Had some bad weather the other day and it tortured my comp. Blew the fuse on my fan controller and all my fans shut off, I had my cpu fan on there aswell. This happened at night so I don't know the total time they were off, but when I got to it, my comp had rebooted itself and my cpu heatsink was untouchable. My Current specs: intel P4 2.4Ghz Gigabyte GA-81PE1000 Pro ATi Radeon 9600 Pro AGP8x Seagate 80gb PowMax 500w PSU 1Gb generic DDR This setup has lasted me 4+ years. I'm sure it would have been longer if the storm didn't pwn it. Needless to say the comp is no longer capable of the games I play. It just locks up. I'm barely able to browse the web now. So I'm starting a new comp build calling it "Chevy Metal". Its a budget build but its gotta last a good amount of time. My comp is usually on 24/7 so the parts need to be reliable. Parts List. CPU- intel E8400 Wolfdale HDD- Seagate ES.2 250gb PSU- Corsair 650TX RAM- G.Skill 2x1Gb DDR2 1066 Now I'm sort of undecided on the motherboard and video card. Was thinking about the P45 chipset but Newegg is slowly just getting them in over the past 2 days, I'm hoping for the Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS5 . As of right now they only have the Asus P5Q, and the MSI P45 Platinum, havent read much about those. As for graffics I really like the Sapphire Radeon 3870 for $159 But I also like the reviews on the XFX 8800GT for $169 Any comments on the setup and/or experiances with these products on how well they cohabitate would be greatly appreciated.
Depending on how long you want to keep this new build, it might be worth considering quad core (Q6600 for example) over the dual core as once the quads become more used in the next year or 2 they'll be much better than a dual. The Q6600 and E8400 are pretty evenly matched in price now too. I'd go for the 8800GT (or the 8800GTS 512 if you can stretch to it...) over the 3870, but that's personal preference more than hard facts to back it up
Yea, I read that the ATI 3870 has problems with AA in games, whereas the nVIDIA 8800gt does not. So many choices out there just trying to build a reliable computer that can gamer for years to come like my old pc. Looking for some more advanced user advice on some of these products, as NewEgg reviews aren't always 100%
Ok, so I have decided to go with the eVGA 8800GT 512. Still cant pick a mobo yet, the 'Egg just got 2 more P45's but not the ones I was hoping for. /cry
