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Gaming Comp - $3000-4200 budget

S

Shattoww

n00b
Joined
Nov 13, 2004
Messages
31
I'm getting a brand new computer this Christmas that I've been saving up for. I'm looking to make it play Half-Life 2 perfectly and any other games in the future for quite some time. Anyways, me and a friend will be building it so thats not a problem but I wanted you guys to comment on the hardware and the prices of the stuff and make recommendations as to what I should be getting. Anyways, this is what I'm going to get so far, give me info, links, opinions, comments, or anything else that would help me in this project. When you give recommendations please try and include a price range, statistics, and company.

I've got a Thermaltake case w/ 500 watt supply for $250

[939- Pin] AMD Athlon 64 FX-55 CPU for $850

I'm interested in a good mobo but I'm not to familiar with what I should be getting. I'll be using onboard sound so 6.1 or greater would be nice but I need some recommendations as far as gaming mobos. Price Range on this (130 - 200$)

2048 MB Dual Channel DDR-400 PC3200 Memory Module. ($730)

ATI Radeon x800-XT( I'm leaning toward Sapphire but open for suggestions) (500-700 depending on brand name etc...)

2 Maxtor 250 GB Hard Drives ( Is Maxtor a good HD company?) ($250- 350)

I don't know much as far as cd-rom, rw, etc stuff goes however I know I need a CD-Rom, CD Burner that burns hella quick. Anyways, I'm open to recommendations as far as this goes as I will be burning AVI files and playing them on DVD players.

I've got a monitor but if you can find a 21'' CRT for cheap, please give a linky because I may want to upgrade if its cheap. Price range I'm looking for is (100-200)

8 in 1 Flash Media Card Reader/Writer (Is there an 9 in 1 now?) ($40)

I'll be using this computer for hardcore gaming, coding, video editing, photoshop, and almost anything else you can think of. As far as Software goes I'm gonna be legit and go out and buy Microsoft Windows SP 2 and The newst Panda Anti-Virus. Anyways, drop me any insight opinions whatever you got, don't be afraid to include links. Thanks.
 
why not spend 1500 on a computer and then also buy a projector. So now you can play hl2 on an screen that can be as large as 200 inches.
 
why not build one computer now and then save the rest of the money for a later build?
or just go crazy and have a huge party and waste.. i mean use all that money for a better reason ;)
 
shiffero said:
why not build one computer now and then save the rest of the money for a later build?
or just go crazy and have a huge party and waste.. i mean use all that money for a better reason ;)
Click to expand...

damn real kid.. get tore up... hell.. make it a coke party..
 
you need either 2 raptors or one of those 300/400gb hard drives with 16mb of cache........

x800xt All In Wonder:D

get a fucking winchester cpu , 3500+.........overclock it to 2.6, it will outpreform the fx because of higher bus speeds, plus run cooler. spend the other money on nice RAM........

1024mb is more then enough..............MUSHKIN BLACK!!!!!!!!!! you could get 2gigs of that.

ATi xpress200 motherboard! those should be out by christmas, and I've seen some wicked stuff out of those

a big ass cooler............thermalright xp90, or the 120 thing............
 
Well, my insight comes in the form of hard drives. I would suggest allocating some money to acquiring a nice Seagate SCSI drive and an Adaptec card and using that as a boot drive. It'll be unbelievably faster than the IDE drives and you can simply use any other money to purchase 300 GB storage drives from Seagate or Maxtor or Western Digital, all of them are respectable corporations with faults to many different people.

That's just one man's opinion though.

Dark Assassin
 
kubalaTF said:
Get RAID 0+1 while you're at it. for 3 grand there's no reason not to.
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What the hell is RAID and what does it do? :confused:
I'll look into the SeaGate thing, and this ATI xpress 200, how much will that be and whats the stats on that o_O?
 
To find out about RAID go to the disk storage section area. And a good internet site I've found about that would be

http://partition.radified.com/

Alot of people would say it doesn't help in some applicatrions, but if you're dropping that much cash, why not? I've heard that seagate is good too, I'm probably going to get one of those for my boot disk.
 
Shattoww said:
What the hell is RAID and what does it do? :confused:
I'll look into the SeaGate thing, and this ATI xpress 200, how much will that be and whats the stats on that o_O?
Click to expand...

A quick run down..

RAID = Redundent array of independent disks

RAID 0 = using two harddrives to act like one.. so on paper.. you read and write to your harddrives twice as fast.. remember.. this is on paper.. you won't actually increase to twice the speed.

RAID 1 = using one hardrive to mirror everything.. so basically if one harddrive dies.. you still got another with the same exact thing

RAID 0 is for performace.. this is considered a bit risky though.. as the chances of a drive crapping out on you are increased..

RAID 1 is for protection against PHYSICAL Disk failure.. not data corruption... so basically you're still prone to viruses and such.. i believe this is also called fault tolerance computing?? :confused:

i'm sure you can read up on the rest..
 
and RAID 0+1 is the best of both worlds. but you have to use 4 drives. mirrored and fast. With that setup my motherboard will fix errors and keep on trucking. I almost went for this, but it is a tad bit expensive for 4 disks. It would have been awsome I tell you! awsome!
 
CPU: FX 55
Motherboard: 939 Board that you like.
Ram: 512 x 4 3200 or what ever config you want.
Videocard: 6800U or x800XTPE (jump on a wagon)
Harddrives: DUal 74GB Raptors (boot and games)
Harddrives2: Dual 250GB WD SATA (storage)
Case: Dear god please not a TT.
PSU: PC Power and Cooling 510


And then drop like 400 on WC, and get a V1000 or whatever one you want.
My suggestions is ^^^^
 
I was told Thermaltake cases are pretty good, the one I'm considering buying has about 7 fans, temp controls, keys, and is black in color. Not sure about the model type or anything but is there another good case for 200 or less?
 
Get a LianLi something.
Not as near ugly as a TT, better mod potential and just a better case then a TT
 
Shattoww said:
I was told Thermaltake cases are pretty good, the one I'm considering buying has about 7 fans, temp controls, keys, and is black in color. Not sure about the model type or anything but is there another good case for 200 or less?
Click to expand...
You can get way better (as in looking and performance) cases for $200 than the Thermaltakes. High end Lian-Li's or Cooler Master's.
 
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