How’s this for $1,000

I’m putting together a new computer for my brother and he wanted to spend around $1,000. He is going to mainly use it for gaming and the internet. The toughest decision I was trying to make was what which kind of RAM to use which would determine what motherboard I could use. I waned to keep the upgrading options as wide open as possible which made me lean towards using DDR3 ram and buying a SLI board that used DDR3 memory. I found 2 GB of DDR 1333 Ram for about $130 with a Cas Latency 9 and a motherboard for $140 that I thought would be nice. But, from reading through these forums I started to have second thoughts. Most people thought that a faster DDR2 is just as good as the slower DDR3, and I could get twice as much RAM for $40 cheaper. The only downside I see to using DDR2 is future upgrading, but I decided that he’d be better of with the DDR2. However, I chose a SLI motherboard so he’ll have the option to do 2 graphic cards in the future if he wants to. Anyway, any thoughts on this build would greatly appreciated.


CPU
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale 3.0GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor Model BX80570E8400 - Retail
$209

Cooling
ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 7 Pro 92mm CPU Cooler - Retail
$27

Motherboard
ASUS P5N-D LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 750i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail
$150

Memory
G.SKILL 4GB(2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Cas Latency: 5
$80

Graphics
EVGA 512-P3-N801-AR GeForce 8800GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported
$223 (30 mail in rebate)

Sound
Integrated

Harddrive Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3320620AS (Perpendicular Recording Technology) 320GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
$80

Optical Drive
LITE-ON 20X DVD±R DVD Burner Black IDE Model DH-20A4P-04 - OEM
$24

Case and Power Supply
Antec Sonata III 500 case
$130

OS
Microsoft Windows Vista 64-Bit Home Premium for System Builders
$108


Total = $1,055

+1 on the mobo choice.

And you could pick up corsair memory for even cheaper, 4GB.

vote....DS3L or Asus P5K-E

aevm,

Thanks for the good advice. I'm probably going to go with what you recommended.

-Dave