$1600 budget for gaming rig

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lordacro

New Member
Yes, I have $1600 to spend on a decent gaming desktop. I'm alright with computers but not an expert by any means. I want to build a gaming machine around a GTX video card (or a 640MB GTS if it's too expensive)

The machine MUST have a TV tuner with PVR functions (and remote), to record off of standard cable TV. I need the computer to have composite inputs as well. I'm pretty set on quad core processor as well.

Other than that stuff, I'm lost. Case/power supply? mobo? I know I want 2gb of RAM. Hard drive should be 500GB+. OS? (I'm assuming 64-bit OS would be best but idk if XP or Vista would be better)

Is this possible with $1600? Please suggest a build, I have no idea where to start as far as part compatibility and stuff. Try to include every single thing I'd need to completely build the machine. (Also, can anyone point me to a good $300-$400 monitor?)

Thanks!
 
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lordacro

New Member
Okay. I've messed around with my budget a bit and made some changes. Don't worry about the $1600 limit for now.

If I bought all these:
computer.jpg


plus the power supply mentioned above, is that all I need to build a functional gaming comp? Are there any issues with compatibility or anything? Any issues I might experience using a 64 bit os? I need to know these things before blowing two grand. Thanks for your input!!

Edit: to save $$ i might go back to the 500GB hd, but i wanna try to keep 4GB ram.
 
chupacabra

chupacabra

New Member
There isn't hardware issues but i do think that 4gb is kinda of an overkill but well it's up to you and yes that's pretty much what you need, the rest comes with the case and the components
 
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XanderCage

New Member
well company of heroes' performance increases by about 5-10 fps per gig of ram added, or atleast i noticed that on my rig. It's heavy on ram.
 
hermeslyre

hermeslyre

VIP Member
COH uses 930Mb's of RAM on my system, bringing the total amount of used RAM to around 1300Mb. Adding a Gb of RAM to a 1 Gb system will see an improvement but keep in mind it doesn't need more than a Gig of RAM.. A three or four Gb system will have no performance increaes in this app.
 
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lordacro

New Member
Okay, so I know 4GB ram is overkill (for now) but I've had the experience that just playing WoW on low settings on my laptop (think 128 shared ATI xpress) plus having itunes and firefox running on xp brings me up to 1.3gb used (yes, I know the shared video memory uses the ram too but still) so I wanted to have over 2gb, plus be on track to expand past 4gb in the future. (And I have the $$ to do it)

This rig has to last me a while. Did anyone wanna try to recommend a good TV tuner? How do most of the internal ones plug in... PCI or PCIx16? Do they work with Vista premium as far as PVR capabilities or do they come with better software? See any space or video card issues? The case I saw looks pretty roomy though.

I think I will go with the WD 750gb hd that was mentioned. I didn't know WD was a good brand but thanks for the tip.
 
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Archiecrider

New Member
well you will definatly have a great computer you would spend double of what i had. and you can play games that are a bit more i tense then wow to i suppose. oh and by the way welcome to computer fourm
 
ETSA

ETSA

New Member
With 64bit Vista OEM, add 100.00, puts you right over the 1600.00 mark..
 
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lordacro

New Member
hey, what if I replace the 22" monitor with a 27" LCD that has PC input? If I do that i'll probably lower the RAM to 2gb but I should be ok with the money. Any thoughts? How well does that do?
 
maroon1

maroon1

New Member
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lordacro

New Member
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