I'm putting together a new system for my home (some gaming) use. It'll end up somewhere in the $850-1000 USD range, I'm guessing. I need to know a few things about compatibility, and have specific questions about a number of components. Partial answers are great.
What I'll do is list specific parts I'm looking to buy for each field of hardware, and state questions regarding that field.
Let's begin with the CPU. I'm looking at the higher-end Wolfdale Core 2 Duo processors. I chose the E8400 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as... for this build (3.0GHz, 1333FSB, 6MB L2 cache) since it has the same construction as the highest clocked Core 2 Duo with two cores, but almost $100 less.
A tad random, but I’d like to mention the case I think I’m going to get. On Newegg, it comes with a 500W power supply, but there are bad reviews about that aspect of it, so I plan on buying a separate supply. The case I want is a Raidmax (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as... that has 2x80mm fans (sides) and 2x120mm fans (front and back). There’s a hell of a lot of ventilation, and it doesn’t look too bad. I really don't know too much about cases, so I'm open to anything in this respect. Might get a case without the supply (since I won't use it) with higher quality?
Now about that power supply. I’m thinking of doing one of two things. On Newegg, there is a combo deal for the processor I chose and a 950W Rosewill supply (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as... The deal saves $150 dollars, but the supply itself costs over 250$. I can use this (although 950W is quite enough), or go back and get the CPU with a different combo (Newegg has lots of these) and get a 750W supply for $100 or a little more. My system (with air cooling for a while) will run at MOST a little above 500W, although I don’t think it will ever go too far above that. So I could save a little money or keep room to expand if I so chose. The only other question about these concern sizes. Do they differ much in measurements? If so, is the aforementioned supply too large for my case? I doubt it, but I want to be safe.
I just chose a standard-ish SATA HDD that features 1TB with a normal 32MB buffer and 7200rpm speed and is pretty cheap. I don’t think there’s anything here…
DVD burner, nothing special here either.
My video card (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as... is an MSI N9600GT-T2D512-OC with GeForce 9600GT chipset. It has decent cooling and often beats competition with the same chip, at least staying with the pack. Now I don’t know much about GPUs, but it seems like a decent choice for some gaming on the side. I know even less about ATI Radeon chips, so I’m open to recommendation here. I probably won't need SLi or crossfire for this build, but you never know.
I saved the motherboard for last. Here I don’t have any models in mind, but I do have some ideas of what I want. First, I need socket 775 and support for Core 2 Duo processors. I might make use of SLi technology later on, so it should have that along with at least two PCI-e (2.0) x16 slots. I want at least DDR2 800 as a memory standard with support for 2GB DIMMs (I don’t care if it has DDR3 as well, depending on how much more it costs). FSB should be 1600/1333MHz, and be very easy to overclock my CPU.
I think that’s about it. Sorry for the long post, but I want the most out of my build. I AM trying to keep it under $1000 USD, we'll see how that goes
. Any comments, recommendations, or answers that you can offer will be greatly appreciated! 
What I'll do is list specific parts I'm looking to buy for each field of hardware, and state questions regarding that field.
Let's begin with the CPU. I'm looking at the higher-end Wolfdale Core 2 Duo processors. I chose the E8400 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as... for this build (3.0GHz, 1333FSB, 6MB L2 cache) since it has the same construction as the highest clocked Core 2 Duo with two cores, but almost $100 less.
A tad random, but I’d like to mention the case I think I’m going to get. On Newegg, it comes with a 500W power supply, but there are bad reviews about that aspect of it, so I plan on buying a separate supply. The case I want is a Raidmax (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as... that has 2x80mm fans (sides) and 2x120mm fans (front and back). There’s a hell of a lot of ventilation, and it doesn’t look too bad. I really don't know too much about cases, so I'm open to anything in this respect. Might get a case without the supply (since I won't use it) with higher quality?
Now about that power supply. I’m thinking of doing one of two things. On Newegg, there is a combo deal for the processor I chose and a 950W Rosewill supply (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as... The deal saves $150 dollars, but the supply itself costs over 250$. I can use this (although 950W is quite enough), or go back and get the CPU with a different combo (Newegg has lots of these) and get a 750W supply for $100 or a little more. My system (with air cooling for a while) will run at MOST a little above 500W, although I don’t think it will ever go too far above that. So I could save a little money or keep room to expand if I so chose. The only other question about these concern sizes. Do they differ much in measurements? If so, is the aforementioned supply too large for my case? I doubt it, but I want to be safe.
I just chose a standard-ish SATA HDD that features 1TB with a normal 32MB buffer and 7200rpm speed and is pretty cheap. I don’t think there’s anything here…
DVD burner, nothing special here either.
My video card (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as... is an MSI N9600GT-T2D512-OC with GeForce 9600GT chipset. It has decent cooling and often beats competition with the same chip, at least staying with the pack. Now I don’t know much about GPUs, but it seems like a decent choice for some gaming on the side. I know even less about ATI Radeon chips, so I’m open to recommendation here. I probably won't need SLi or crossfire for this build, but you never know.
I saved the motherboard for last. Here I don’t have any models in mind, but I do have some ideas of what I want. First, I need socket 775 and support for Core 2 Duo processors. I might make use of SLi technology later on, so it should have that along with at least two PCI-e (2.0) x16 slots. I want at least DDR2 800 as a memory standard with support for 2GB DIMMs (I don’t care if it has DDR3 as well, depending on how much more it costs). FSB should be 1600/1333MHz, and be very easy to overclock my CPU.
I think that’s about it. Sorry for the long post, but I want the most out of my build. I AM trying to keep it under $1000 USD, we'll see how that goes
. Any comments, recommendations, or answers that you can offer will be greatly appreciated! 
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