Building new PC ~$500

F

fermineutron

Hello every one,
I've built almost all pcs currently in my house, but been out of the
techno-loop for several years. What I need is a suggestion/list of
well functioning parts to use to build myself a pc with following
specs

HD - SATA 2, already have 500GB drive, not icluded into $500 price tag
CPU -???, not quad core, will do some number crunching on the system,
but not too much designed for dual cores.
RAM 2GB+, fast enough to feed cpu.
Mother board - stable, preferably namebrand, possibly overclockable.
Video card - Good enough to max out grafix in World of Warcraft yet
leave enough CPU power to allow video recording of the game at decent
FPS with mid grafix.
Case - already have
priherals- already have

With the parts that i can get would i get a significantly better
system than say assembled by dell for same price?

The system will have win Xp or vista on it, have not deccided which
yet.

Thanks ahead
 
J

johns

Use one of the Mwave mobo bundles with a dual
4400 and 2 gig pair about a $70 mobo. Make sure
to have it assembled and tested for the Mwave
warranty. Get a case. I'm sure yours is crap.
Recommend the ANTEC slk1650. And put a
450 watt TruePower in it. Then hunt high and low
for an nVidia 7950 GT 256 meg. That should put
you a little over $400 .. note: the included 350
watt supply is OK, but will fail in about 1 year
.... still under warrantee. You can prevent that
by keeping the box in a cool place, and turned
off when not in use. I can tell by your goals,
that you don't do that very well. Also, you can
pick up a decent used LCD monitor for about
$80 now.

So ... do you really believe they have a positron
raygun at NCSU ?

johns
 
P

Paul

fermineutron said:
Hello every one,
I've built almost all pcs currently in my house, but been out of the
techno-loop for several years. What I need is a suggestion/list of
well functioning parts to use to build myself a pc with following
specs

HD - SATA 2, already have 500GB drive, not icluded into $500 price tag
CPU -???, not quad core, will do some number crunching on the system,
but not too much designed for dual cores.
RAM 2GB+, fast enough to feed cpu.
Mother board - stable, preferably namebrand, possibly overclockable.
Video card - Good enough to max out grafix in World of Warcraft yet
leave enough CPU power to allow video recording of the game at decent
FPS with mid grafix.
Case - already have
priherals- already have

With the parts that i can get would i get a significantly better
system than say assembled by dell for same price?

The system will have win Xp or vista on it, have not deccided which
yet.

Thanks ahead

There are a few sample systems in the guides here.

http://www.anandtech.com/guides/

The tough decision, is what to do for graphics. That makes
it harder to hit the $500 mark. You have the choices of
going with a previous generation card (there might be some
X1950 pro cards around). The DX10 situation is really a mess,
in the sense that a lot of the low and midrange cards, will
render things like a slide show. There is a table here for what it
is worth, mixing DX9 and DX10 cards together.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/10/01/the_best_gaming_graphics_cards_for_the_money/page6.html

DX9 - A X1950 Pro, with review comments $155
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16814102075

DX10 - 8800GTS for $250 after rebates.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150171

The X1950 got an honorable mention here:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=2043949894&sid=1

And here they don't think WOW needs much in the way of a
graphics card at all.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/215415-33-world-warcraft-x1950xt-nvidia-7xxxx

Paul
 
F

fermineutron

Yeah WoW is not Halo 3.. but still pushes my emachines 6810 Laptop
above its limits.
Here is the build i am considering, critique please:

Case: http://www.antec.com/us/productDetails.php?ProdID=93800 -Alrady
have
CPU: Intel E6420 - $200
RAM: Advice please, would rather go with quality than quantity but
ddr3 seems a waste. Thinking of PC2-7200 2GB(2X1024) 900MHZ DDR2 $170

MOBO: Advice please
Video Card GeForce 8600 GTS - $180
HDD - SATA2 500GB - Already have
Monitor+accessories: Already have


Looks like i will not get it for $500, so please advise cheapest
components which are reliable and yet will not hold back the rest of
the system. In my experience quality mobo is vital.

I came up with CPU and VDO choices based on online published
benchmarks but I dont know if these choices are already in the zone of
diminishing returns, if so plz advice. CPU was chosen for 4MB cache. I
would like to keep the system for 5yrs +.

Thanks
 

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