Mo' money, mo' problems

[The_Corinthian]

Hello everyone,

I am looking to build a new system for about $2,000. I will primarily use this system for gaming as well as intensive Photoshop work (I routinely work with multiple 150MB TIFF files at a time...) Now, I do not want to go completely overkill with this system, but I want to make a good investment--so spending the full $2gs is by no means necessary...

I have put together a list of basic components, but I am at a complete loss regarding which GPU and CPU to buy. Simply put, there are too many options at each price point for me to decide.

Here's a list of components I have put together (all links to newegg.com):
CoolerMaster Centurion 5 case --$50
Thermaltake 430W PSU --$39
Western Digital Raptor 74GB 10,000rpm hard drive--$166
NEC DVD Burner--$40
Sony 52x CD-ROM--$16
Windows XP Professional w/ SP-2--$146
Thermaltake CL-P0025 or some other badass fan--assuming I need it--$47
Razer Diamondback mouse--$60

Base total of $564

So, where do I go from here? For an additional $1300-1400, what's the best I can do for gaming, photoshop, and long-term performance?

I really appreciate your time and advice.

Cheers,
Francis.

 

[scottatwittenberg]

get a better power supply.. and not a thermaltake.. the watts don't mean crap... look at fortron, sparkle, enermax, zippy, pc power and cooling, and antec true power.. get one that has a 24 pin connector too.. most still have 20 pin

raptors are nice.. but you might want soemthing bigger to hold all those 150mb tifs.. a maxtor 16mb cache drive shoud be pretty damn close to the speed of the raptor and at close to 50 cents a gig.. however some people will say that the raptor would be necessary to you in cutting down on the time it takess to open those huge files in photoshop.. you can decide on that one.. maybe get a raptor and a 30 gb 16 mb maxtro..

why even get a plain cd rom? do you burn frorm on cd to another often? at $40 each you probably should just get 2 dvd burners if you really feel the need for 2 optical drives...

once again.. stay away from thermaltake.. they look badass.. but thats about it.. a thermalRIGHT xp-90 or an xp-120 cools much better and costs less..

from there:
this: if you don't overclock, or only a bit.. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813152053

one of these if you do OC:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813130484
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813136152


cpu:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103535
or
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103539
or
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103547

memory:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820146190
or
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820220045

and what's left? do you want a monitor too? keyboard?


edit.. i left out the gpu.. and really.. i don't know muchabout them.. i don't game.. you would proabably want somthing like an x800... or in that range.. around $300 pci-e.. i listed only pci-e motherboards...

 

[HRslammR]

sounds like if ya do alot of photoshopping, the more RAM the better. but i agree on the X2 processors. good gaming with greater processin power

 

[The_Corinthian]

I priced it out; I think I'll go with the 500W Fortran isntead of the thermaltake, the DFI Lanparty Ultra-D, the Athlon X2 4200+, a Sapphire Radeon X850XT PCI Xpress edition, and the Patriot or Corsair memory (1GB; any advantage to the Corsair XMS rather than the patriot?)

Also, will an upgraded heatsink really be necessary?

Oh, and BTW; I have a 250GB external disk for all those TIFFs. The internal drive will mostly store my games and stuff.

 

[Zxcs]

If you aren't OCing and will be using the computer for long hours (I assume as working in photoshop can take a long time) do not get the DFI. The stability on it pretty crappy (I mean when left on for 72+ hrs), however it does have good OCing options. Get the Asus A8N instead. The A8N is far more stable than the DFI, allthough it does not have some of the OCing options the DFI does.