zenkat911

I've been using the same pos computer for about 2 years, and I'm thinking of upgrading. I haven't looked at parts in a long time. What would you recommend for putting together a new computer with a max price tag of 1500. This includes monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, etc.

cyrnel

You need to replace everything at once? A two-year old PC would likely have useful parts. What do we get to scavenge from your existing box?

zenkat911

i'm selling the existing box to a friend... so nada

Crisis

If I were you I would keep the hard drives and optical drives. AMD 64bit is the way to go right now. You may want to invest in an SLi capable motherboard to avoid big future upgrades down the road. nVidia has some pretty good PCI-e video cards that are easy on the wallet and SLi capable. A gigabyte of RAM isn't a bad idea look into any dual channel kits you can get. Look into OCZ and Corsair. Chenming 601 is a great cheap case and should come with a few fans. If you don't care much for flashing lights and shiny polished finishes look into an Antec or Enermax powersupply with a minimum of 400W. You can pick up a refurbished 21" flat screen CRT from most any joe schmoe's computer shop in town. Logitech has affordable and quality optical mice and keyboards. Logitech is also your best bet for good sound at an affordable price. If you want me to go into detail private message me and leave your email or something with me.

EDIT: Include your nationality so I can give you a proper dollar amount estimate.

zenkat911

Texas, USA

sailor

Go to newegg.com and price stuff out. Id go with:

Some sort of Athlon 64 processor
A matching mobo with PCI Express
At least a gig of RAM
A GeForce 6800, whatever flavor you can afford.

Get the biggest monitor you can afford. CRTs are generally better for games, but I honestly cant tell much of difference, and value my space a lot--so I go LCD.

Also make sure you get a nice power supply, of at least 400 watts.

__________________
"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws."
--Plato

DEI37

I'd have a hard time mandating PCI-e. I have an Athlon XP2000+ at 2.1 GHz with a ATi Radeon 9800 Pro and 512MB PC3200 DDR that runs circles around a PCI-e equipped Intel P4 3400MHz with 1GB DDR. In my opinion dual channel DDR and a good AGP 8x video card is plenty. And cheaper.

__________________
Generally speaking, if you were to get what you really deserve, you might be unpleasantly surprised.

Crisis

Case - Chenming 601AE $79
(http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...125-443&depa=0)
Power Supply - Antec True480 480 Watts 92$ (http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...103-909&depa=1)
Motherboard - MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum $148(http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...130-468&depa=0)
CPU - AMD Athlon 64 3500+ $253 (http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...103-460&depa=0)
CPU HSF - Zalman CNPS7000B-Cu LED $47.99(http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...118-119&depa=0)
Memory - OCZ EL Platinum Revision 2 2x512Mb $266.50(http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...146-890&depa=0)
Video Card - Leadtek nVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra $509 (http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...122-196&depa=0)
Speakers - Logitech Z-5300 $143.50 (http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...121-121&depa=0)
Keyboard/Mouse - Logitech MX Duo $63(http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProduc...126-124&depa=0)

$1598 :S A tad bit over your budget. This is also assuming you plan on using your old optical drives and hard drives. This doesn't include a monitor because you can buy a big cheap monitor at any Joe Blow's computer shop refurbished. All these parts are top of the line and you can cut back on some stuff like getting an A64 3200+ or a 6800GT instead of the Ultra, 400W instead of 480W, etc. Tell me what you think and we can modify the list.

cyrnel

Help your friend build one from what's left. Why force yourself to buy new floppy/optical/RAM/case/mouse/kbd/... if you have working parts that don't make a large difference for gaming? (he says, not knowing anything about the current system)

zenkat911

Thanks Crisis. It is a little bit over my budget, and I'll need to cut it a little, but it's a great starting point!

sailor

Good list. Id knock the 6800 Ultra down to the GT for money reasons, which would save around $150 that he could use on a monitor, and thats still gonna whoop ass on anything out there. I might also knock the RAM down to a slightly lower quality unless hes planning on overclocking. Everything else is a good choice. Dont know about the mobo just because I dont follow that, but good list.

__________________
"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws."
--Plato

cyrnel

That's a nice mobo, especially for the money. It has room for enough RAM and all the other goodies. No SLI, but that's its only real shortcoming. Zipzoomfly.com has a <a retail href="http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=80717-R-241143">64 3500 bundle for $405</a>

There is a somewhat cool dual-GPU card/MB combo from Gigabyte just coming out this month. I believe the card is the "SL1"? It's a dual SLI 6600GT (each with 128MB) on a single PCIe card, selling with a fairly nice 939 mobo for $~500. I read a <a href="http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews/gigabyte3d1/">performance review that showed</a> it beat X800XT's & 6800GT's on some tests and fall well behind in others. As long as the jobs could be shared and didn't need more than 128MB/processor it put out some amazing numbers. This will be an interesting year for video cards.

Agreed on the RAM. That is nice stuff but pricey. <a href="http://shop2.outpost.com/product/3746176">Outpost has kingston hyperX CL2 for $159 (139 after rebate)</a> for a matched pair of 512MB DIMMs. Crucial CL2.5 can be had for <$130. The last 10% improvement in latency is very tough to notice.

Chytrak

One other suggestion for you, in addition to the great responses given already: Go to Sharky Extreme and look at their current gaming systems. They do a budget system that stays under $1000, and they do an extreme gaming machine that has a $5000 limit. I just built a new core system (CPU, motherboard, RAM) using a few of their suggestions. Here's what I just put together about 3 hours ago:

-------- New parts -------
MSI K8T Neo 2 FIR
AMD Athlon 64 3000+
Corsair 2x512 PC3200 400mHz DDR
-------- from previous setup --------
GeForce FX 5800 Ultra 128MB
120GB Western Digital Caviar 7200rpm drive
all other misc. hardware...