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Upgrading from a single-core socket 939 system with an X1800XT videocard, it just doesnt game with the big boys anymore. Plus, it was built back in the day when I wanted a flashy computer. And it was flashy alright, with enough green LED's to light up my room, and loud enough to keep me up at night.
http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=9543994
With this new build, I had a couple of things in mind that I wanted to do differently. I wanted to keep the internals visible for show-and-tell, but maintained a level of professionalism. I specifically chose parts to fit an all-black color scheme, I think it'll look dead-sexy. It was actually really hard for me to find a motherboard that didnt look like a clown. I have to wonder who comes up with some of these color schemes sometimes. No more LED lights, no more noisy components. I'm pushing for minimal noise, minimal dust, and minimal maintenance. This is also a $1000 budget computer, which I've succeeded in doing. I thought that I might as well go quad core and SSD (w/ Trim support) since a few of the games I have now are optimized for quad core and I assume the games that arent optimized for quad core will still run fine. Quad core's the future, right? The games I play the most are Call of Duty 4/WaW and PlanetSide, a game which I seriously doubt most of you have heard of (this build is in anticipation for PlanetSide 2). Other games I hope to play are Aion, Max Payne 3, Mafia II, and Modern Warfare 2. I usually turn eye candy off anyways so I dont see how I would run into poor framerates with this build, especially since most of the games I play are older. To be honest, the games listed above are my grand hurrah, I dont think I'm going to be doing much gaming a few years down the line. SSD is self explanatory, upgrading to a Raptor drive was the best upgrade I ever made and a fast non-mechanical drive would be a dream. I only opted for 2GB RAM now because it's sufficient for the gaming that I do in XP, and when I eventually upgrade to 7 then I can just buy another stick then and by that time it'll probably be cheaper. I see people with 12GB of RAM and I just dont see when I'd ever possibly use that much. While I'm still using XP 32bit, I might as well use 2GB since XP cant recognize more than 4GB total, that's my thought process.
I went with AMD/ATI because they were the optimal price/performance for my needs. AMD plans on sticking with AM3 for a while, right? I'd hate to have another Socket 939 incident. Intel has two different socket types for their Core i7 and i5 lineups and not factoring into account that this confuses me as to what socket I should invest in, the CPU's are still much more expensive. I'm not a heavy computer user, I recognize the advantages of an Intel CPU but I'm sure that the cheaper option will be just fine for me.
I'd like to hear others opinions on this build. If you recognize a compatibility error between hardware, please point it out. I'm open to suggestions.
http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=9543994
With this new build, I had a couple of things in mind that I wanted to do differently. I wanted to keep the internals visible for show-and-tell, but maintained a level of professionalism. I specifically chose parts to fit an all-black color scheme, I think it'll look dead-sexy. It was actually really hard for me to find a motherboard that didnt look like a clown. I have to wonder who comes up with some of these color schemes sometimes. No more LED lights, no more noisy components. I'm pushing for minimal noise, minimal dust, and minimal maintenance. This is also a $1000 budget computer, which I've succeeded in doing. I thought that I might as well go quad core and SSD (w/ Trim support) since a few of the games I have now are optimized for quad core and I assume the games that arent optimized for quad core will still run fine. Quad core's the future, right? The games I play the most are Call of Duty 4/WaW and PlanetSide, a game which I seriously doubt most of you have heard of (this build is in anticipation for PlanetSide 2). Other games I hope to play are Aion, Max Payne 3, Mafia II, and Modern Warfare 2. I usually turn eye candy off anyways so I dont see how I would run into poor framerates with this build, especially since most of the games I play are older. To be honest, the games listed above are my grand hurrah, I dont think I'm going to be doing much gaming a few years down the line. SSD is self explanatory, upgrading to a Raptor drive was the best upgrade I ever made and a fast non-mechanical drive would be a dream. I only opted for 2GB RAM now because it's sufficient for the gaming that I do in XP, and when I eventually upgrade to 7 then I can just buy another stick then and by that time it'll probably be cheaper. I see people with 12GB of RAM and I just dont see when I'd ever possibly use that much. While I'm still using XP 32bit, I might as well use 2GB since XP cant recognize more than 4GB total, that's my thought process.
I went with AMD/ATI because they were the optimal price/performance for my needs. AMD plans on sticking with AM3 for a while, right? I'd hate to have another Socket 939 incident. Intel has two different socket types for their Core i7 and i5 lineups and not factoring into account that this confuses me as to what socket I should invest in, the CPU's are still much more expensive. I'm not a heavy computer user, I recognize the advantages of an Intel CPU but I'm sure that the cheaper option will be just fine for me.
I'd like to hear others opinions on this build. If you recognize a compatibility error between hardware, please point it out. I'm open to suggestions.
