Hello everyone. Been out of the hardware game for awhile and ready to upgrade my aging 4400X2, 7800 gtx sli system. I've got $1100 to spend and I want to wait until after the July price cuts. I'm going to be using this system for gaming, multimedia and general office work (games, photoshop/video, internet/html). I'm not particuarly biased to either AMD or Intel. Here are my basic requirements: full sized tower case 2gb ram 8800 gts or gtx (2) hard drives at 250gb or more cd/dvd burner power supply motherboard I DON'T need a monitor, soundcard, keyboard, mouse or anything esle... just a tower and it's components! THANKS MUCH IN ADVANCE!!!!
You want a Intel Core 2 Duo, but judging your budget, a E6300 looks the best. Add to that: 2GB of PC6400 RAM (any latency, C2Ds don't give a rats ass about latency) A mobo of your choice (I'm not sure what you want in terms of on board features) One of the newish Samsung T166 500GB The cheapest 8800GTS 320GB you can find A chassis of your choice (again, I have no idea of your tastes, but you could do worse with an Antec P180) As one of BT's PSU gurus on a good PSU, but in general, Seasonic, Corsair and Antec make decent PSUs to name a few (correct me if I'm wrong here guys) Hopefully that'll be inside $1100, but I'm not familiar with what you can get for $ really. Knowing rip off Britain, you could probably get a lot more lol!
I went threw newegg (I assume you are in the states) and picked some parts. It does come out to $1068 without the processor and dvd. I assume you are going for the e6850 or the Q6600 which are both supposed to be $266. You could go for something a bit cheaper and over clock it to save some money. You could also goto a motherboard with a few less features than the one I picked here and save about 50 bucks, and you could get a 320mb version of the 8800 and save about $100-$120. that would bring it down to about $920 before tax and your CPU. Oh and I am by no means an expert at this but as far as I can tell everything should work. motherboard ASUS P5K DELUXE/WIFI-AP LGA 775 Intel P35 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131182 Power CORSAIR 620W http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139002 Harddrive I know you said two hard drives but I found 1 400gb for a good price. its and OEM product through. Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD4000AAKS 400GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136076 Video EVGA GeForce 8800GTS 640MB 320-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 SUPERCLOCKED Ram As far as I can tell this ram should work with the P5K motherboard. dont quote me on that but this board does support the 1066mhz ram. OCZ Platinum 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227178 I didn't pick a dvd burner because there are so many choices now and they dont really cost that much. Before tax all that adds up to 1068. pretty close to your price of 1100. after tax will most likely go over it. Like I said before you can reduce a few things, like the MB, ram, video. A lot of people give good reviews on that power supply so I wouldn't get anything less but its your money. Hopefully someone else will suggest something else so you can get a variety of choices. Edit : oh and I forgot you need a tower too... dragontail suggested the 180, I have no experince with it but lots of people seam to like it, its about 129 on newegg. I have an antec 900 and I really like it. its 139. the 8800 will be a tight fit in the 900 though, my 1950 pro is a tight fit but it does fit. lots of screws in that case so if you would rather not have to undo a lot of screws to get at something like your hard drive, skip it for something else.
Asus P5K vanilla Intel Q6600 (AFTER july 22nd) 2x1gb DDR2 800 kit Silverstone Olympia 650 8800GTS 640mb + anything else needed.
The above spec is really good, good bang4buck. But, there isn't really much point to upgrade until next year. DX9 will still look amazing on your system. Why don't you wait until DX10 is a must?
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3P - $150 XFX Geforce 8800GTS - $250 2x1GB Corsair XMS - $128 Antec NeoPower 650W (modular) - $160 western Digital 500GB - $110 - could also go for a pair of 250GBs for about $60 each Lite-On SATA DVD burner - $31 Core 2 Duo E6600 - $222 Grand total - about $1050 if you want an 8800GTX that would cost about an extra $300. If I were doing this build, I would keep the pair of 7800s and wait until buying a DX10 GPU. L J
Gigabyte DS3R, Abit IP35 Pro, Asus P5K, MSI P35? 1GB CAS-3 capable DDR2 800MHz, SATA DVD writer, Corsair/Enermax/Tagan/Seasonic PSU and whatever else you can afford.
