Building an 'old school' Gaming puter

[Total Immortal]

With a few office computer under my belt, I figured it was time to upgrade my spyware infested, dinosaur gaming computer (AMD Athlon 2200+, 1 GB, GeForce Ti4600) with something new, but with a catch. I'm kind of an older gamer, and while I definitely appreciate the new games that come out, I'm pretty much only interested in playing HL:CS and HL:TFC (yea the original, I don't even have Source yet but I plan to!), Battlefield: Vietnam, and I just really got into World of Warcraft. So with this system I basically want these games (plus CSSource, eventually) to run flawlessly (they don't right now), which I think won't require a ridiculous set-up, but as it been about two years since I built my last system, I am absoultely blown away by what is on the market now, and I don't really know where to start. I'm not interested in a Conroe/8800GTX set-up. That seems overkill for my needs. Could someone give me a general direction to go? And what is the deal with these 10,000 RPM hard drives? Do they have an effect on game performance? Thanks a lot guys.

TI

 

[Trotter]

I just put this together for someone else, but here ya go'

Here's a little something to the tune of $507, plus shipping, with a $20 rebate.

CPU - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103535

Mobo - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813186037

RAM - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820231079

Graphics - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814130073

Hard drive - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822136062

OS - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16832116169

Just add a case and PSU.

 

[Total Immortal]

That all looks very nice. I have a question about the 3d card though, it looks like it only has DVI outs.. is that common for 3D cards now? The current monitor I have a is a pretty nice 19" CRT, but it is SVGA.
So, what do you think about
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814130062
as an alternative? Is DVI really that much better?

 

[Ronnie]

the card should come with an adaptor

 

[lancec2c30]

whoa dude I think you should do a little research just to see what is standard stuff right now.

But dont worry about it having dvi instead of analog the card will come with an adapter that you can use.

here are some basics. PCI-E, socket am2, ddr2 memory, sata2 hard drives. I dont know if ti will help you out any, but it is a start.

 

[Total Immortal]

Thanks for the info lancec. And if it's any consolation, I'm pretty embarassed that I'm so far out of it. The last time I was looking at high-performance products, 64-bit processors weren't even out yet. So yea, it's been a while.

 

[UA_Iron]

I just put this together for someone else, but here ya go'



Just add a case and PSU.

Value DDR ram is hardly a "value" anymore with DDR2 out now and the prices of DDR ram going up.

this ram would give better performance and costs less (post rebate):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820227031