3 different setups help me decide.

[strikeout]

1) What will you be doing with this PC?
Gaming (tailor made for battlefield bad company 2)

2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
about $200 per component

3) Where do you live?
Northern california

4) What exact parts do you need for that budget?
cpu, mobo, ram, gpu

5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing?
DVD, PSU , anything else I can

6) Will you be overclocking?
no

7) What size monitor do you have and/or plan to have?
1680x1050

8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
Mid Febuary

9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support?
DX11 for BBC2

10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license?
no I need to buy W7 for dx11


Look at my sig, its getting old. I built it in 2005, when BF2 came out. Since then, I upgraded to dual core, psu , gpu and some odds and ends. Its time to retire it for the next generation BBC2.

I want to go with AMD

1st setup: use my midtower and do a cpu,ram, mobo, swap + gpu swap

amd 955
Asus M4A785TD-M EVO
gskill 2gb x2 ddr 3
xfx 5770

Pros: least expensive, most upgradeable, recycles most parts
Con: least mobile


2nd setup: shuttle case
SA76G2
amd 955
gskill 2gb x2 ddr 3
xfx 5770

pros: mobile,small, light
cons: can't reuse a lot of parts, need new psu & case, can't upgrade to huge cards later.

3rd setup:
Hp Envy 15 laptop
pros: The most mobile and most powerfull
cons: most expensive, no upgrades, no DX11 card

A while back when I built my rig in my sig for BF2, I carried it around to big LANS and small lans at friends houses. I don't plan on doing too many lans but will moving my rig between my mom's house and my GF's appt. I fucking hate carring shit all over the place, especially with stairs. I never had a laptop before I and think it would be cool to have it pull double duty as desktop replacement/lan rig. I shuttle would be good as long as I could get a carry case for it. I will get lazy with the midtower and just be caught without a rig some days.

 

[Dangman]

Rank these in terms of importance to you:
1) Convenience (i.e being able to take it to place to place)
2) Max performance
3) Price

Figure that out and you can easily decide this. Also, how often do you actually switch from your mom's to your GF's place?

Also note that the Shuttle uses DDR2 RAM, not DDR3 RAM.

 

[tiraides]

Consider Option #4: a SFF system built around the Intel P55 chipset and the Da Box 100 SFF case.

$180 - Da Box 100 Blackheart microATX desktop case
$200 - Intel Core i5 750
$105 - Gigabyte GA-P55M-UD2
$94 - G.Skill Ripjaws 2x2GB DDR3 1600 kit
$180 - XFX HD5770
$105 - Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit OEM DVD

I chose the most expensive version of Da Box 100 just to give you a better picture of how much everything would cost you. (The "bare bones" version of the case is $160 plus shipping.) Smaller, cheaper cases, like the Silverstone SUGO series cases, are available, but if you plan on using aftermarket cooling and/or you don't like tower-style mATX cases, then Da Box 100 is one of the better options available.

Having said all that, you have a while before you need to start gathering parts. Revisit this thread a week or two before you plan on ordering everything.

 

[strikeout]

The main reason why I looked at shuttle was the fact that they sell these nice padded cases that were easy to carry 1 handed. I found a really nice monitor tote to hold my lcd, mouse and keyboard.

 

[tiraides]

You can buy straps for carrying SFF cases, including Da Box 100.

But since Option 4 is out of the question for you, which of the other three options do you prefer?

 

[Shalafi]

out of curiousity, how hot does a SFF get with all those components inside it?

 

[tiraides]

"How hot" an SFF system can be depends on the case and its contents.

For example, in the SG01/SG02, things can get pretty hot inside as there are only three 80mm case fans, plus the PSU's fan(s), available to draw heat out of the case. The SG03/SG04 is a little better, since it uses two 120mm fans in the front to draw air into the case. However, because of the SUGO case design, it's hard to find a good aftermarket CPU cooler... and if you need a chipset cooler (oftentimes for the X58 mATX boards), good luck with that.