I've been running a p4 3.2ghz extreme for about 5 years now - 4x512mb ddr400 ram, 15 hard drives (6 internal, rest external).
I'm coming very close to my physical memory limit, with firefox memory leakage, video encoding, photoshop, virtualdub, etc. I'm looking for something that will handle everything I'm doing atm very well, and possibly a good gaming rig. As a side-note, when buying games, I always try and have 4x the system requirements, so I know it will run well, so I figured that my components such as ram and cpu should be at least 4x the capacity of my current ones, maybe even 10x, since the system is so old.
Anyway:
sound card: asus xonar dx, or sound blaster titanium fatality pro (I'm leaning towards the asus, I've just had too many problems with creative sound cards in the past, mainly *having* to use their driver cd to reinstall drivers, and it loading up a bunch of crud when you only want drivers)
case: haven't really decided, but maybe an antec 900, just something very roomy, plenty of drive bays
cpu: intel core i7 920 (fastest cpu I can afford)
video card: geforce gtx 275, 896mb DDR3, 448 bit
hard drives: 6 x seagate 1.5tb sata's (sick of my 9 external hard drives...)
ram: corsair 6x 2gb ddr3 1333mhz
monitor: asus 24", vga/dvi/hdmi, 5ms, 1,000:1 contrast, 1920x1080 (though I'm thinking of perhaps just paying $500 for a 40" plasma/lcd tv, and using a basic monitor for this - I watch even my high-def stuff on a crt tv still)
burner: pioneer blu-ray with recordable dvd support (I want blu-ray, but can't find one cheap enough)
power supply: ocz 600w (I've found 550's to be not much cheaper, and 700's to be far more expensive)
motherboard: anything with at least 2 pci slots, 6 ram slots, and perhaps dual gb LAN (though this is very hard to find all these with a 1366 board)
The reason I've probably gone overboard with the ram is because I intend to use win7, I've found the beta very easy to use, though I've tested it on a box with 1gb ram, and you really can't do anything without the physical ram just running out. This looks like it's going to cost a pretty penny, so any suggestions for what I can safely leave out and buy later (if I've gone overboard and can just add stuff later) would be welcome, but one last thing:
Thinking of getting a laptop from the same store - I might get a discount of $200 or so if I buy it along with this system (which will be about $1,700 all up, if I buy what I listed above). Just want it to run win7 well. The store I'm dealing with just doesn't have laptops with 4gb ram, though my friends' does, however they only seem to be at hire-purchase stores. The laptop specs:
ASUS x50gl-ap321c - t6400 2ghz cpu, 2gb ram, 250gb hdd, nvidia 8200m, 8x burner, 15.4" screen, 802.11bg wireless, 1.3mp cam, 6 cell 1lb battery, 2 year warranty, vista HP included, $600
Not sure if games are meant to run very well on laptops these days, but I'd like to get this while I can strike a deal with the main system, pretty much just to use when I'm away, or can't be arsed to use my main PC. Am pretty sure they're still not designed for 24/7 usage, otherwise I'd probably just buy a laptop. My cheaper option is to get a samsung n110, intel atom n270, 1gb ram, 160hdd, 10" screen, 802.11g wireless, 1.3mp cam, and *try* loading win 7 on it (after adding more ram, of course)
Sorry for the long post, but it's a huge purchase decision.
I'm coming very close to my physical memory limit, with firefox memory leakage, video encoding, photoshop, virtualdub, etc. I'm looking for something that will handle everything I'm doing atm very well, and possibly a good gaming rig. As a side-note, when buying games, I always try and have 4x the system requirements, so I know it will run well, so I figured that my components such as ram and cpu should be at least 4x the capacity of my current ones, maybe even 10x, since the system is so old.
Anyway:
sound card: asus xonar dx, or sound blaster titanium fatality pro (I'm leaning towards the asus, I've just had too many problems with creative sound cards in the past, mainly *having* to use their driver cd to reinstall drivers, and it loading up a bunch of crud when you only want drivers)
case: haven't really decided, but maybe an antec 900, just something very roomy, plenty of drive bays
cpu: intel core i7 920 (fastest cpu I can afford)
video card: geforce gtx 275, 896mb DDR3, 448 bit
hard drives: 6 x seagate 1.5tb sata's (sick of my 9 external hard drives...)
ram: corsair 6x 2gb ddr3 1333mhz
monitor: asus 24", vga/dvi/hdmi, 5ms, 1,000:1 contrast, 1920x1080 (though I'm thinking of perhaps just paying $500 for a 40" plasma/lcd tv, and using a basic monitor for this - I watch even my high-def stuff on a crt tv still)
burner: pioneer blu-ray with recordable dvd support (I want blu-ray, but can't find one cheap enough)
power supply: ocz 600w (I've found 550's to be not much cheaper, and 700's to be far more expensive)
motherboard: anything with at least 2 pci slots, 6 ram slots, and perhaps dual gb LAN (though this is very hard to find all these with a 1366 board)
The reason I've probably gone overboard with the ram is because I intend to use win7, I've found the beta very easy to use, though I've tested it on a box with 1gb ram, and you really can't do anything without the physical ram just running out. This looks like it's going to cost a pretty penny, so any suggestions for what I can safely leave out and buy later (if I've gone overboard and can just add stuff later) would be welcome, but one last thing:
Thinking of getting a laptop from the same store - I might get a discount of $200 or so if I buy it along with this system (which will be about $1,700 all up, if I buy what I listed above). Just want it to run win7 well. The store I'm dealing with just doesn't have laptops with 4gb ram, though my friends' does, however they only seem to be at hire-purchase stores. The laptop specs:
ASUS x50gl-ap321c - t6400 2ghz cpu, 2gb ram, 250gb hdd, nvidia 8200m, 8x burner, 15.4" screen, 802.11bg wireless, 1.3mp cam, 6 cell 1lb battery, 2 year warranty, vista HP included, $600
Not sure if games are meant to run very well on laptops these days, but I'd like to get this while I can strike a deal with the main system, pretty much just to use when I'm away, or can't be arsed to use my main PC. Am pretty sure they're still not designed for 24/7 usage, otherwise I'd probably just buy a laptop. My cheaper option is to get a samsung n110, intel atom n270, 1gb ram, 160hdd, 10" screen, 802.11g wireless, 1.3mp cam, and *try* loading win 7 on it (after adding more ram, of course)
Sorry for the long post, but it's a huge purchase decision.
