Need a sweet desktop

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Octaver

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Hi all,

I've been perusing this forum for a few weeks now and finally got up the courage to register and publicly display my technological newbness.

Here's the deal: my old PIII Thinkpad is on its last legs. Over the last four years or so, I added more RAM to it, popped on an external hard drive, upgraded the CD-ROM drive to play DVDs, but times are changing too quickly and it's time to retire the ol' workhorse.

I'd like to use a new computer for three things primarily:

1) Basic Internet browsing, word processing, etc.
2) Audio recording. I don't know if anyone here is into that, but I have Digidesign's Mbox that I just bought, and my old laptop just doesn't have enough space to handle all the bundled software that came with it.
3) Gaming! I used to play computer games, then I got into console stuff, but I'm kind of itching to pick up Guild Wars and WoW, and I'm eagerly awaiting a few other games that are slated to come out by the end of the year.

So hopefully this is where you all come in. My budget has to be $1500 or less. I've never built a CPU before, and I do live about a half an hour from Monarch Computer, which I've heard good things about. What components should I be looking at to put together (either by myself, or perhaps with the help of the good folks at Monarch) in order to have a system that will play some good games, handle audio recording, and be expandable enough to where it's not completely obsolete in a few years? Is that even possible for $1500 or less?

Thanks in advance for your help!
 
Well, if you're going to be playing games like BF2 and F.E.A.R, then you'll prolly want an SLI mobo, like the DFI Lanparty. Nothing less than a 6600GT. 6800 Ultras are nice, and you can get two of them in SLI, which would be even better. Prolly want at least 1 GB of ram. An AMD proc of course for games. I would go with the X2, 939 chip. Forget the name of the chip, but it's not the same name is the one given to the 3800. It's the 4200 I believe. Hope that helps.

EDIT

The cpu I was talking about is the AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ Toledo.
 
yo just custom build it if you can. That pc PatrikK is selling it outdated in some ways. And really isnt worth more than 500, 600 bucks really. For $1500, you could make a computer that makes that computer look like your old p3
 
If you feel comfortable building it yourself then just figure out what parts you want and Newegg 'em. Otherwise Monarch or Ibuypower.com.
 
Thanks for everyone's comments so far. I guess what I'm asking is, for those three main things I listed (internet, games, audio), are there any specific components or combination of components that are better suited for my needs than others? Are AMD processors generally better for audio recording than Pentium? I don't think I'll quite get into absolute cutting edge gaming stuff, so SLI's extra cost doesn't quite appeal to me right now.
 
Not sure if Intel's chips are better for audio recording or not. Something wants to make me think they are, I think Intel does better with this like video editing/databases/prolly audio recording. Get a nice P4 EE cpu w/ a DFI mobo, I think they support Intel...
 
gaming go with amd

audio recording go with intel

multi tasking(EDIT: extreme) go with amd
 
look for these things:

Athlon 64 3500+ or X2 3800+ - the 3500+ would be better for gaming, the X2 would be better for everything else, and eventually would be better for gaming once multi threaded games are released.

1gb in dual channel config - this is plenty unless you really are into high end video and image editing.

2x 120 or 160gb SATA HDD's in RAID - Heaps of space, and as fast as a 10,000RPM drive.

6600GT or 6800GT whichever you feel is better suited for you.

SLI mobo, so you can add one GPU now and one GPU later.
 
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