I looked around and in an evening with a bit of advice I layed out plans for two possible systems that I could buy depending on my budget. I'm looking to see if for the same price I could do any better for a pretty straight forward gaming PC, with light to moderate multitasking. I don't plan on doing any extreme overclocking as I have never done it before, and I can't afford to replace anything expensive that might get fried. Moderate OCing with a good margin for error would be acceptable.
The two systems share a lot of components, in fact the only real changes are the CPU and the HDD.
Shared components :
DFI nF4 Ultra-Infinity Socket 939 board for $105
eVGA GeForce 6800GT 512mb PCI-Express for $350
OCZ modstream 450w PSU for $90
OCZ Performance 2x 1GB PC 3200 RAM for $220 total
Samsung Spinpoint 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0 HD for $115
Plextor DVD burner model PX-740A/SW for $85
Audigy2 ZS sound card for $70
total of the shared components is $1050
The cheaper system has a X2 3800+ for $350 and comes to a total of $1,400
The more expensive one has an addition 74 GB Raptor HD for $180 and uses a X2 4400+ Toledo for $530 and costs $1,750.
So what changes would you make to either system without going over 1400 for the cheaper one and lets say 1800 for the more expensive one? If you can make the cheaper one less expensive, 1200 would be ideal, without sacrificing much performance that would be great.
Also, I don't know if general hardware is the place for something like this. If not, I apologize and please move it somewhere more appropriate.
The two systems share a lot of components, in fact the only real changes are the CPU and the HDD.
Shared components :
DFI nF4 Ultra-Infinity Socket 939 board for $105
eVGA GeForce 6800GT 512mb PCI-Express for $350
OCZ modstream 450w PSU for $90
OCZ Performance 2x 1GB PC 3200 RAM for $220 total
Samsung Spinpoint 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0 HD for $115
Plextor DVD burner model PX-740A/SW for $85
Audigy2 ZS sound card for $70
total of the shared components is $1050
The cheaper system has a X2 3800+ for $350 and comes to a total of $1,400
The more expensive one has an addition 74 GB Raptor HD for $180 and uses a X2 4400+ Toledo for $530 and costs $1,750.
So what changes would you make to either system without going over 1400 for the cheaper one and lets say 1800 for the more expensive one? If you can make the cheaper one less expensive, 1200 would be ideal, without sacrificing much performance that would be great.
Also, I don't know if general hardware is the place for something like this. If not, I apologize and please move it somewhere more appropriate.