Advice on buying a Gaming PC

[BMasterChief]

Hello all. i am an avid gamer and have been for a while. i however posess very little knowledge of computer components and their effects on how games run. i know the basics, that i need a good video card, motherboard etc, but do not know which are the best. i have been looking at prices of custom gaming pcs and i have narrowed the company to choose from to Vicious PC. i however am overwhelmed with choices of which processor, whether to get (and what it exactly is) a RAID setting, which video card to get, which network card, which power supply, and a god monitor to adequately play my games with. i am looking at this pc, and was wondering if someone would be so kind as to show me what a good pc (for about 1400 or so) would be configured to. thank you in advance for any help you may supply.

http://www.viciouspc.com/product/config_bushido.html

 

[Ronnie]

if you were to build it yourself then you can get a really bad *** system

for gaming you would want Raid 0 which breaks down a file into two halves one on each hard drive and you use both hard drives to read that one file so it reads faster.

as far as graphics go i would get a 8800GTS or GTX if you can afford it

PSU i love my Antec Truepower Trio 650watt

monitor get a 19inch viewsonic with the 2ms response time its fairly cheap and great quality imo

you will want to go Core 2 Duo for your CPU atleast a E6600 if i were you

 

[Trotter]

For the $1050 they have listed (using "brand name" parts... yeah, right), you can build your own rig.

 

[j12]

umm, why dont u just build your own. it would be much cheaper.

 

[BMasterChief]

the fact is that i wouldnt know how to build it! i mean i have friends that could, but are the parts listed EVERY single part nessecary or are there basic components not listed? i also worry about messing it up and ruining all the equipment, which i wouldnt have to worry about with the company building it, plus with a 3 year warranty.

 

[BMasterChief]

it is very tempting though, because i wouldnt want to waste all that money just to be convenient

 

[Ronnie]

Case
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=144008
Motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131025
CPU
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819115003
RAM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820231065
PSU
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817128006
HDD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822136003
VGA
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814130071
DVD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16827136091
LCD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16824222024

something along thoose lines

 

[BMasterChief]

would i not need two identical HD's to run the RAID 0? and also, the price for all that comes to about 1600 or so. and the other comp, with about same specs (not sure about how much better the mother board you suggested is than the one they have) is 1800. only other difference is that it doesnt have the 8800 video card, it has the NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX. also, the 1600 is without shipping. so is it that muc more for the vicious pc? sorry if it seems im tryin to rip apart your suggestions. im just tryin to see what would be easier without sacrificing performance. are these specs unreasonable for an 1800 computer?

PROCESSOR Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 EM64T @ 2.40Ghz, 1066MHz FSB, 4MB L2 Cache

CPU COOLER Vicious Liquid Cooler with Radiator + Temperature, Speed Control, and LCD Display

MAIN BOARD Asus P5NSLI 1066 Mhz FSB, Dual PCI-E, DDR2 667 w / 4 SATA RAID

CORE LOGIC NVIDIA nForce 570 SLI Intel Edition Media and Communications Processor

MEMORY Name Brand 2GB (2 X 1GB) PC2-4200 DDR2 533MHz Dual-Channel Memory Kits

HARD DRIVE 1 Name Brand 160GB S-ATA II(3.0 Gb/s) 7200RPM Hard Drive

HARD DRIVE 2 Name Brand 160GB S-ATA II(3.0 Gb/s) 7200RPM Hard Drive

RAID SETTING RAID 0 Striped Drives - Performance Purposes (Must use 2 identical drives)

SLI VIDEO 1 NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX 512MB GDDR3 1.6 GHz PCI-E, DVI & TV Out

CD/DVD/RW 1 Dual Layer 16X DVD+/- R, RW Drive

SOUND Onboard 3D Digital 7.1 8-Channel Sound

NETWORK CARD Onboard Gigabit (10/100/1000 Mbps) Fast Network Port
FLOPPY DRIVE 1.44MB 3 1/2" Floppy Disk Drive

POWER SUPPLY ACE Power 480W SLI Ready Power Supply

CASE COOLING Level 3 TyphoonTM Cooling system w / Dual (front and back) 12CM Case Fan

PORTS 1 Serial, 1 Parallel, 1 Game/Midi and 6 USB ports

OS Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition with SP2
WARRANTY Standard Warranty - 3 Year Limited Parts, Labor, and Lifetime Tech Support

Price: $1840.00

sorry for the lenghty post

 

[Ronnie]

that build is good you may want a bigger psu because 480watts isnt very much i would get atleast 550watts

also that ram isnt very fast its DDR2 533 the one i suggested had DDR2 800

 

[BMasterChief]

okay, its only about 100 more i think for the 800 ram, and about 45 for a 600 watt psu. so its still under 2000. its gonna be a few months before i get anything but i am starting to feel better about buying it from vicious. how easy would it be to install an 8800 video card if i decide to get one later on down the road? seeing as they dont offer it for this comp set up (and i have a friend i could sell the gtx to)