First Build - Need Suggestions!

kstratton

New Member
Here goes...I'm building a computer for the first time. The last two I've had were both 'hand-me-downs' from my family. I've been reading articles, and doing some research and I've basically found what I want. As far as I can tell everything should work together; however it's a bit out of my price range. If anyone could offer suggestions on how to lessen the price of this a bit while keeping the performance basically the same it'd be greatly appreciated!

I'm buying all my stuff from Newegg, here's the links:

Case: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16811213006
Vid Card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16814150108
PSU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16817171001
Cooling: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16835106043
RAM: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16820141200
Motherboard: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16813121288
Processor: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16819116213

The case comes with a 400W power supply, but it's cheap and only has 17A on the 12V line and there's a lot of complaints about it going dead. Doesn't come with any fans, but has lots of ventilation.

Guess I should state my budget: $1,000 USD. This is about 1027 with shipping.

I also wanted to get a UPS and a surge protector.

I already have a 120g HD, Dual layer DVD-RW, CD-RW, and a monitor.
 
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what this for? im guessing its giong to be for gaming, and if your giong to be doing almost all gaming and very little other things, i would go with the AMD X2 series, much better for gaming then the Pentium D. Also much cooler and quieter.
 
Here's what I'll be using it for: Rendering in Maya, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, and gaming. AMD x2 are probably out of my price range, plus I heard AMD's were for gaming, but Pentium D worked better for multitasking, including rendering in Maya.
 
There are a lot of cheaper mobo's out there, Asus, Abit and MSI.
Scale down your graphics card to a 6600GT or a 6800GT.
Get better quality RAM, OCZ, Geil, Crucial, Corsair.
 
I don't really want to get a lesser graphics card (the same card, or an equivilant at a lesser price would be nice though!), since I'll be doing a lot of graphics-intensive stuff (Maya, gaming).

Would a cheaper motherboard affect performance much?
 
Well the RAM is better. The 7800 is a great card just a bit spendy. Seems you have gotten the cost down as far as you can. The exception is the mobo. There are quite a lot of socket t mobo's out there for under $100 so a little savings. The mobo's from Abit, Asus and MSI will actually be a bit faster and have the ability to o/c, no performance loss at all.
 
are you sure you dont wana get a fan or two? 7800's run pretty hot and with all those stuff in the case it can hurt to have a fan or two, plus they're really cheap.
 
Did any one else look at the mobo pic? It seems that the NorthBridge HS is a bit close to the PCI-E slot, It looks as if you might run in to problems with some HSF for the GPU with the North Bridge HS that close. Some one else take a look...
 
i think someone else had that problem on this site.... not with the same stuff though.... or was i reading a review somewhere? i dunno.... im lost....... mommy........
 
Guess I should state my budget: $1,000 USD
Here's what I'll be using it for: Rendering in Maya, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, and gaming. AMD x2 are probably out of my price range, plus I heard AMD's were for gaming, but Pentium D worked better for multitasking, including rendering in Maya.

- AMD Athlon64 X2 3800 [ADA3800DAA5BV, 350USD]
- MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum [100USD after 25USD MIR]
- PNY Optima 2x512 [CL2.5, 65USD after 20USD MIR]
- AOpen 6800GT [280USD]
- WD 250GB [16MB SATA 3.0Gb/s, 120USD]
- NEC 3540 [40USD]
- XClio 450W [12V@32A, 50USD]
Subtotal = 1005USD
 
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