Please Help

Hi All,

Yeah, like others here I'm going to upgrade - present system is a P4 3.0GHZ and have been out of touch with hardware for sometime now

But, I'm very excited about getting back into building a system again. I've done a lot of reading over the last few days and here's what I've come up with so far

core i5 2.6 - decided this over quad core for performance and architecture upgradation and over i7 for price.

LGA 1156 - just in case I want to upgrade to an i7 down the road. I saw that i7's come in 2 different chip sets. Am I ok here?
Asus -7p55d and Gigabyte GAA-p55M are the 2 I'm interested in for the price and performance. They also have some good ratings on Newegg. Thoughts? I'm thinking the Asus because my present one is an Asus and has been trouble free for well over 5 years.

ddr3 1600 is memory for price and performance mix,. I'm thinking GSKILL 4GB (2x2). I have crucial and that has given me a couple of issues but largely trouble free.

I'm undecided over graphics card. I have an ATI now but before that used to have NVIDIA. I know this is a very broad question and one that will open up a can of works. I'm thinking ATI. Any recommendations? Sapphire seems to have a lt of cards. I have a Diamond now.

Have plenty of hard drives that I can reuse, so won't buy any

I am planning on reusing my SB Audigy2 Platinum Ex for now. Mobo has PCI slot I can use. Maybe an upgrade down the road

Also, can anyone recommend a heatsink+fan for cpu? I am leaning away from thermaltake. Returned 2 a few years ago because of noise.

Any recommendations for a cabinet? I can't believe how many cabinets there are out there. Newegg has a LARGE selection.

Thanks for any suggestions and lending me your ears

Thanks hunter. New to this site

here goes:

APPROXIMATE PURCHASE DATE: 1st Week of Nov (Early thanksgiving gift to.....MYSELF )

SYSTEM USAGE FROM MOST TO LEAST IMPORTANT: gaming but not port-the-latest-WII-games-or-latest-FPS-Games, surginf obviously, watch online broadcasts, other video/music related stuff.

PARTS NOT REQUIRED: HDD (Have Sata 100/300 drives I can use and reuse), Soundcard(Reuisng my Audigy 2 Platinum ex), keyboard, mouse, monitor, speakers (have logtech's surround

PREFERRED WEBSITE(S) FOR PARTS: ( newegg.com, amazon.com, zipzoomfly.com) COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: (USA)

PARTS PREFERENCES: by brand or type (Intel Processor on an Asus/Gigabyte mobo with an ATI based GPU

OVERCLOCKING: Maybe


ADDITIONAL COMMENTS: WOuld like a quiet system but am not averse to moderate noise. The bling on the system matters but not so much. What does matter is the number of fans on the system. I must have a COOL system because I;ll be running several hard drives etc. I wan to achieve this just by fans since I'm not an overlocker that will need water cooling etc.

Hope that's better

Budget?

Thanks hunter. Copied.
So most likely a separate case and PSU

Also, I forgot to mention that though I'm open to a budget I would prefer to wind up the system at around $600-700. Guess that's important to decide on parts.

what's your advice between core i5 and quad core?

This is about the cheapest i5 build you can get:

Intel Core i5 750 Lynnfield 2.66GHz 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1156 95W Quad-Core
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6819115215

GIGABYTE GA-P55M-UD2 LGA 1156 Intel P55 Micro ATX Intel
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813128405

G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6820231279

ASUS EAH5770/2DIS/1GD5 Radeon HD 5770 (Juniper XT) 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814121350

SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD502HJ 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] f3%20500gb

OCZ ModXStream Pro OCZ500MXSP 500W ATX12V V2.2 / EPS12V SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Modular Active PFC
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6817341016

LITE-ON Black 24X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 8X DVD+R DL 22X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW SATA
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6827106289

+ Some cheap case w/o PSU.

Comes to about $725.

If you can't spend that much you may have to switch to AMD, which would also allow you to get a much better GPU.

Since your not interested in crossfire, it makes things a little simpler. Here's a nice, comparable AMD build.

AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Deneb 3.2GHz 4 x 512KB L2 Cache 6MB L3 Cache Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6819103674

GIGABYTE GA-MA770T-UD3P AM3 AMD 770 ATX AMD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813128392

Mushkin XP 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Dual Channel Kit Desktop
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] -_-Product

ASUS EAH5850/G/2DIS/1GD5 Radeon HD 5850 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814121349

SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD502HJ 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] f3%20500gb

OCZ ModXStream Pro OCZ500MXSP 500W ATX12V V2.2 / EPS12V SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Modular Active PFC
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6817341016

LITE-ON Black 24X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 8X DVD+R DL 22X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW SATA
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6827106289

Here's a review of the GPU, for comparison the 5770 performs between the 4850 and 4870.

Just realized I forgot to paste the review above, here it is
http://www.anandtech.com/video/sho [...] i=3658&p=6
Be sure to check out some of the other games as well.

You'd be fine with a 5770 imo, but the AMD with the 5850 beat the intel build with the 5770 solidly, just so you know.