Building frist REAL gaming computer...ideas?

[sk84blind84]

Hey guys, this is my first post on this site and i would like to know what you think about this basic setup i have in my head....ive been researching for a few days now, and talking to many people, all who are telling me different things...just throught i would try out you guys as well.

**made some changes now**

Motherboad: DFI Lanparty nF4 SLI-DR

CPU: AMD 64 4000+ Sandiego

RAM: OCZ PC3200 Platinum Rav 2 (512x2)

HD: Western Digital Caviar 250GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s

GPU: eVGA GeForce 7800GT 256 till games support SLI

Sound Card: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Platinum Sound Card

PS: OCZ OCZ600 600watt

Thats what I have so far...if you guys could give me your input i would greatly appriciate it

 

[Ste]

Looks good,

Go with the SLi 7800 Gt

and since it looks like you have the money go with this power supply.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817711001

and if you want a less expensive yet still good sound card.
Go with this.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16829127001

 

[BColes]

why not go with a san diego? isn't it cheaper too??

 

[Trifid]

You should start looking at getting 2gb's of ram now, as games are starting to require more than 1gb.

Again, go with the San diego as it is their newest core.

I would suggest you leave the sound card unless you are doing sound recording on the pc.

And seeing as you are getting dual video cards, why not the ATI X1800XT (even comes with teh 512mb versions.) And get a crossfire board from DFI. ATI's version of SLI is crossfire btw. and it will give you a bigger boost in performance, due to how it works.

 

[Rmaia]

You should start looking at getting 2gb's of ram now, as games are starting to require more than 1gb.

Again, go with the San diego as it is their newest core.

I would suggest you leave the sound card unless you are doing sound recording on the pc.

And seeing as you are getting dual video cards, why not the ATI X1800XT (even comes with teh 512mb versions.) And get a crossfire board from DFI. ATI's version of SLI is crossfire btw. and it will give you a bigger boost in performance, due to how it works.

x1800xt's aren't even shipping yet and that would cost a crap load more than what he currently has.

I agree the sound card is a little overkill unless you are using it for sound editing/recording.

My personal preference is to drop the second card and downgrade the sound card and then upgrade to a dual core cpu and maybe upgrade to 2g of ram.

 

[sk84blind84]

my next question was going to be should i go ATI or nVidia? if i should go with ATI i would go with the DFI lanParty UT RDX200 Cross-Fire mother board and Dual x850 Crossfire edition video cards......what about the AMD 64x2?? what do you guys think about that instead of the AMD 64 4000+ San diago??

 

[Trifid]

Looking at several benchtests (wanted to see what my newly brought 7800gt oc would get in games if I had a hard drive to install them on) The 7800gtx does get better results than the ATI X1800XT. (I didn't look at any crossfire ones though, but it should do better than SLI, due to how SLI works.

 

[DJ-CHRIS]

Okay about the sound.

#1: If you were doing editing and recfording that would be the completely wrong ****ing soundcard to use. However it is nice to have a soundcard that will not make your ears bleed from terrible sound quality like intergrated soundcards.

And 2 gig of ram is helpful.

 

[Trifid]

My intergrated sound is great (on my old motherboard, haven't heard what my new one sounds like yet) and it had spdif out, so I could hook up my surround sound via opticle, when watching movies, and have dolby digital 5.1 sound.

 

[sk84blind84]

i was just told by someone that i should think about some sort of after market CPU cooling fan...what ideas do you guys have about that?