build me a computer 800-1000 dollar budget

[rocky 59 5,000+ posts]

tigerdirect.com is the best out there imo

 

[Hades2004 10+ year member]

I would go with a Enermax, Fortron or OCZ PSU, and atleast a 480watts or higher

Either the DFI Expert or the ASUS SLI16 motherboard.

Go with the 3800+ Dual Core

OCZ memory atleast a gig

an eVGA Geforce 7800GT

Hard Drive, I choose what ever is cheaper

As for the cd-rom's and that I don't know what to tell you get, cause I only have xperence with Lite-on and they worked well for me

 

[Randy Savage 5,000+ posts]

You have a point, but I still think that if he's going to do a gaming PC, he should spend the extra $200-$250 and get something that will blow a $1000 system away.
He could still save a little $$$ by going with a pair of 80 GB drives (-$30/drive) or just one 80 GB drive ($65 instead of $180), going with a cheaper motherboard (-$40), going with Kingston ValuRAM (-$10) and going with a cheaper power supply (-$30)

That would bring mine down to $980 + case + optical drive

I'd say do a 6800GT and put the $100 difference back into something else. What are the specs on the Kingston RAM?

 

[ndnbolla 10+ year member]

tigerdirect.com is the best out there imo

although they have a wider range of products, I would have to go with newegg.com when it comes to computer parts.

quick shipping with reliable customerservice and low prices.

 

[Scoobydoo 5,000+ posts]

newegg or zip zoom fly is the place to buy your stuff

if it's a gaming pc then cpu, video card and ram performance is going to be more important that hard drive performance, definately go top of the line on those and get 2gb of ram, may also think about doing some minor overclocking

i say get a single 250gb drive(only about $120)and partition it 80%/20%, the smaller partiton is the primary where the OS and games are installed and the larger is the extended partition when you store/backup all your games, music, movies, etc. you could do that with the 2 120's as well in a master/slave format

the reason to do this is if the install does get corrupt you just reinstall the OS and games without losing an data. i'm not a gamer but i reinstall about every 6 months just to clean out all the junk left over by programs, browsing and other random crap

 

[Hundreth 10+ year member]

if it's a gaming pc then cpu, video card and ram performance

Concentrate on that.

 

[HiAmplidude 10+ year member]

is he going with an opensource Linux OS or bootlegging WinXP Pro? ... or transferring his existing license?

There's a lot to this and you're not going to get $3000 worth of performance out of a $1000 PC, but the difference will be hardly noticeable (without benchmarking programs) if done right. 50 frames/sec @ 1280x1024 looks the same as 120 fps. With the right proc' and vid combo, you'll have your gaming performance -- they work together so don't skimp too much on one to beef up the other beyond reason. RAM may improve some aspects of loads but you want a lot of it so big games don't have to cache the hard drive often if ever, and a fast hard drive will lower load times. The moboard (ASUS is my personal preference) will improve stability of the overall system and can allow for newbie easy low-level overclocking, and the power supply ties it all together -- without absolutely stable voltage rails and lots of amperage you can experience everything from artifacts in intense games to complete shutdowns for no apparent reason not to mention increasing the likelihood of component failures (hdd's, etc). Optical drive is your choice. Plextor is arguably the best you can get, but very close speeds at a third the cost can be seen with the very reliable NEC units -- Sony isn't bad either.

Oh, and you don't really need a RAID0 -- that can double speeds in certain functions, but as already mentioned also doubles your potential for total data failure. If you go with a very fast single drive you can save a bit of money and hardly notice a performance difference at all, like the Hitachi Deskstar T7k250 250GB 8MB cache and Western Digital's newest SE 16 400GB with 16 MB cache. Both are 7200 RPM with almost unheard of access times and transfer rates (SCSI level even). RAID1 will cut usable space in half but does provide some data integrity if a drive fails, but it won't do anything for you if a glitch freaks out the RAID controller and you lose all the data even without a disk failure (happened plenty of times in my business). RAID1 also slows down write times in order for the parity information to be calculated and written, but read times improve a bit (over single drive, in most cases).

 

[HiAmplidude 10+ year member]

We should have a "post your computer(s) (if it's at least decent)" thread. Would that be a re-post? Might be interesting to see what some folks are running.

 

[Randy Savage 5,000+ posts]

I just built my machine about 2 months ago and I'm already upgrading some things on it lol //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif

 

[HiAmplidude 10+ year member]

I just upgraded my system this summer and it's already hurtin' for a whole new moboard, proc, RAM, vid upgrade *lol*... I'll wait for some more turns of events in technology to happen first though.

 

[noob with an RS 10+ year member]

Plextor's lack of bitsetting = t3h l0se
I personally use Lite-On ... most of the newer ones convert DVD+Rs to DVD-ROM by default ...

Your computer should never be dropping below 60 fps ...

my plextor has bit setting.. the PX-716A.. i write DVD-ROMs all the time.

 

[sumone 10+ year member]

Some expensive as shit in this thread...

Me, I just build computers that "work".

1. some msi mobo w/ athlon xp processor, onboard lan, vga, & sound = $130

2. some case w/psu off ebay = $50

3. already had compatible memory. don't care about the type; it just works.

4. some 19" crt monitor off ebay = $50

5. usb keyboard/mouse $25

6. 80gb hard drive = $30

7. dvd burner = $40

8. floppy disk drives are obsolete it seems nowadays so no need for that.

9. software = free. I either steal from my job or download.

Total: $325 WOW!

 

[sumone 10+ year member]

I game...Pong (in MS-DOS, of course) is in heavy rotation!