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$1000 Dollar Budget: What to build?

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Highroller

Registered
Joined
Oct 7, 2005
All right, I'm pretty new to building my own computer. Let me know if this would be a decent setup(and if all parts would work together!?) and what I could do differently. Since I've only got a grand, here's what I was thinking:

Case: Sunbeam Acrylic w/ 500 W PSU- $200
CPU: AMD 3700+ San Diego 64- $274
Motherboard: Asus A8n-SLI Deluxe- $165
Graphics Card: ATI All-in-wonder 9600- $129
DVD Burner: Plextor IDE- $80
RAM: Corsair 1gb (2 x 512)- $75
Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda 7200.8, 250GB- $107

Also, I'd like to head towards oc'ing in the future, would these parts be good for that? Thanks.
 
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Case: ??? - $200
CPU - AMD64 3000+ $145 - If you're Oc'ing save some money here they'll get similar clocks
Motherboard - DFI nF4 Ultra D $130 - Best OC'rs, no point in SLI if you're getting an ATi Card
Graphics Card - X800GTO2 I believe they can be had for $230 should flash to 850XT
DVD Burner - NEC $50 give or take a couple dollars - Dont pay extra for the name plextor NEC's are great.
RAM - OCZ Plats Rev 2 $155
Hard drive - That one should be fine.

Total: $1017
 
Get a good case and a good PSU. I also see no reason to spend $200. I would bump the CPU up to a 3800 X2. Get rid of the SLI board and just buy a Epox NF4 Ultra board. Try to get a better video card. Don't spend so much on a DVD burner.
 
Uhm, your headed in the right direction, sorta. But I'd change...just about everything you picked, lol. Maybe not the Corsair Value Ram, but if you plan to OC, you'll need something better then that.

First I'll critize your case and PSU choice. I'd say NEVER get the case+psu combos if your planning to OCing, they usually include some pretty crappy PSUs, it might be fine for people who don't do anything extreme with their computer, but it's usually not even up to par for a OC. I'd say, with a $1000 budget, get a PSU from either Forton or OCZ. Namely the AX500-As from Forton, one of the most rock stable PSUs, great for OCing. For the case, I'd recommend to be cheap and get like a $50 case, just find one with some good case fan slots and your fine.

Next would be the CPU. The 3700+ is great for it's price and such, but since your running on a $1000 budget, I'd say you can save a lot by dropping to a 3000+ and use the money on the other parts. Both the 3000+ and 3700+ top out at about 2.7ghz max OC on air. The only differences between the two cores are the cache, 3000+ has 512KB of L2 Cache, while the 3700+ has 1MB of L2 Cache. And the 3700+ has a higher multiplier then the 3000+, which allows for easier OCing, but regardless of that, both should hit the same speeds on air cooling, if you use more extreme cooling, the 3700+ can go much higher. So I'd say it's not worth paying the $100+ for the extra cache and multiplier, maybe the cache can give you 2-3fps and a few seconds in load times in some cases, but not worth the extra cost.

Next is the motherboard. That's a pretty expensive A8N Deluxe, if you search around, you can most likely find cheaper. Anyways, if you plan on OCing at all, I recommend getting the DFI LanParty UT NF4 Ultra-D($123.99), that's the best OCing board out there, because it runs great with high voltage ram and such. The ASUS ones aren't too great at OCing, most only get about 300mhz-400mhz out of it, some higher or lower depending on how lucky you are.
You could also consider the EPoX EP-9NPA+Ultra ($97.99), because the DFI is quite troublesome and might require some tweaking for it to work well. The Epox is probably the second best OCing motherboard, and not nearly as troublesome as the DFI.

Maybe you'd want a better video card? If your planning on gaming, I'd highly recommend a better video card. But for your budget, maybe a 6600GT or 6800 should suffice. Maybe even the 6800GT.

I'd recommend a different DVD burner. Plextor makes pretty good ones sometimes, but it's way overpriced. You can get a much better BenQ one or NEC one at $40 and it's much faster then the Plextor one.

If your planning on OCing, you'd need some better ram then Corsair 2x512MB Value Ram. Value ram is great for not OCing and just regular using it, but you'll need some better ram, maybe some higher voltage ones for the DFI.

I'd recommend a different brand 16MB Cache HDD for the same price and would perform much better then the one you choose.

Here's my recommendations:
EPoX EP-9NPA+Ultra Motherboard $97.99
OR
DFI LanParty UT NF4 Ultra-D Motherboard $123.99

Antec P180 $96.31
AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Processor $142.99
Maxtor DiamondMax Plus10 250GB $89.99
Forton AX500-A $91
OCZ 2x512MBGB PC3200 Platinum Revision 2 $159.00
eVGA GeForce 6800 GT $289.00

Total: $991

Well it does depend on how much gaming/graphic intentsive usage you use for the graphics card, because sometimes even a 6600GT may be good enough for you.
 
All right, how about if I modify my budget up to 1300 or so and go like this:

Case: $60
PSU: FSP AX500-A 500 w- $91
CPU: AMD 3800 + X2- $347
MOBO: Epox EP-9NPa + Ultra- $98
Graphics Card: ATI-x800XL-$330 (Chose this so I can have a tv tuner)
Ram: OCZ 2 GB DDR-$257
Hard Drive: Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 10 250 GB-$90

Total: $1273.

Also, all these prices are off newegg. Is there another place that is better?
Thanks again.
 
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i like the idea of the 2gbs of ram really well. i know how it was when i went to 2gbs from 1 in games like bf2.....it made an extreme difference. i also imagine soon to be released games like quake 4 and fear will most likely benefit from 2gbs. really the only thing i would change is that video card. i would pay a lot less and get that gto2 that everyone is talking about right now. its basically a super x850xt after you flash to 16 pipes and oc. you can read about the card here: http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=415860 good luck with your build and seriously consider that gto2.....for the price its amazing!
 
Not sure how much faster (or not) the OCZ is, but you can get a 2GB dual channel kit of PQI DDR400 3-4-4-8 for $227, and it's got a $30 MIR, too, so $197.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820141227

What OS are you going to be running? If you're on Linux, I'd suggest an nVidia card for better driver support... If you have XP Media Center then you could get an nVidia and an NVTV card for the TV tuner.
 
Highroller said:
Also, all these prices are off newegg. Is there another place that is better?
Thanks again.

I still check Newegg first, but have been looking towards ZipZoomFly.com more as of late. Most items have a better price than that of Newegg, plus ZZF has free 2-day shipping on almost everything.

I used to pay a little more for Newegg when their service was far and beyond everyone elses, but that seems to be slipping a bit the past few months. No longer worth the premium to me - at least not in comparison to ZZF and a couple other vendors I normally shop with.
 
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