1st time budget gaming build

[hejira]

pretty sure this will work but just to be sure and for budgeting tips from the more experienced, how does this look to you?

looking to play recent FPS/RTS/racing games.

E8400 (stock cooling?)
Gigabyte EP43-DS3R
MSI 9800GTX+ OC 512MB (unbeatable price)
iCute S901-5G1 with 25cm FAN
Kingston DDR2 4(2x2G)PC6400 800Mhz - KVR800D2N5K2/4G
Antec Neopower 550w modular w/ 2x 6 pin for 9800GTX+
Western Digital 250G SATAII 7200 rpm HDD(16Mb Cache)
Pioneer DVR-216BK SATA 20x Dual Black OEM with software


to run with:
ASUS 24" LCD w/ D sub, DVI, HDMI.
component home theatre system w/ RCA & optical audio input.

will consider mild CPU OC, but not SLI.

*the link for the case is slightly different; the case i want doesnt have a window, just one 25cm fan on the side.

 

[Outlander_04]

well the case is very ugly , but apart from that it will run fine

The gfx card is a little light for a 24 inch monitor . You will be fine but you will have to turn some detail down

 

[Akebono 98]

If you like Asus monitors, how about this VH226H? It's got true HD resolution and only has a few less pixels overall than the 24" so you're not giving up too much screen real estate, but at the same time you're lightening the load on your video card a bit too.

 

[hejira]

i already have the 24", bought it months ago, wont be changing it.

trying to stick to a budget but to increase to a 1GB, the only choice available is the gigabyte 9800GTX+ for $60 more, with a lesser 740MHz core instead of the MSI's 760MHz.

so is it worth the extra cash because of my 24" screen?

the cheaper OC'ed 512MB MSI or 1GB gigabyte for $60 more?

not really interested in the 4850/4870 that are more expensive, require more power, run hotter, & dont seem as good according to the FPS bench marks compared to the 9800GTX+. the 260GTX & 9800GX2 are too expensive.

 

[megamanx00]

What a crazy looking case . Anyway I think you should go with a bigger Hard Drive. I mean really on my Vista partition I have 9 games installed and it's using 100GB of space with the OS. I've got like another 60GB of crap on my XP install and the rest I've burned of or moved to the external hard drive. Anyway my point is that you may find yourself using up that 250GB real fast as recent games seem to take an average of 8 GB on the ol hard drive. The Witcher alone is taking up like 12GB and GRID takes up 10GB. Spend a little more on the Hard Drive and go for a 500GB unit at the least.

I'm not to crazy about your motherboard selection. Get a P45 based board as they overclock much better than P43 boards. I think you would be better served by getting a p45 board with two PCI-E graphic card slots and going with a Radeon 4830 so that you can add another one later for more performance, but that's just me. If you're getting a good price on the 9800GTX+ then go for it, just go with a decent P45 board with one PCI-E 16x slot.

 

[hejira]

sorry i should have explained my choices a bit more, the small hard drive is cause ive already got a few external HDD's with about 350GB spare space already for media. i dont seem to need more but then im not used to having a heap of games on the drive, ill just go a 320 or 500 then.

should be running XP SP3 ive already got, so it wont take up much room, then onto windows 7 at launch.

thanks for the tip on the motherboard, chose the EP43 it has what i want, and its $50 ($35 USD) cheaper than any EP45.

ive found big savings on the EP43 ive chosen that does what i need it to, should i spend alot more on a better board when im not considering SLI? (the PSU wouldnt support it anyway i dont think)

 

[mehcrim]

i know you dont want to sli but if you can find the 9800GTX+ for an awesome price it would increase your fps by a fair amount because of your 24" screen, you could also get 2x 512 instead of 1x 1gig.

 

[hejira]

k cheers, thats something ill take into consideration. i also have a 42" 720p (1366x768) LCD w/ HDMI, so if 1920x1200 seems to take a toll, i could use the lower res screen as a back up plan.