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building a desktop
Smilingoat
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
i havent done this in 4 years, and probably dont remember how really. but im going to be spending ~$2k on a new desktop shortly.
ive spec'd one out, but really dont know too much about them to really know if i did a decent job or not, all i know is i want a new gaming machine
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16836116153
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16829102004
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16827152074
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16822144415
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16820142013
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16819115003
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16817159040
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16814130071
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16813131046
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16811119104
then windows vista premium upgrade, word/encarta package, keyboard/mouse, and a 22-24in flat panel monitor ($330 for the 22in, $670 for the 24 with better res)
basically if i can trim some fat off this baby i can get the nicer monitor, im going to be using it for my 360 as well as HD movies (once live starts offering them)
so yeah, any ideas, is this decent? am i spending too much in certain areas (quite case is kind of important to me)
do you think if i wait a until january for the other DX10 cards the price will be so much lower than it would be worth the wait? so many questions... im a n00b.
ive spec'd one out, but really dont know too much about them to really know if i did a decent job or not, all i know is i want a new gaming machine
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16836116153
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16829102004
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16827152074
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16822144415
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16820142013
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16819115003
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16817159040
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16814130071
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16813131046
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16811119104
then windows vista premium upgrade, word/encarta package, keyboard/mouse, and a 22-24in flat panel monitor ($330 for the 22in, $670 for the 24 with better res)
basically if i can trim some fat off this baby i can get the nicer monitor, im going to be using it for my 360 as well as HD movies (once live starts offering them)
so yeah, any ideas, is this decent? am i spending too much in certain areas (quite case is kind of important to me)
do you think if i wait a until january for the other DX10 cards the price will be so much lower than it would be worth the wait? so many questions... im a n00b.
whos havin butt-seks
Smilingoat on
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Quoted, so people can click. Do you really need word/encarta? I don't imagine they cost that much, but Openoffice.org is free and can handle word documents and...man, does anybody still use encarta? The Multimedia stuff was cool but Wikipedia contains all the real information plus a billion articles on topics that Encarta probably doesn't include.
You could also get a cheaper Core2Duo, depending on how leet you want to be. Isn't the 6400 the optimum between performance and price?
Additionally, do you really need surround sound? I don't find it necessary but then I've never experienced it before. If you really do want it, the motherboard you've chosen has onboard support for 6.1 I think. It won't be top-notch sound but should probably be serviceable for the time being, so you could at least save cash on the sound card just now and upgrade later if you feel you need it.
7.1 speakers for less than $100 :?
If you're spending that much on a soundcard then get an X-Fi; creative seems to have introduced some low-end version that's a bit cheaper even or there's the Xtreme Gamer/Xtreme Music at ~$90... I don't know which one is better though.
OTOH you don't really need a separate sound card, as the on-board sound on Intel boards is supposed to be pretty good quality.
What the fuck is "MAD DOG"? If you know that that's a good brand then :shrug: but if not then get a BenQ or LG or any other brand that's known to be decent.
160GB isn't much, PC games now start to take up more space when installed (eg. Medieval 2 is ~7,5GB, NWN2 is ~6,5GB) but if you don't have loads of other crap then I guess it will suffice (btw. Vista isn't much larger than XP).
I would suggest buying a HDD with a 5 year warranty though (I believe that would be all Seagates and "RE" WDs).
Larger drives are also faster due to greater density...
Good value ends at about 320GB@$95.
Good price, though I've never heard of "viking". Notice that Newegg won't take it back if something will be wrong with it - you'll have to go straight to the manufacturer. They have a "lifetime" warranty so I guess it's not bad.
The 6600 has a larger cache which improves performance a bit more over the lower models than frequency alone. It also has a fairly high multiplier of 9x which is nice for overclocking, though now there are boards that can get even the 6300 up to 3,5GHz (7x500MHz).
It doesn't support DDR2-800, which might be important in the future. P965 'boards aren't much more expensive, though they rarely come with firewire. The Gigabyte S3 is supposedly good and fairly inexpensive
Yeah, it's good. You might be able to get away with the 450W in the Antec Sonata II, which, I heard, is pretty quiet.
Probably the best cooling at the lowest noise level can be provided by the Antec P180 but it's ~$120 without PSU.
Well, $450+ for a video card is a lot though it's hard to tell if they'll remain high-end - maybe it will be similar to the 7800/7900 situation where the mid-range 7900GT is as fast as the high-end 7800GTX - so yeah waiting might be a good idea.
Some good placeholder cards would be the 7600GT, 7900GS, 7900GT or maybe one of the "open box" X1900XTs that newegg has
At night, the ice weasels come."
I also would suggest buying a retail hard drive, and NOT from newegg. You can find MUCH MUCH MUCH better deals at Best Buy, Circuit City, etc. where after coupons and rebates it comes down to like $10-20 for a 250-300GB drive. Also on outpost.com I think they still have a deal for a 400GB SATA seagate drive for $130 up front. Another reason not to buy from newegg is they pretty much only offer OEM drives, which isn't all that bad but you get no cables with them and the warranty is usually 1 year for drives that are normally 5 years.
For video card I would get a 7600GS/GT and hold off until the 8600GT and such are available. Even and 8200 would probably be a major upgrade from a 7600 when they come out since the new GPU is so powerful.
SC2 NA: exoplasm.519 | PA SC2 Mumble Server | My Website | My Stream
BS on the the no-difference-between-E6300-and-E6600, Q4 gets a significant boost from an E6600 even on high settings, and the difference is probably larger in non-gaming applications.
Of course, you'll be able to play comfortably even with E6300 but there is a performance gain from getting the more expensive model and it's not unreasonably priced.
And it's exactly the other way around, at least with WD - you get only 1y warranty with retail drives compared to 3-5y with OEM ones. Even if newegg doesn't give you the full warranty you still have the manufacturer's warranty.
7600GS is significantly slower than the GT version and GTs are pretty cheap ATM
At night, the ice weasels come."
Viking is (or was when I sold it several years ago) the premium shit. Lifetime warranty, as you pointed out.
thats quite a bit off the bill, its looking a little more realistic now (i also changed something else... not sure what i had just gotten up when i did it) still need to purchase the software though, which is going to be the suckage part, but like metioned, openGL could work too.
OpenOffice.org is the office suite you were probably referring to.
SC2 NA: exoplasm.519 | PA SC2 Mumble Server | My Website | My Stream
anyway i think ill wait until the ATI cards are released now that i think of it, but will be getting the monitor as soon as i get payment for my laptop, i think im going to go all out and get the 24in dell widescreen ultraview... should be a decent way to spend $600... considering ill be using it for my 360 and HD movies...
does anyone know what res the xbox will revert to to play the movies/games? (will it give that blurry effect?) either way it should look loads better than my 27in magnavox SDTV.
Do any of you have any suggestions? I am thinking the 1200-1800 dollar range.
[edit]: I guess I'm hijacking this guys thread, eh? Should I make my own?
untruly yours, Saint Justin the Sluggard