Need Help building system

[Bizznaatch]

Hey All,

Looking to build a new system.....I'm wanting to finally make the jump to dual-core (currently running an athlon XP!!) and also to PCIe.....I do a lot of gaming and also video editing. Looking to spend about a grand or so and was wondering if anyone can help me piece something together? Thanks

 

[zone_86]

Very limited budget for what you like to do.I would probably go with an E6400, a Biostar 965 Intel board, and a single 250GB WD hard drive (for now and add more later) and and X1950 Pro, 2GB of Corsair 1.8v 12-5-5-5 memory. However if you're gaming on a CRT still and don't mind sticking with it you could drop down to an EVGA 7900GS with a Biostar 945 series Intel board (about $78.00 and very stable just not a great overclocker), and a Rosewill case with a 550 Sunbeam PSU. That might be slighly over a grand with a 7900GS from newegg. I have done about 25'ish budget builds just like this and they all went very smoothly. Only one bad mainboard out of the lot so far. Biostar makes incredibly stable mainboards.

 

[Bizznaatch]

Say I pump up what I'm willing to spend. What enhancements can I make??

 

[Dangman]

A couple of questions need to be answered first:

1) Do you need to buy a new OS?
2) Is the $1000 with everything included? Like case, power supply, DVD burner, LCD, OS, etc? Or is the $1000 for just the PC itself like power supply, mobo, CPU, ram, hard drive, video card and DVD burner?

 

[engiNURD]

1K is a great budget, assuming you don't need a new monitor or OS. Will you be overclocking?

$221 - Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 Conroe 2.13GHz
$123 - Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 Socket T (LGA 775) Intel P965 Express
$169 - G.Skill 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2-800 F2-6400CL5D-2GBNQ
$157 - MSI RX1950PRO-TD256E Radeon X1950PRO 256MB
$90 - Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3320620AS 320GB 7200RPM SATA300 16MB Cache
$64 - Enhance ENP-5150G 500W PSU
$30 - Cooler Master RC-534-KWN1 Black Centurion Steel Mid Tower ATX Case w/ Side Window
$32 - Lite-On 16X DVD±R DVD Burner Black SATA SH-16A7S-05
$6 - Yate Loon D12SL-12 120mm black low speed fan 47CFM 28DBA
=======
$892 + tax and shipping

If you'll be overclocking, go for these as well:
$40 - Scythe SCNJ-1100P Ninja Plus Rev.B 120mm CPU HSF
$6 - Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound 3.5g (Free First Class Shipping)
And this ram instead:
$215 - Patriot eXtreme Performance 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2-800 PDC22G6400LLK ($50MIR)

If you want to play DX10 games, then you need to add more cash to that budget and get a DX10 card, like the 8800GTS:
$290 - eVGA 320-P2-N811-AR GeForce 8800GTS 320MB ($20MIR)
$390 - eVGA 640-P2-N821-AR GeForce 8800GTS 640MB ($30MIR)

 

[zone_86]

Great list from above