mejiman89

An Intel Based Alternative: from newegg.com MOBO $205 ASUS P5WD2 Premium ATX Intel Motherboard best chipset out right now... only about $50 more than older 945p chipset... worth it. I like ASUS- they have the best manuals for the build, and nice features. This mobo has everything you could ever need for an intel based pc. For mobos just make sure the cpu socket matches the cpu. ATX is the current standard. Don't buy anything but ATX. CPU $320 Intel Pentium D 830 800MHz FSB LGA 775 Dual Core, best processor for money... if you are building a future proof computer, you have to go with a dual core processor. AMD x2s are better but cost around $200 more last time i checked. Graphics Card $140 - 285 eVGA 128-P2-N368-TX Geforce 6600GT 128MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 eVGA 256-P2-N376-AX Geforce 6800GT 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 either graphic card is a good buy and if you have the money go with the more expensive 256mb model even 512mb if you wanna go all out. eVGA is a solid video card brand in my opinion. Geforce 6800 is good gpu. Def buy a graphic card that is "PCI express". Anything with 128-256mb memory is solid Memory $175 CORSAIR ValueSelect 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) Unbuffered System Memory Model VS2GBKIT667D2 the mobo I recommended supports up to 4 sticks of ddr2 ram. If you can afford more than 2 sticks go for it. You can never have too much ram. DDR2 667 ram is the best bang for the buck. Corsair is a pretty reliable brand and you shouldn't have any comflicts with asus mobos. Hard Drive $105 - $155 Western Digital Caviar SE WD2500JS 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM SATA II will be the next standard for hard drives, the drive above is SATA II 3.0gb/s. Although the Raptor drive mentioned earlier in this post is fast (and also currently on sale on newegg), its a little pricey ($1.80 per gb). Its tempting as a boot drive, but not much else in my opinion. Anything SATA II is a pretty good buy. You might also want to look into RAID configurations (RAID-0, RAID-1), which is basically linking hard drives. My computer has 2 of the above drives in RAID-0. PSU $65 Antec SmartPower 2.0 SP-500 ATX12V 500W PSU's are not the biggest deal, but for gaming pcs you generally want like 450-550 watts. I bought the above PSU. It's 500 watts and provides more than enough power for me. Make sure the power supply is ATX... anything else is crap. DRIVE $60 Sony DRU810A / 16x8x16x DVD+RW / 16x6x16x DVD-RW / 8x DVDÃÆââ¬Å¡ÃâñR DL I just bought this drive a week ago from Tigerdirect.com. It does everything. THeres a lot of cheap DVD burners out there... don't go cheap. This is a reasonably priced, feature packed DVD burner. CASE $50-150 really whatever you like. I bought an aluminum coolermaster case. I don't like the plastic cases with windows. Aluminum cases look good and are a big plus when it comes to cooling. SOME NOTES -Most mobos have integrated sound, works fine for me. If you want to go out and buy a creative card go ahead. Not necessary though. -You might want to get a cheap floppy drive for boot disks. -I'm afraid I can't help with speakers and monitor. I'm not really into those. Get a flat panel LCD with decent frame refresh rates, 17in is good. For speakers do what you can. - Get as many case fans as your case can accomodate, If noise bothers you, look into a control panel (slides into a 5.25" bay). - If you want to watercool your CPU (overclocked) look at coolermaster's aquagate. I don't own one but I've heard good things. - Computers suck... they become obsolete 2 months after you buy them. To future proof your pc for the next 6 months or so: *Dual Core Processor *DDR2 Ram (667 at least) *PCI express graphics card (most memory you can afford) *SATA II hard drive. *Proper cooling will extend the life of your CPU - Things that will come out this year * New Intel 965x chipset in July * New Intel Conroe dual core in July * Blu-Ray DVD-- Tobisha HDDVD? burners? maybe in dec but pricey * Windows Vista in Dec (original release date August 2005 :lol: ) * LCD prices will fall sometime? * DDR2 prices will fall further in spring * AMD will release new chipset supporting DDR2 memory in early 2006 Total Price: $1365 using high estimates for each component (price doesn't include monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, fans, etc.) For some reason this pc came out cheap? I hope i didn't leave out any key components. Maybe because others went for the pricey video cards. Oh well, hope I was of help. http://www.pcmech.com/byopc