My First Build: $800 Budget for Gaming Computer

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LOL...sorry about that. 🙁 Aside from the PSU's..he he, it looks now like it's between the AMD builds and the Intel build. Mix and match on a few builds is always fun, and cost effective.
 
Also, there was no OS mensioned, but I could easily add that. Thank you all for posting your useful info, and feel free to keep doing so.
 

BFG is not a company that is known as a good PSU manufacturer. Corsair has a reputation for good PSU's that last a long time, BFG does not. That PSU is new, you have no idea how long it will last. Going with the single rail PSU that is manufactured by a better company makes a lot of sense to me. $10 is a small price to pay for extra assurance that your PSU will not explode and take the whole system with it.
 

Feuding over a suggestion on someones build...what has the internet become? 🙁
 

Could you link to the board you are talking about?
 


You realize that BFG and Corsair don't actually handle the manufacturing of the power supplies right? That's done by Enhance and Seasonic respectively. Just jump on the popular brand band wagon, and spew fanboyism out of your mouth. I don't even want to flame anybody, its just, you're shooting out such inflammatory language, the OP is going to shy away from anything that isn't 'reputable'.

In all honesty OP, if this were a few years and you wanted to build a system, xthekidx would be telling you the same thing about Corsair not being reputable because they are new to the power supply market, contrary to early testing that shows they have a good product. Either the BFG LS-550w or Corsair VX550w will be great power supplies for you to get. I just feel at this point in time, that BFG is offering a better product with a better warranty than the competitors.

The build I suggested to you is a great option, for your price range. Is there anything you want to discuss about it? Possibly some things you want to switch out? I know gkay09 mentioned a Biostar 790GX board, and that's a good place to start. Some people might scream Asus at you and tell you they are the best motherboard maker on the market, but look to the benchmarks for that. The 4th core unlocking that he was talking about comes from a BIOS option called ACC, advanced clock calibration. Setting it to auto can unlock the 4th core the Phenom II X3s, however, there's a reason it was disabled by AMD in the first place. You might be lucky and have a working 4th core for a free, which is awesome, or you might experience some stability issues.

I don't know if anybody answered your questions about OS choices. I'd hate to steer you one way or the other. $100 on an OS isn't cheap. What's more painful, is that Win.7 is going to be coming out very soon. The RC is slated to come out in April if I recall, but you wouldn't really want that as your main OS in the mean time. Win.7 is looking very appealing, and I'll probably be picking up a 64bit copy when it hits the streets. I skipped Vista entirely, because I wasn't going to dump another $100 on an OS after just buying XP.

 

Yes I do, Seasonic is IMO the better manufacturer, which is why I say go with the Corsair. I am not a fanboy of anything just for the sake of it, my preferences are based on reason. I'm sure the BFG is a fine PSU, but I think the Corsair (made by seasonic) is better. I only go for the most reliable of PSU's, I'm not one to cut corners on such an essential part of the system. I'm not convinced that the BFG is as or more reliable than the Corsair and I would spend $10 more for something that is tried and true, rather than something that looks promising. Many PSU's using split rails cannot offer all the combined amperage of their 12v rails, a single rail PSU will. Maybe that BFG can, I don't know.

@OP either PSU will probably be fine, you are well aware of our opinions on this matter by now.
 
I really don't no much about this kind of stuff. Its why I asked. I have no Idea what the heck a rail is. Whats a Phenom II X3? I really don't know. And do you think I should wait for april till windows 7? I don't know, maybe I can buy retail and get a free upgrade thing.
 
The rail is what supplies power to whatever component is hooked up to it in the PSU, in a general sense.

The Phenom II x3 is a CPU from AMD, and a good one for a midrange build, comparable to a E8400 from Intel in terms of performance, but cheaper.
 
I'm not an expert either, but I thought I'd inject this info about whether 4-core or 3-core processors are really giving you anything of a "future-proof" bang for the buck.

Tomshardware has lots of good articles and interviews, often allowing us to sift through the advertising hype to get down to the nitty-gritty performance reality. In their interview with the maker of the Killer networking cards, it's mentioned that online games aren't, and won't any time soon (because of how the networking is handled on the net), use multi-core processors effectively.

I take this to mean that buying a quad-core upgrade over getting a flying core 2 duo is gaming money wasted. You can read the article and take it however you like here:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/killer-nic-network,2035.html
 
I also prefer newegg. i am looking to make almost the same build, except i prefer to go with the biostar 790GX with a 2 2g ddr3. I have a different case(alienware case). i think it is a superb build
 
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