editing. For gaming, the Intel wolfdale e8400 is a 3ghz core 2 duo processor made with 45nm technology. Because of that, there is less heat. I have mine overclocked to 3.6GHz, and with a better CPU cooler, you can easily get to 4GHz.