Yet another budget rig....

[kuabarra]

I was thinking about building a budget gaming pc, and I came up with this http://secure.newegg.com/Shopping/ShoppingCart.aspx as I want the mobo to have support for 1600 fsb in case i want a yorkfield in the future, and ddr3 support. waduya think?

[Ajmukon]

.... we can not view your shopping cart

[kuabarra]

uhhhg sorry i thought I saw someone else post one... maybe they did a print screen. Here we go:

$22.99 CD/DVD drive : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827136149

$47.99 Case: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811156136

$54.99 HDD 250 GB: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148261

$109.99 PSU 650 Watts: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139005

$69.99 p43 mobo: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157130

$84.49 pentium Wolfdale CPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116072

$169.99 Radeon 4850: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121253

$64.99 4GB DDr2 memory http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820211188

Total w/ shipping: $653.58

Good?

[callistra]

1) Get at least a 16mb cache hdd: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136161

2) Overkill on the PSU. Save yourself some money and get a cheaper one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817341010 That's still more than enough to run what you have.

3) You can afford a much better motherboard at your price point: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131299

4) For $650 you can do a hell of a lot better on the CPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115037

5) for $1 more get better ram: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231122


This is the entire list together: https://secure.newegg.com/WishList/MySavedWishDetail.aspx?ID=10736788 The motherboard and cpu have a combo discount, so make sure you take advantage of that. The entire system with shipping and including the rebates costs $651.11.

[Lostatsea3]

Pentium? Seriously?? C'mon you gotta bump that up to a C2D!! That vid card is killer and the CPU will hold you back. That mobo will work fine... The hard drive you can bump up to 500GB for maybe $10 just look on Newegg. Other than that looks good.

CPU -
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115052
I know its almost $50 more... but trust me it will be worth it in the long run. You can downgrade your PSU and save... look for a $70 one with maybe 500 watts.

[kuabarra]

Cool, thanks, although the reason I didn't go for that CPU is the only difference I saw was one megabyte more of cache and a higher fsb, which I was thinking of overclocking my fsb to even that out. But good call on the HDD for sure, I don't know what I was thinking with 250 GB! O and are Rosewill or epower good PSU brands? I opted for a corsair psu as I had one in the past and it was very reliable.

[kuabarra]

callistra, you suggestion totals out to $756 for me for some reason, although I may still be willing to go for it.

[mostafa179]

It's $756 because the rebates were not included.

[Lostatsea3]

Rosewill and ePower... well they're not the Corsair but they are reliable. Just don't go too cheap, minimum of say $70.

[callistra]

Uh no.. NOT good psus. Don't go there. Especially not for a gaming system running a higher end card.

Yes, I took into account the rebates.

[Lostatsea3]

Yeah my old comp has a Rosewill thats lasted 2 years with minimal watts lost... still running strong. I wouldn't say they are bad callistra, have you ever had one? Just look at this one... out of 13 reviewers, only 2 have given it below a 5 Egg review, one was because they had a powersurge, but the said that Rosewill was very good a replaced it. The other was because it was out of stock at the time... Don't fall for the stereotypes.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182150

[callistra]

That particular one is one of the few Solytech who can actually pull the rating, but it's still not very efficient and it's noisy. For the price you can do a lot better. Solytech has a very long and EARNED reputation. I don't base my stance on a stereotype, but fact. They are not one of the better manufacturers. They aren't marketed as such either.. they are a cheap budget alternative but at $70 plus shipping not really so cheap, once you consider all the deals you can find on higher quality parts. Glad you've had a good experience with yours at least.

[kuabarra]

Thanks guys for all of your input, but I was also thinking that would it be worth it to wait for Nehalem? I could save up more money and if I were to get a Nehalem cpu I don't think it would be "outdated" for quite some time.

[Lostatsea3]

If you can wait that long... yes. Because when Nehalem comes about, so does a new socket type, so you would have to buy a new mobo and cpu to upgrade.

[hockey man]

I don't know how "budget" friendly Nehalem will be for a the first bit it is out. The longer you wait the more hardware you'll be able to get for your money. . .but the flip side is you have to wait!

[Lostatsea3]

Good point... I haven't heard anything about Nehalem pricing. But it seems that they are going to be integrated into almost all computers, so you would think they have some low end ones?? I know they have laptop versions, as they're going in the Macbooks.

[kuabarra]

Well according to the wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nehalem_(microarchitecture)) article there will be one released late this year for $280 although it has a lower clockspeed "2.6Ghz" ans a slower quickpath connection "4.8 Gt/s as apposed to 6.4Gt/s", but I'm surely going to read up on how that slower quickpath speed effects performance as it may bottleneck the GPU. I'm not worried about a memory bottleneck though as the memory will be directly connected.. although seeing as how all nehalem chipsets supports DDR3 I will have to get that, even if it's noea necessity I don't want to hinder it's performance with a memory bottleneck. Then I have no idea how much a motherboard for one of those beasts is going to cost...

[hockey man]

$280 isn't for a CPU isn't very budget! I would just buy now. If you wait till the next model CPU is out, why not wait for the next GPU? You get stuck in a cycle really fast! I would just build now. Budget PCs are never going to be the newest hardware, because after all, they are budget pcs.