Building my first Gaming PC

[shiek23]

I am going to be building my first lower end somewhat budget pc (under 1k)and was looking for some feedback. Take a look at what I have picked out and let me know what you think. Any and all thoughts are welcome. Thanks for the help!


PC Case-RaidMax Aztec ATX
Power Supply-Rosewill RX750-D-B ATX12V 750W
Processor-Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 Conroe 2.66GHz
Mobo-ASUS P5N-E SLI LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 650i SLI ATX
Memory-G.SKILL 2GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 X2
Video Card-EVGA GeForce 8800GTS 320MB 320-bit GDDR3
Hard Drive-Seagate Barracuda 250GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb
CD/DVD-LG Black 20X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW
Sound Card-Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer 7.1

[saphalline]

PSU is overkill, unless you're planning to go SLI. A nice 550-650W unit from Thermaltake or Seasonic or OCZ/PC Power & Cooling would be plenty.

Mobo's chipset is old news. Intel's P35 chipset should be your choice on a budget. Better support for Penryn and 45nm and all that. No SLI possibilities, though.

RAM is adequate but I do not favor G.Skill as a manufacturer. I prefer Corsair, Crucial/Micron, Kingston, or Patriot. Others have their own preferences.

Vid card is a poor choice. Radeon HD 3850 or GeForce 8800 GT 512MB, possibly up to a GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB. If you'll be gaming, spend the most on your vid card!

HDD is a bit on the small side, but perfectly adequate in terms of performance.

OS? WinXP? Vista? Shooting for Crysis? CoD4?

[odannyboy000]

I'd get 4GB of Ram (2x2gb kit) You can pick one up for not much more than 2gb. 114 Dollars on Newegg for a lot of ddr2 800 models.

[shiek23]

I have decided to go with a EVGA GeForce 8800GTS SSC 640MB 320-bit GDDR3 video card instead of the previously posted one. Would that be adequate?

Also, I am going with the two 2 gig sticks, sorry if the post wasnt cleared. I figured I would get the two 2 gig sticks so that if I want to buy two more I can have 8 gigs of mem.

And yes, I am thinking maybe going to SLI at some point in the future.

[beterthanlife]

I would strongly recommend purchasing 2 SATA hard drives (preferably identical) so you can get a RAID array going. This can make a sizeable performance difference.

[shiek23]

What exactly is a "RAID array" and what does it do/how does it increase performance?

[rond36]

Redundant Arrays of Independent (or Inexpensive) Disks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

[stepfinder]

8800GTS is no so good as the 8800GT in gaming performance.

[rond36]

stepfinder;
That depends on which 8800GTS you are talking about, the 8800GTS G80 PCI-E 1.1 with a 90nm GPU
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130305
That card is so last year! It gets its butt kicked by the new 8800GT G92 cards that cost $150 less.

or the new 8800GTS G92 PCI-E 2.0 with a 65nm GPU
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130312

If both cards have the new G92 GPU and 512MB GDDR3 the GTS is faster then the GT
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3175&p=4

The G92 GTX and Ultra cards are not out yet but I am sure they will be faster then their G80 counterparts.