gaming box, 1500 dollar budget, help needed

[Cerpintaxt]

As the title reads...

I need
CPU - Will naturally be an athelon 64 bit of some fashion, then i suppose I need a heat sink as well. Could use some advice in this area regarding the best buy.

GPU - from what I read on these forums the most popular choice is the 6600GT, but I still need alot of counseling in this area.

Memory - 2x 1gig sticks of ram, but I'm uncertain what the best ram out there is... also, does it matter how you couple the RAM with the CPU, will some combinations have adverse effects?

mobo - I'm completely lost in this area, know nothing about them, need much help.

case - this shouldn't be awfully hard. Not looking to spend huge sums of money on some water cooling system, I won't be OCing. Just need something that doesn't look awful and has good air flow, and holds the pieces in place

hard drive - 200gig, but I think I can handle this one myself, not so hard.

case fans - i was told this might be good to have... for someone who isn't OCing, is it needed?

PSU - i suppose i'll figgure this one out after I decide on all the other pieces.


getting a floppy and dvd/cd rom and burner from my old box, so that's no worry.



does anyone have any advice for any of these, or any full builds that come to mind? My hardware knowledge is limited, so any help would be greatly appreciate

thanks in advance.

 

[Vampire_Slayer]

CPU-I would go with the 3700 or the X2 3800 depending on what you can afford. Also, retail processers come stock with HSF.

GPU-If you get a 6600GT I would go eVga, but with 1500 bucks I would shoot for a 7800GT

Memory-Well, the best way you could go is OCZ Platinum. Its ddr400 with 2-3-2-5 latency which is really nice for 1g sticks. Otherwise OCZ valueram would be good, or valueram from another company.

Mobo-Depends, DFI if your into overclocking and MSI if you don't want to. DFI for a mobo would be really cool even if you didn't overclock. I will recommend the DFI Lanparty Ultra-D, but there are other good motherboards out there worth looking into.

Case-Thermaltake cases look awsome and usually have nice features such as tool-less stuff......These are my fave cases, getting the Armor myself.

Hard Drive-I would go with a 250g Seagate, great deal. Lots of room for your money.

Case Fans-Most likely the case you pick out will have fans so you don't have to worry about this.

PSU-In these forums people will suggest OCZ, Antec, Earnmax, or Fortron most likely. Don't skimp out on your psu, count on spending over 100 bucks. PC Power&Cooling would be the best, but those are 230 bucks. Tomshardware suggests Seasonic, and so do other forums but the Newegg reviews are mixed. Maybe some of those people had bad batches?

As for builds, look in my sig. I think it will go over your budget though. Hell, I got nothing better to do so I guess I will make you a build. I will not include taxes or shipping though since I will be too lazy.