Building my first computer - Help and suggestions

[Waldie]

Hey all, I'm brand new to the site, and to computer building. I'm just wrapping up my second year of university, and as soon as I make enough money in the first little bit of the summer I'm planning on building a computer that is good enough to game on with no troubles and should last me at least a few years with minimal upgrades... Once I graduate from school and start earning a salary I can think of building a respectable system on the top of the line. For right now I just want a good gaming PC that's inexpensive, if I can keep my budget below $1000 that would be perfect. I don't plan on overclocking, either, at least not for a good long while.

From poking around these forums and reading processor reviews it seems like I don't need to go to an i7 or even a quad for gaming, so below is what I had in mind, any suggestions or feedback would be greatly appreciated, I've only just started reading up on building computers and the different components maybe a week ago. Seems to me there's no point spending the extra cash on a LGA1366 and Tri-channel RAM setup just yet.

Processor:
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Dual Core Processor LGA775 3.0GHZ Wolfdale 1333FSB 6MB Retail

Motherboard:
EVGA nForce 750I SLI Ftw LGA775 ATX DDR2 2PCI-E16 1PCI-E1 2PCI SATA RAID Sound GBLAN Motherboard

Video Card:
EVGA E-GEFORCE 9800GT 55NM 600MHZ 512MB 1.8GHZ 256BIT GDDR3 Dual DVI-I HDCP HDTV Out Video Card

Memory:
G.SKILL F2-8000CL5D-4GBPQ PC2-8000 4GB 2X2GB DDR2-1000 CL5-5-5-15 240PIN Dual Channel Memory Kit

Hard Drive:
Western Digital SE16 500GB SATA2 7200RPM 16MB Cache 8.9MS NCQ Hard Drive OEM 3YR MFR Warranty

Power Supply:
Corsair TX650W 650W Atx 12V 52A 24PIN Atx Power Supply Active Pfc 120MM Fan

Case:
Coolermaster CM 690 Mid Tower Black ATX Case 5X5.25 5X3.5INT No PS Front USB Sound Firewire & eSATA

[geokilla]

First off, remember to price match your parts. Second, since summer is a couple months away, you may wanna do research now to get an idea of what you want to purchase, but by the time you will purchase you'll want to research again to see what will get you the best bang for buck. But then you're in university so your summer basically starts within a few weeks....>.<

Does your $1000 budget include a monitor? What resolution are you gaming at? If you game at 1680X1050, I recommend you something similar to the NVIDIA 9800GTX+/GTS250, or the ATI 4830.

Overall, what you picked out looks good. I would swap the motherboard out for a P45 motherboard though. If you really don't plan on overclocking, then look into P43 motherboards. Some good brands include ASUS and Gigabyte.

For around $70, you can get a WD 640GB hard drive. These are faster, have more storage capacity, and are cheaper than the WD 500GB you got there.

Oh and don't forget to check out NCIX's weekly specials. Happy building!

[rjbarker]

^ +1 to everything Geokilla pointed out!!!

[Realityshift]

The above build looks good to me, the 750i FTW is a great motherboard if your planning on running SLI, 9800GTs would probubly do pretty well in SLI although I prefer 9800GTXs/GTS 250s. You shouldnt have to much trouble overclocking that E8400 on a 750i FTW, they should be able to handle atleast 500fsb with little issue. If however you arent planning on going SLI in the future by all means go with something like the P5Q Pro, which NCIX has with free shipping on the entire order, they over clock a bit better then the nvidia chipsets from what im told.

+1 on geos sudgestion on the hard drives, the 640 16mb cache is faster then the 500gb, but if you can make room in your budget for the 640 black then you have yourself the fastest 7200 RPM hard drive around ;) plus a 5 year warranty.

I just ordered the PC in my sig from directcanada and they where awesome to me, I didnt have any problems other then they didnt send me my video card, but I got ahold of them the next buisness day and they had my video card shipped to me within 3 days.

Over all nice build.

[JD]

Just to throw it into the mix, how about a Phenom II X4 920? Then you can have a quad-core processor for roughly the same price. Also put in a far better video card. Though I changed the case since the 300 is cheaper.

Newegg.ca - AMD Phenom II X4 920 2.8GHz
Newegg.ca - GIGABYTE GA-MA790X-UD4P
Newegg.ca - G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1000
Newegg.ca - SAPPHIRE 100259-1GL Radeon HD 4870 1GB
Newegg.ca - Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD6400AAKS 640GB
Newegg.ca - CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX (This was cheaper than the 650W on Newegg, though 650W is fine)
Newegg.ca - Antec Three Hundred

Total: $926.44 (before taxes/shipping)

Also Newegg.ca probably isn't the cheapest site for everything, just that their site is far easier to use.

[Realityshift]

X3 would be nice with a 4870/GTX 260 216 =)

[crazyhorsejohnny]

Stick with Intel. And 690 is good choice. Lot more room than 300.

[mo' power]

The 690 is a good case. However, the only reason I bought mine is because it was on sale. I should have gone with the 300. It has better cable management.

[Realityshift]

The 690 is a good case. However, the only reason I bought mine is because it was on sale. I should have gone with the 300. It has better cable management.

How pray tell does the 300 have better cable management then the 690? There isnt even a hole behind the PSU to run wires to the back of the case? CM-690 was pretty easy to manage my cables and I had the ultra long ones on the TX750 to deal with...

+1 for CM 690, awesome case, and WAY nicer then a 300.

[JD]

Originally Posted by crazyhorsejohnny

Stick with Intel. And 690 is good choice. Lot more room than 300.

Why? X4 920 is faster due to the fact that it has more cores and direct memory access and it doesn't cost anymore than a E8400 setup. Also the OP said he's not OC'ing either and that's really what the E8400 is known for.