Curious about Compatibility

[Diego22]

I am a first time builder and am curious about the components in this combo, first are they all compatible, and second would it be a decent gaming build.

Thanks in advance!

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[JD]

They'd work fine together but that's definitely not a gaming build.

Video card is pretty crap and the power supply in that case I wouldn't touch with a 10ft pole.

Give us a rough idea of your budget, and I'm guessing your American?

[Diego22]

Ya, I am American.

Trying not to spend more than 500 bucks, just trying to get a decent first time build to play mmorpg's without a bunch of lag and choppy frames. I have a monitor, optical drive and planning to use windows XP

[Dave510]

What size is your monitor?

Get a 4770 (about $35 more after tax since you can get them for $99.99 American) and you'll be able to handle probably every MMORPG out there.

[Chilly]

$500 after tax I'm assuming?

I just put together an awesome build for you, $438.95 USD before taxes, using all QUALITY parts(well except for the case, but, you can live without that for a while)

HEC 6C28BB8S Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
Western Digital Caviar GP WD7500AACS 750GB
XFX HD-483X-YDFC Radeon HD 4830 512MB
PC Power & Cooling Silencer PPCS420X 420W
AMD Phenom II X3 910 + ASUS M4A78 Plus 770

Let me know what you think!

[JD]

I'd go with something like this:
Phenom II X3 710 + ASUS M4A78 Combo
OCZ Blade Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR2 800
Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD6400AAKS 640GB
CORSAIR CMPSU-400CX 400W
Antec Three Hundred
XFX Radeon HD 4830 512MB or any HD4770 (when there's stock)

Total would be $505.91 before tax/shipping.

2nd option, drop the Phenom II X3 + M4A78 combo and get: E5200 + Gigabyte GA-EP43-UD3L Combo, while keeping everything else the same. That would put you at $466.89 before tax/shipping.

@Chilly, you seem to have forgotten RAM. And personally wouldn't recommend those "Green" hard drives for gaming. Also that's a 710, not 910. That PSU is decent though I went with Corsair since it has a bit more amperage along with longer cables which will be needed in the Antec 300 (or any case with the PSU in the bottom).

[Cowboy]

Both of those builds look pretty solid and I have no doubt they will do what you want them too.

In the end its up to you to decide what you want.
Pro's of the intel system is that it is a tad more power efficient and upgrades for the lga775 platform will get cheaper as it gets phased out.
Cons: its a dying platform, only dual core (subject to debate as to whether or not 3 cores is better than 2)

Pros of the AMD:
Its a 3 core box
Platform is still new
Upgradeable in the future to an am3 mobo with ddr3

Cons: more expensive, more power hungry.

Again, both will do exactly what you need them to do.
Oh and BTW, unless your planning on overclocking there's no need to buy the more expensive ram, kingston value ram will do the trick.

another note: hard drives really have no impact on gaming performance, just load times.
I personally prefer capacity over the extra 10-50ms gained from a faster drive.

[JD]

Originally Posted by Cowboy

Oh and BTW, unless your planning on overclocking there's no need to buy the more expensive ram, kingston value ram will do the trick.

That OCZ Blade stuff is actually nearly the cheapest. The lowest is $40.99 but some unknown AllComponents brand (lol?), the decent brands are $44.99 with CAS 5 timings, so for $2 more you get top quality RAM with CAS 4 timings. Worth it IMO. And after the $10 MIR, it's actually the cheapest DDR2-800 4GB kit.

[clone63]

The ECS motherboard in that combo looks to be buggy, according to reviewers anyway.