1500-2000$ Gaming Build

[Lone Apothecary]

Thanks again.

[Realityshift]

^ +1 both are good brands with awesome warrantys, EVGA is normally cheaper then XFX though. XFX does however offer a transferable double lifetime warranty so if you resell the card down the road the purchaser also gets a lifetime warranty.

[Ogdin]

I've had good experiences with BFG cards too.

[Realityshift]

BFG is nice to since they have canadian RMA offices, if something goes wrong is much easier to send it in to be fixed, EVGAs office is in california.... Cost me $25 to ship my motherboard in for repair.

[Mr. Gruntsworthy]

What about the case?

CoolerMaster has many a beastly chassis, but you could also go the Antec route. Personally I run an Antec 900 (not the revised version), but for you I'd suggest an Antec 1200 or CoolerMaster 690.

[Toronto122]

The Hard Drive: Blow the big dough and get the Western Digital WD640AAKS Black....wicked fast drive.

IF you can afford it, i7 is the way to go.

As for video cards, the 275 is a VERY well priced video card for what it can do. it's over 90% of a 285 at way less money.

[Lone Apothecary]

Ok, I have everything I'm planning on buying and I'll post it below. I used most of the components that were in the suggested build but changed a few.
NCIX.com - Buy EVGA GeForce GTX 275 633MHZ 896MB 2.26GHZ DDR3 PCI-E Dual DVI-I HDTV Out Video Card - 896-P3-1170-AR In Canada.
NCIX.com - Buy OCZ Platinum OCZ3P1600LV6GK 6GB DDR3 3X2GB DDR3-1600 PC3-12800 CL 7-7-7-24 Triple Channel Memory Kit - OCZ3P1600LV6GK In Canada.
NCIX.com - Buy Intel Core i7 920 Quad Core Processor LGA1366 2.66GHZ Bloomfield 8MB LGA1366 4.8GT/S - BX80601920 In Canada.
NCIX.com - Buy Gigabyte EX58-UD4P ATX LGA1366 X58 DDR3 3PCI-E SATA2 Sound GLAN 3-WAY CrossFireX SLI Motherboard - GA-EX58-UD4P In Canada.
NCIX.com - Buy Western Digital Caviar Black 640GB 7200RPM 32MB Dual Proc 3.5IN SATA Hard Drive OEM 5YR Mfg Warranty - WD6401AALS In Canada.
NCIX.com - Buy Corsair TX850W 850W CMPSU-850TX 12V 70A 24PIN AT Power Supply Active PFC 140M Fan Powersupply - CMPSU-850TX In Canada.
NCIX.com - Buy LG GH22NS30 Black DVD+RW 22X8X16 DVD-RW 22X6X16 DL 16X/12X 2MB SATA OEM - GH22NS30 BLACK In Canada.
NCIX.com - Buy Coolermaster Storm Scout Black ATX Tower Case 5X5.25 5X3.5INT 120MM & 140MM Red LED Fan No PSU - SGC-2000-KKN1-GP In Canada.
NCIX.com - Buy Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme 1366RT Heatpipe Cooler LGA1366 120MM Fan FDB 1600RPM 28.0DBA 63.7CFM - U120E-1366-RT In Canada.
Right now without price matching it's $1,612.25 . I'm roughly $288 below how much I had expected to spend which is great. From what I can tell it should all work properly together but I could have easily missed something that wouldn't work well together or left something out completely. I'm good with the on-board sound and I don't need any extra cooling for overclocking at the moment.

Sorry if I've been asking too many questions and thanks in advance again.

[Realityshift]

You could drop the 1200 case and go with the new Coolermaster Stormscout ;) very nice case for $140. You can never ask to many questions, we want you to get the best build you possibly can for the money =) personally id drop the G.Skill ram for some of these

NCIX.com - Buy OCZ Gold OCZ3G1600LV6GK 6GB DDR3 3X2GB DDR3-1600 PC3-12800 CL 8-8-8-24 Triple Channel Memory Kit - OCZ3G1600LV6GK In Canada.

or

NCIX.com - Buy OCZ Platinum OCZ3P1600LV6GK 6GB DDR3 3X2GB DDR3-1600 PC3-12800 CL 7-7-7-24 Triple Channel Memory Kit - OCZ3P1600LV6GK In Canada.

I dont normally like OCZ but they make some decent DDR3 kits, and those 2 kits are faster then the G.Skills as well as running much tighter timings for less money... Would allow you to save a bit more cash.

Could also save money with this motherboard...

NCIX.com - Buy Gigabyte EX58-UD3R ATX LGA1366 X58 DDR3 2PCI-E 2PCI SATA2 RAID Sound GLAN CrossFireX Motherboard - GA-EX58-UD3R In Canada.

since your only running 6gb of ram and not overclocking. Also I personally would drop the 850w PSU for a 750w or even 650w if you dont plan to go with a 2nd video card down the road, 850w is pretty overkill here.

[Lone Apothecary]

Ok I'll definitely be changing the motherboard and the ram but I might keep the power supply mainly because I might overclock it later when I actually have the computer built and spent some time using it. Plus I'll probably be using this build for a long time, so a more powerful power supply is probably better in the long run for me. I'm reading and watching some reviews on the Storm Scout right now and it seems pretty good for the price but I'm still on the fence at the moment. With the cheaper mobo and ram it's about 60$ less so thats rougly 1630$ ,still without price matching.

[Realityshift]

Even overclocked with that video card the build your propossing will not use more then 650w, max draw @ load will be around 425w or so when overclocked, just an idea to save you some money =) My 750w corsair was running dual 9800GTXs with an overclocked CPU, overclocked DDR3 ram, 9 case fans and some lights, and it didnt even get hot, I doubt it was drawing anything near its limit with that build and those 2 video cards take much more power then a GTX 275.