from ground up - $1500 build

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paco

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1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? moderate gaming, web browsing, picture editing
2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included? ballpark of $1500 after shipping
3) Where do you live? Janesville, WI
4) What exact parts do you need for that budget? everything (case, psu, HD, CPU & fan, graphics card, mobo, dvd-rw, RAM, monitor).
5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? only may reuse some sata hd's.
6) Will you be overclocking? No
7) What size monitor do you have and/or plan to have? Want at least a 22" monitor.
8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC? next 30 days
9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? nothing special, USB 3.0 would be nice, but not necessary. At least 1 PS/2 port if possible, at least 6 usb ports. decent onboard sound (5.1), and onboard NIC.
10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license? If yes, what OS? 32bit or 64bit? Need a copy of Windows 7 64bit included in the price as well.

So basically a from scratch computer. All the hardware, including monitor and the OS all for the low low price of $1500 (give or take $100).
Moderate gaming, otherwise pretty standard use. No overclocking.
Would like...
22" or bigger monitor
Triple or Quad Core (AMD or Intel, doesn't matter)
Fast HD or SSD.
Windows 7 64bit
4Gb RAM minimum

I'll post some stuff I came up with soon. Let me know what you think. Thanks!
 
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Here's what I came up with on the first shot. Went to NewEgg just to make it easier, but will probably shop around. Also, no combo deals in this either.

What are the glaring mistakes? I know they are there.

COOLER MASTER ELITE - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119161
CORSAIR HX Series CMPSU-750HX - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139010
ASRock X58 Extreme LGA 1366 Intel X58 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157163
Intel Core i7-920 Bloomfield - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115202
G.SKILL 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231225
GIGABYTE GV-R489UD-1GD Radeon HD 4890 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125297
Western Digital Caviar Black WD6401AALS 640GB - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136319
ASUS Black 24X DVD+/-R - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827135204
Hanns·G HH-281HPB Black 28" 3ms - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824254043
Windows 7 Home Premium Full
=$1607.43
 
Curious what you think of this HP build. Seems like a similar machine. More RAM (but slower), probably slower HD, CPU is a level up, video card is maybe a step down. Obviously the psu is probably lesser.

It's the HPE-180t series
hpmachine.gif

prices out just under $1650. Obviously, the build is fun. But is this just easier for the price?
 
paco said:
Here's what I came up with on the first shot. Went to NewEgg just to make it easier, but will probably shop around. Also, no combo deals in this either.

What are the glaring mistakes? I know they are there.

COOLER MASTER ELITE - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119161
CORSAIR HX Series CMPSU-750HX - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139010
ASRock X58 Extreme LGA 1366 Intel X58 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157163
Intel Core i7-920 Bloomfield - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115202
G.SKILL 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231225
GIGABYTE GV-R489UD-1GD Radeon HD 4890 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125297
Western Digital Caviar Black WD6401AALS 640GB - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136319
ASUS Black 24X DVD+/-R - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827135204
Hanns·G HH-281HPB Black 28" 3ms - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824254043
Windows 7 Home Premium Full
=$1607.43
Click to expand...

Not bad, I would suggest you get the Gigabyte X58A-UD3R motherboard instead of that ASrock one. I was going to suggest against the 4890 but I see that its actually sub $200 which is decent, although it is an older card, it would probably still do you pretty good. Also you should get the Caviar Blue 500gb as it is the single platter design which is shown to be much faster than the double platter design of the black 640gb. Don't know much about the monitor so I can't comment on that. Also you are paying about $50 more for that psu just for it to be modular, so is that really worth it to you? You could downgrade to the non-modular 750TX and use that spare money to upgrade the motherboard/case.

paco said:
Curious what you think of this HP build. Seems like a similar machine. More RAM (but slower), probably slower HD, CPU is a level up, video card is maybe a step down. Obviously the psu is probably lesser.

It's the HPE-180t series
/removed to save space
prices out just under $1650. Obviously, the build is fun. But is this just easier for the price?
Click to expand...

Not bad, I don't get the ram configuration at all though. 9gb and 5 dimms? That means it was 4x2gb and then a single 1gb stick thrown in? Wouldn't be running triple channel which seems like a waste. I would honestly just build it yourself.
 
Shadowssong said:
9gb and 5 dimms? That means it was 4x2gb and then a single 1gb stick thrown in? Wouldn't be running triple channel which seems like a waste. I would honestly just build it yourself.
Click to expand...

In fact, it depends on where the 1GB stick is installed in. If the 1GB stick is installed in the fifth DIMM slot (that would be the third channel of a triple-channel setup on most motherboards), then only 3GB would have run in triple-channel and the other 6GB would have run in single-channel. In all other arrangements (assuming that the first, third and fifth DIMM slots are occupied for triple-channel operation), then 6GB would have run in triple-channel and 3GB in single-channel.

This is the characteristic of all Intel DDR SDRAM memory controllers since the days of the 865 and 875 chipsets.
 
thanks for the suggestions, but ended up buying a rig off of genocide in the FS forum.
 
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