Tell me what you think. I am obviously waiting till the July 22 price drop. I already have a 19" LCD, Hitachi 250gb SATA, an Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro, and 2x1gb Crucial Ballistix 1066. I also have optical drives; however, they are IDE. Would you recommend scraping them and going with SATA for space conservation?
Purpose: I want to to be able to play the newest games with high settings (ie. Quake Wars, Crysis) and have good multitasking ability. I only have a 19" monitor, but will probably upgrade to a 22" within the year. I am also planning a mild overclock; I can't tell you what I'm a clocking it to yet though, as I am new to OCing and need to do some research. Lastly, I want to somewhat future proof the system. Yes, I am aware this is practically impossible, but I chose the the DS3R so I could step up to DD3 and Pentium's new chip when the price is right. I hope to keep this rig around for 3-4 years.
Case: COOLER MASTER Centurion 5 Aluminum $55
Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-P35C-DS3R LGA 775 Intel P35 $130
GPU: eVga GeForce 8800GTS 640MB $350
PSU: PC Power & Cooling Silencer 610W $140
CPU: Intel Q6600 $260
Ram: Crucial Ballistix 2GB (2 x 1GB) $165 ($85 MIR) ALREADY OWN
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3320620AS (Perpendicular Recording Technology) 320GB $80
Paste: Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound $6
Heat sync: Artic Freezer 7 Pro $21 ALREADY OWN
Total: approx. $1,257 (-$85 after Crucial Rebate I am waiting for)
My budget is no more than $1350. I am tempted to try and squeeze a GTX in there, but I'm not sure there is room, as I really do not want to skimp on the motherboard or power supply.
Purpose: I want to to be able to play the newest games with high settings (ie. Quake Wars, Crysis) and have good multitasking ability. I only have a 19" monitor, but will probably upgrade to a 22" within the year. I am also planning a mild overclock; I can't tell you what I'm a clocking it to yet though, as I am new to OCing and need to do some research. Lastly, I want to somewhat future proof the system. Yes, I am aware this is practically impossible, but I chose the the DS3R so I could step up to DD3 and Pentium's new chip when the price is right. I hope to keep this rig around for 3-4 years.
Case: COOLER MASTER Centurion 5 Aluminum $55
Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-P35C-DS3R LGA 775 Intel P35 $130
GPU: eVga GeForce 8800GTS 640MB $350
PSU: PC Power & Cooling Silencer 610W $140
CPU: Intel Q6600 $260
Ram: Crucial Ballistix 2GB (2 x 1GB) $165 ($85 MIR) ALREADY OWN
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3320620AS (Perpendicular Recording Technology) 320GB $80
Paste: Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound $6
Heat sync: Artic Freezer 7 Pro $21 ALREADY OWN
Total: approx. $1,257 (-$85 after Crucial Rebate I am waiting for)
My budget is no more than $1350. I am tempted to try and squeeze a GTX in there, but I'm not sure there is room, as I really do not want to skimp on the motherboard or power supply.