Budget Gaming Build - Need advice badly !!

Tom's did a recent article on a sub-$1,000 gaming system. It should help you get started on your research.
http://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] ,1962.html

I love you guyz, thanx a ton.

Now one more question, does Newegg ship to Canada? *gasp*

Sweet, thanx alot again.

from what i've seen from using shopbot, directcanada.com tends to have some of the lowest prices around. sometimes their prices are even lower than newegg!

Good CPU, RAM, mobo, HDD, PSU. Diamond has earned a place on my personal "Do not buy" list, for a variety of reasons (including incompetent tech support), so I'd choose another brand of HD4850.
You may or may not need a sound card. I'd suggest you try the onboard sound first, especially considering your budget.
Not a bad cooler, but I've heard a lot more people crowing about the Xigmatek S1283 lately, WITH the separate retention bracket. The case is a big personal preference item, but note that that one comes with a decent PSU; most PSUs with cases are excrement.
Personally, Mushkin has become my favorite RAM because it almost always operates at the JEDEC standard 1.8v, meaning you won't need to play stick-swapping BIOS games to get it to work, but it can be tweaked later.

directcanada put low prices but they don't have a lot of item in stock. For example, they were the first to put the hd4850 below 200$ (around 190$) but the card was backorder. When the card was back online, the price was the same as the others stores...

This is a good system. Just add hard disk, optical drive, case, power supply and CPU cooler.
Dual cores are faster in gaming right now. If you believe in quad cores, you can change that.

Since the OP is on a budget, I would recommend the Gigabyte P35-DS3L, which is a solid board, reliable overclocker, and considerably cheaper than that ASUS board (nothing against ASUS boards, other than price).

Don't go for the extra $400. Do a $500 build. Why almost double the price for 5-10% gain in performance? Plain stupid. I just put together a new build a couple of weeks ago (Newegg rocks!):
ASUS P5Q (it's P45 Intel motherboard, just came out last month, 1600FSB!) $150
Intel E8400 $150 (combo deal discount)
Radeon HD 4850 ($175)
2GB Crucial Ballistix Tracer free with HD 4850 (best memory out there by Toms standards, see their build articles, Tracer LEDs look amazing in my case)
Western Digital 640GB WD6400AAKS (the best hard drive on the market for the money, read/write speeds better than Raptor 10000rpm drives) $90

I would not buy a RaidMax PSU, even on a low-budget build. Typically one of the Antec Earthwatts PSUs (right now the EA430) can be had for a good price on Newegg, so I would guess that this would probably be true for a Canadian supplier as well.
I've also seen some good prices on some OCZ 600W models.

I've never Overclocked before, but I hear that it is usually very safe and easy to do nowadays. With a little coaching, I just might OC a little bit if I feel the PC isn't giving me what I need, but overall I doubt it would be essential for what I want to do.

(Amateur FL Studio producing & Gaming - I'll get me some good audio much later when I want to get more serious with FL)

At the same time, if it's risk free and can give me a little extra for my money, why the heck not?


Also, thanx a million times for all the feedback, I wasn't expecting this much help and "dumb questions" answering.. you guyz are great!

I'm leaning towards..:

Intel's E8400 (~$200) (thinking of the E7200 also..saves me 75bux)
Giga's HD 4850 (~$225)
Crucial Ballistix Tracer DDR2 1066Mhz PC2 8500 2GB Kit (~$70)

Western Digital Caviar 250GB SATAII 7200RPM 16MB Buffer (OEM) (~$70)
Antec EA-430 430W (~$60)

And I don't know wich mobo to pick, either go with the cheaper ones and use the E8400 or shoot for the xFire ones and get an E7200. I've had alot of bad experiences with mobo's, so it makes the choice even more difficult.

Hopefully all of this stuff works togheter! *shock*

Going to have to do some shopping, everything I find seems to cost ~10% more than newegg.. that increase and the taxes takes the $500 system to around $700-750 one.

Don't bother with 1066 MHz RAM, just go 2x2gb of DDR2 800 and you'll be great. But at the same time, don't be fearful of incompatibilities; find a motherboard you like and then look on the manufacturer's website to check RAM compatibility.

And Shadow, I can't find a P45-DS3R anywhere. Where can you purchase one?

Sounds good, I will probably go for the 7200.

As for memory, thanx for the headsup, they were similar in prices on the site I was browsing so I figured what the hell, get the 1066.

Ill look into a quality PSU also but I have a question about the video card.

Between the Gigabyte and the Sapphire, there's about a 50$ difference down here. Are they similar or should I put the $50 for the Gigabyte?

You can also check Canada Computers and Infonec for some decent prices as well.

Gotcha.

I can't say THANK YOU enough to you guyz, especially to you, Shadow, to have been so generous of your time. All of the suggestions and information has helped me alot, I feel confident about building myself a solid rig now.

In the next few days I should be done shopping for prices and I'll come back to post the hardware I chose and how much the system will cost me to build, for those it might interest.

Thanx again, I'm amazed I've received this much help, you guyz rock!