What is best cpu + mobo for under $400 for gaming

I am looking to what advice people would give on to what motherboard plus CPU to get. I will purchase an after market cooler with a different budget and plan to overclock the cpu a small amount. What would you recomend? I would like under $300 or a little over. I am open to Icore7 but everyone tells me that it is not worth the money for gaming.

I am thinking about going with a one video card solution such as the 4870 or 4870x2 mabey the x295. SLI or Crossfire is not worth the money. I play games such as wow, warhammer, supreme commander, sins of a solar empire. Plan on picking up starcraft 2. (also like to run 2 or 3 copys of wow at a time to level up alts). I was looking at the E8500 as well?

Oops you replied while I was posting.

I'd go for a Q6600 ($189.99) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6819115017

And a P45 board like the Asus P5Q SE PLUS ($96.99 - $15MIR = $81.99)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813131347

or if you want raid you could go for either the Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R or the Asus P5Q Pro - both the same price... ($119.99 - $15MIR = $104.99)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813128359
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813131299

Finally, if you want raid and a 2nd PCIe slot you could go for a Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P ($134.99 - $20MIR = $114.99)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813128358

The Q6600 is the best performing quad core processor for under $200 if you plan on overclocking.

You mentioned $300 in your first post but you put $400 in the title of the thread so I was trying to come in under the lower amount. The Q9550 would be a great choice but it costs $310. There are rumors of an Intel price drop coming soon so you may want to wait to see if it does happen. The Q9550 is a great processor.

If the Q9550 is too expensive then one step down would be either the Q9400 for $270 or the Phenom II 940 which goes for $275. I don't have much experience with the 790fx/gx chipsets so someone more familiar could probably give a motherboard recommendation if you wanted to go with the Phenom II.

+1 on Uguv Q6600 and P45 mobo

I would get the asus board as it has crossfire on there. so if youever wanted to try it you could.

i would get the Asus P5Q Pro + Q6600 and overclock the Q6600 to about 3.2 and that should last for you for a while

If you just wanted a really good P45 board with a single slot then you should think about going with this board

GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3LR $104.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813128368

Personally I would go with a board that had dual PCI-E graphic slots to increase its upgrade potential as you can add a second 4870 down the road, but that's just me. As for the CPU you should go with the Q9550 as that's the cheapest model with 12MB of cache

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 $294.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6819115041

For the Hard Drive I would go with a fast 1TB drive such as the Western Digital Cavalier Black.

if you wanted to go with Phenom.

$109.99 Biostar 790GX motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813138130

Phenom II 920 which still can overclock just as good as the 940
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6819103472

But I would go with the Intel's. Also the P2 are a little bit better for performance than the Q6600. But if you were going intel Quad-Core solution get the Q9x50 series as it has 12MB L2 cache and the P2 dose not do as well.

+1 Q9x50 + P45, It will fit in that price easily.

I too am getting either the Q6600 or Q9x50 (Still undecided) and a P45 Chipset (Probably P5Q Pro) to go with it over the coming weeks/month and either way it will be a HUGE upgrade for me as i am still using (Socket A)

As far as i am concerned the most important part is the motherboard + chipset, once you have that figured out you can go from there...

You can also get $15 off either Phenom II if you use these codes. Unfortunately I bought mine before this promotion.

EMCABBEBG for 920
EMCABBEBH for 940

This is the system parts I was looking at, I finally picked up my case ($150 and power $50).
https://secure.newegg.com/WishList/ [...] D=14346947

I have been hearing that I-core 7 is not really giving a boost to gaming and is giving a boost to non gaming functions like encoding.

Just fyi on the psu and tower (had $100 off this psu, and $60 off case and free shipping on both)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6811129043
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6817341002

Can anyone link Phenom performance reviews so I can see how it is performing vs the quad core in gaming?

Your list is good, and a good buy on the case and psu.
At the level of the E8500 or Q9550, the vga card is much more important for gaming than the cpu.
At that over3.0, overclocking is good for bragging, but it will not net you as much increase
in FPS as a better vga card will. Today, very few games can make use of more than two cores.
Flight simulator X and supreme commander are exceptions. It is not a trivial matter to code multi threaded programs,
and game vendors will not sell too many games that require quads to run.
I don't see this changing in the next couple of years.

Net: E8500 for the increased clock speed instead of the quad. Spend the savings on a GTX285, 4870X2, or GTX295.
Look at the corsair 4gb kits, they are almost giving them away at $25:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6820145184
Core 2 cpu's are not very sensitive to ram speeds.
If you look at real application and game benchmarks(vs. synthetic tests),
you will see negligible difference in performance between the slowest and fastest ram.
Perhaps 1-2%. Not worth it to me.
Don't pay extra for faster ram or better timings unless you are a maximum overclocker.

On the Vista for students, search for "vist academic". There is a legitimate procedure to install an upgrade version if that is cheaper than oem or retail.

E7400, OC to 4Ghz's + with a good cooler (I recommend Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro) Also don't get any other E7*** series CPU, as they are all the same, with only about a 10Mhz clock speed increase and +$20 between each one.

Asus P5Q SE Plus: great overclocker and value

$212, get yourself a great graphics card like the EVGA GTX 260 Core 216 SSC ($210) that $410 for CPU, motherboard, and graphics card.