building a gaming rig in China

[hughdc]

Early last year I mixed up a mid range system, 4gb ram, Asus mobo with wireless, Ati X1650 pro, etc... Nice little system, extremely stable, even with Vista. The only problem is I just moved to China to teach English, and the only pc I could bring is my 3 year old R4010 laptop. I was all resigned to not playing Space Siege, Fallout 3, Mass Effect (ya, little slow on that one) or anything else that needed more then 1.8gHz with 512 ram, until I stumbled upon the local computer store.
It is a treasure trove of small competing vendors, carrying top of the line electronics.
This got me thinking, maybe I might be able to toss together some parts.
I have to price stuff but this is the system I was thinking of:

Asus P5E3 or P5Q3 mobo
Q9450 or E8500 cpu
HD4800 series video
DDR3 ram

The rest is immaterial. The deciding part is cost, of course, those are the low and high end parts.
I glanced at my local stores web page and got the price on the P5Q3 mobo, about $270 CND. Thing is I can pick it up here for about $80 (tax included!). I hope the other parts scale price wise too. Just think of the possibilities
Dirt cheap electronics aside, what do you think of this combo?

It will probably be a couple months before I can get this put together, but I would like to hear your thoughts. Course I run into the same problem taking anything I build back with me. (Hey look friends, no souvenirs, just computer parts for me!)

 

[ohiou_grad_06]

A lot of guys will tell you go with a board that uses ddr2 memory as ddr3 can still be pricey, Thus you can still buy more ddr2 at the same price of less ddr3.

 

[Proximon]

The consensus is that DDR3 is not worth it, but I have seen one review recently that made me think it might be better than I thought.

Head over to Legion Hardware and check out the ASUS Rampage Extreme review done a week or two ago.... it has comparisons.

Based on that review, it would seem that the P5E3 might be a good choice.... but then you are not bringing it back? That eliminates one argument for DDR3, because you will not be using it to upgrade to i7.

 

[iluvgillgill]

i build a computer with 20"screen 2.1 speaker E2180+P31+9600GT+320GB HDD+DVD-RW for just RMB5000 bargain! and the price has dropped also so you should be able to get it cheaper. but make sure you go there with someone you know. they do alot of rip off!

 

[hughdc]

Sounds good, I imagine the monitor would be the pricey part. As for taking it back, that is debatable. I would hate to leave it behind. Will have to look into the import laws, if that was all good, I would probably strip it for video card and mobo, the more expensive bits in North America, then rebuild my old rig with the new parts.

As to the P5E3, I do like the look of the board, and frankly I consider the board the most important part, if the fast cpu and new video card can't communicate, it don't matter how good they are.

I haven't been following stuff recently, so this may seem like a dumb question, but can you pop DDR2 into a DDR3 board? I seem to recall DDR 1 and 2 being swappable.
I have been glancing over the specs, but my internet connection is not ideal, lots of sites are blocked or just won't load, so I haven't been able to put much research into that yet.

 

[iluvgillgill]

things are so cheap in china you get better local brand with better feature and quality for less then those expensiuve international brand.

memory is not compatible with one another.