Cost of a new rig

[d3jake]

Well, I sit here on a Pentium II wondering how archaic this system is compared to what's out ehre now. THat sad part is this: I only own the case, motherb., and wireless card...al the rest is my dad's. So I decided that over the summer I'd get a job so by the next year of school that I'd have a kick-ass system, the thing is that I have no clue what to get. ie, what amnufactures are the best, what card\\drive gets my money worth. Stuff like that. So I figured that I'd ask y'all for help.
Thanks

[Immortal Lobster]

It changes from day to day, currently AMD still has the respective lead, especially in price/performance ratios, but be on the look out for the new Intel Conroes, aka the newer duos which should start appearing soon, theyll be knocked down in early 2007 by the next AMD K8Ls, that should be the trend you'll see there. video card wise...depends on the month, currently ATi holds a decent advantage, nVidia has better ...much better mid-range and low-end cards. Hard drives, Hitachi, Seagate or western digital, although ill be honest, im really beginning to question my hitachi, so Id favor a seagate. avoid maxtor. Mobos, depends on the CPU, atm, for AMD, DFI, EPox, or Asus in that order. Epox over DFI if you have no intention to OC, so chances are that fits your bill. Intel...errr, i dunno, asus or intel i guess. definetly get a separate sound card, it helps performance more then people give it credit for. memory, its prices vary worse then oil prices, and so do the manufacturers. anything else?

[Krom]

It is better to tell us how much you are planning on spending on this computer and let us find out what components you need from there.

Since you seem to have the time to do some research, I would start reading sites like Anandtech, Toms Hardware Guide and [H]ard|OCP to get a feel for PC hardware.

On a side note for video cards, the high end battle and who has the absolute maximum performance is completely irrelevant. Whoever rules the low end rules the world, and that would be: Intel with their intigrated graphics cores.

So when picking your video card, look at the midrange and lowend parts from either Nvidia or ATI, ignore the horribly inflated high end.

[d3jake]

Thanbks for the info Krom. That's very importand info. The thing is that I'm trying to see how much it would cost to get what I want so I can see how long I have to work...
IL: That's very important, thanks.
Okay, the system I want would probably be a 2.4-3.0 GHz CPU, 1.5-2.0 GB mem, abt. 4 PCI slots, 1 AGP (pretty standard?) 4 mem slots, 4 USB ports onboard, serial\\parallel ports. Um...a 256MB vid card, something with dual moniter outputs maybe? or maybe a S video out (unless that's pretty standard nowadays...) LAN card... Hmm.. that's about it unless I want to shell out more for one of them fancy cases with the lights and such...

[Krom]

What you should aim for if your plans are end of year or early next year would be a pure PCIe system, no AGP or old PCI slots because both AGP and PCI are rapidly becoming quite dead and useless. 10 onboard USB slots should not be that hard to do. 2 GB of RAM would be nice, but 1 GB wouldn't suffer much in the next 18 months, if you want the system to respond faster; get a faster hard drive. Any mid range or higher video card made today or from now on should have dual monitor outputs.

It is possible to make a system cost anywhere from $1200 to $5000+ depending on what you want it to do. My computer totals up to over $2500 but I didn't get it all at once, that is just the amount I spent over the last 3-4 years to reach the point I am at now, and that is only the hardware that is in the PC, there are a lot of parts that I moved on to other computers. In total I have three working home built computers that I own most or all of the hardware to. If I were to add it up I imagine it would easily be breaking $5000 or more.

So what exactly do you want this computer to do? Virtually anything made today will murder a Pentium II system so badly it would be comical to compare them side by side. Using your old computer as a reference to what you want the new computer to do would be foolish.

I can say this though, the longer you work the better, don't plan on quitting when you reach the budget you want. Once you have the computer odds are you will want to buy other things for it, and a larger wallet never hurts when you are talking about building a machine in the first place. Just work and make as much as you possibly can and then decide on what you want to spend.

[Immortal Lobster]

And when you buy the new PC, and the CPU for it, dont base the CPU on ghz alone, the new conroes are also low speced, much like AMDs, rather read a few reviews, its not uncommon anymore to see a 2.2ghz CPU beat out a 3.4ghz CPU =), Conroes entry models I believe are 2.66ghz and will range to 3ghz, but will be the faster CPUs on the market. ghz as a buying point decision is officially dead, base it on a PR rating (usuualy healthy) or base it on reviews/benchmarks. I would also definetly drop the few extra bucks and get a dual core, it future proofs your PC a little better.

[Krom]

Agreed on the dual core front, my next system will be multi-core. I prefer AMD at the moment, but that has never kept me from buying Intel when the price is right. The Intel Core Duo processors will most likely make things interesting when they finally hit the market.

[d3jake]

Alright, sorry for the delay...

I will probably be using it mainly for D3, plus Maybe the newest NASCAR games (yes I like those kinda too). Now a somesuch GHz whatsit (performance not copletely based on speed, got it) isn't completely required for playing Descent 3 but, in case there is a game that really interests me in the future I want a good computer, and one that won't completely such at a LAN party... and I could heat my room during the winter...
I'm going to probably start making up a list of parts and cost. I hope it'll be okay to bounce it of your heads in the future!

EDIT: I already picked out a few choices, tell me if I'm heading down the right track please.
HDD I decided on a Maxtor DiamondMax 10 6L250S0 250GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache Serial ATA150 Hard Drive - OEM I picked this one because it has plenty of space (I havea hard time filling a 5GB drive...) it's 7,200 RPM and it's SATA150 which I've been told is good (not the best, but good)
Graphics
I was pawing through my dad's microcenter ad when I found two cards that look promising:
First a GeForce 6600 PCIe card and a GF 730069. THey're both 256 MB cards, and should do nicely.

[Sir Sam II]

Here are the specs of your 2 video cards listed:

GeForce 6600
http://www.nvidia.com/page/geforce_6600.html
GeForce 7300
http://www.nvidia.com/page/geforce_7300.html

I would personally go with a GeForce 7600.
GeForce 7600
http://www.nvidia.com/page/geforce_7600.html
I have found a few for a great price, & the specs are worth the extra money depending on whether you get the GS or the GT version.
Look here to shop around http://www.pricewatch.com/video_cards/

Set a price range, & I can give you a complete system recommendation layout.

[Immortal Lobster]

7600 is a beast of a card, especially for its price, im no fan of maxtor, theyve always always died early on me, my roomate just found that out too, his new maxtor bit the bullet a few days ago. Seagate or Western Digital, best way to go.

[d3jake]

Alright, from what I gather from other places that I posted about this, Maxtor isn't a very good HD, and the 6600 isn't the best...

Thanks for the links.
Would there be any great advantage to getting a 512MB card vs. a 256MB? And I was wondering... on the NDIVIA website, how do I sort by interface? I\"m looking for PCIe 16X

Newegg Seagate HDDs * Krom edit: fixed excessively long url.
I'm looking at these two drives, they're SATA150, and 250GB, though the thing that bugs me is that the first has a cache of 16MB, but it's cheaper than an identical drive that has a 8 MB cache...
EDIT: stupid tags...
For a sound card, I picked out a M-AUDIO 9900-40765-00 Sound Card. It seemed kinda cheap, and straightforeward...
EDIT2: Fixed the tags!
EDIT3: sry....

[Immortal Lobster]

Go ahead and gran the 16MB one, might be a supply demand issue in the pricing, consider it a bargain =)

The 6600 wouldnt have been a bad choice a year ago, but its old tech, uses old instruction sets. 512 is better then 256, its also more expensive. Me, I just bought a 256MB 7800GT back in march, should be plenty for a while, but if you plan on keeping your video card another 2-3years without any upgrades, 512MB might be worth investigating. Video card busses now come in PCI, AGP (you should recognize those) and PCI Express, PCI Express is going to usually be PCIe 16x

[Sir Sam II]

Alright, from what I gather from other places that I posted about this, Maxtor isn't a very good HD, and the 6600 isn't the best...

Thanks for the links.
Would there be any great advantage to getting a 512MB card vs. a 256MB? And I was wondering... on the NDIVIA website, how do I sort by interface? I"m looking for PCIe 16X

Newegg Seagate HDDs * Krom edit: fixed excessively long url.
I'm looking at these two drives, they're SATA150, and 250GB, though the thing that bugs me is that the first has a cache of 16MB, but it's cheaper than an identical drive that has a 8 MB cache...
EDIT: stupid tags...
For a sound card, I picked out a M-AUDIO 9900-40765-00 Sound Card. It seemed kinda cheap, and straightforeward...
EDIT2: Fixed the tags!
EDIT3: sry....

Read the reviews if you haven't already on that drive, seems that one drive failed, & some have trouble getting it working. Of course that can just be a user error issue Not sure why the 16mb cache is cheaper but, as far as the specs go it sounds like a good drive. If you want more speed & sacrifice space you could go with the Raptor WD740GD. Although I installed one of these for a friend & it seems to just be slightly noticeably faster then a SATA 150 80GB 8mb cache Western Digital. Not enough to compare to space in my opinion. I also had problems getting it working on the SATA controller, I believe this was related to the ABIT motherboard though myself.

[d3jake]

Alright I collected the links to a couple cases, and I was wondering what y'all thougght of them.

Lian Li PC-6077B Case
V-Tech 7799KL Case
Lian Li PC-7B Plus - Black
ASPIRE X-Infinity ATXB6KLW-BK/420 Black Computer Case With Side Panel Window
Rosewill TU-155 Black Computer Case With Side Panel Window
Antec Solution SLK3000-B Black Computer Case

[Sir Sam II]

Alright I collected the links to a couple cases, and I was wondering what y'all thougght of them.

Lian Li PC-6077B Case
V-Tech 7799KL Case
Lian Li PC-7B Plus - Black
ASPIRE X-Infinity ATXB6KLW-BK/420 Black Computer Case With Side Panel Window
Rosewill TU-155 Black Computer Case With Side Panel Window
Antec Solution SLK3000-B Black Computer Case

If I had to choose one of those 6 I'd go with the: Rosewill TU-155 Black Computer Case With Side Panel Window

Those other cases offer heat reductions, but I don't really see how thats possible. Heat all depends on your components. Don't really need more power unless your going to have maybe 2 Video Cards running SLI or have a bunch of external accessories. I am running a 400w with 3 cathode lights, 4 case fans, 2 hard drives, 2 cd-rom drives, an XP3200+ 400fsb, with Volcano 12 & it isn't using all the power yet.

[d3jake]

Next, I would like to know the best Headsets out there. It has to have a microphone on it (I like VV + TS). I would like one that will provide good sound (espically when listening to music) even if that means dropping down good money for it.
Please and thank you!