[IamPWNT]

I am going to be upgrading next month with price drops on Intel CPU's and really need some advice. I am looking for somewhat of a budget OC'er and gamer and really will be only upgrading Mobo, CPU, PSU, and Video Card. What I am really lost on is mobo selection, and which CPU will yield the best performance vs. value. For video card I am pretty much set on getting a 8800 GTS 320mb from Evga (I play mostly at 1024x768 w/2Qs AA and 4x Ansio), but I may get a 640mb if their prices drop too and it makes sense price wise. I really don't want to go over $300 for the mobo/cpu combo. I want something that will be very stable, OC well and full ATX. I don't really think I will do SLI again as I have found it more trouble than it's worth with my 7900's. I may eventually go water cooling, but for now my Zalman 9700 will have to do the sir cooling with a OC. I also would like a recommendation on a solid PSU with modular cables that will run this system with 2x WD SATAII 250gb drives in RAID 0, and two SATA DVD/RW drives.

So for CPU best OC for least money?
Best mobo OC'er and stable for money?
Best modular PSU to handle it all for money?

Thanks for the help guys, I'm sure you get tired of us nubs asking all these questions.

[anothermbdusted]

best OC cpu from my understanding is the e6400 which after the price suts should be nice and cheap

as for the mobo look into abit and asus boards as they are everywhere on this board

other then that please read other posts as there are alot of others like this posted very recently in these forums

[Surfrider77]

Keep an eye out in the for sale section of the message board.

You may find a CPU / MB combo to suit your needs. As the previous poster stated, there will be an official Intel pricecut in April if youre looking at buying new. The E6400 sounds like your best bet, but the E6600 will come down to $217 and offers 4M of cache, where your E6400 has only 2M.

[IamPWNT]

Originally Posted by Surfrider77

Keep an eye out in the for sale section of the message board.

You may find a CPU / MB combo to suit your needs. As the previous poster stated, there will be an official Intel pricecut in April if youre looking at buying new. The E6400 sounds like your best bet, but the E6600 will come down to $217 and offers 4M of cache, where your E6400 has only 2M.

Yeah unfortunately I can't even look/buy/sell in the classifieds because I am a n00b, somethign about 100 posts to access (which is understandable). But the 6600 for $217 I may have to adjust my budget a little bit as I may go ahead and get that. Thanks guys, I found it hard to look thru all of the mobo posts (I did try), because there are so many, but I will admit I was being lazy, so I will do some more searches here. Again thanks.