Build Critique: New gaming PC

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Stealth5325

Gawd
Joined
Dec 27, 2000
Messages
693
As per the sticky:

1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
This PC is being built for a 62 year old man to play Battlefield, essentially. I'm sure there will be web browsing and some word processing, but mostly FPS games.
2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
It's mostly irrelevant. I could go to $5k if needed, though I doubt it will be.
3) Where do you live?
Bay Area, California.
4) What exact parts do you need for that budget? CPU, RAM, case, etc. Please be very specific.
Don't have an exact parts list, it's been freely assigned to use my judgement.
5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.
Nothing being reused.
6) Will you be overclocking?
No. Stabilty and performance are key.
7) What size monitor do you have or plan to have?
24" or so.
8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
Within the next two months.
9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? etc.
A NIC. heh.

I've been building for quite a long time, and I generally go for build quality from reliable vendors that have been around for quite some time, rather than the newest turbo fast 1% extra overclocking hardware (that's for my own personal PC) So, what I've come up with so far:
Case: Lian-Li PC-8B
Motherboard: ASUS P5Q Pro
Processor: Intel Core2Duo Wolfdale 3.0gHz
Ram: Mushkin 4GB 1066
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX280
Sound Card: Creative Soundblaster X-Fi ExtremeGamer
Power Supply: PC Power and Cooling Silencer 750 ATX12V

I've also got a Lite-On burner, Seagate Hard drive, and cabling, software, etc, but I know those are solid. Have any of my 'trusted companies' gone off the deep end of stupid, or am I doing ok?
Thanks in advance guys.
 
- Ditch the mobo. The ASsus P5Q SE has a piss poor placement of the 24Pin PSU connector that can and will obstruct airflow around the CPU area. It'll also make cable management a little harder. I recommend getting this mobo instead due to the better 24Pin PSU placement:
GIGABYTE GA-EP45-DS3L LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard - $100

- Ditch the Crucial Ballistix RAM. Not only will DDR2 1066 not provide a single iota of real world performance increase over DDR2 667 or DDR2 800 RAM, for the price of that DDR2 1066 set you can get 4GB of DDR2 800 RAM:
G.Skill F2-6400CL5D-4GBPQ 2 x 2GB DDR2 800 RAM - $40

Not to mention that Crucial Ballistix RAM have a lot of quality issues according to all the forum posts I've been reading.

Other than that, your build looks good to me.
 
I could switch the RAM, but G.skill is just not a name brand enough for me. I'll look into Corsair or Mushkin. I'll check into the board. I'm pretty die hard Asus/Abit, and apparently Abit's about over, which sucks.
 
Updated original post with new board and RAM. RAM's a bit expensive, but it's a brand I trust.
 
Again, budget isn't nearly as big a concern as name brands with quality support and reputations. I could also save some money not buying everything from Newegg, but they've always done me right. I am aware that I am buying expensive equipment, the point is something that'll last and not have some stupid BIOS issue when I'm not around, or have the memory overheat or the PSU fail.
 
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