[Nuke]

i think i finally have enough money to fix my gaming rig which died back in mid april. i have about 800 in disposable income at the moment. if i wait till payday i will have more.

im not building the whole computer, just core compnenets, ram, mobo, cpu, psu, im also throwing in a new hd since 500 gb drives are hella cheap. im probibly gonna do quad core, possibly dual if there are performance gains over quad. ive not decided if im gonna go with ddr3 or stick with ddr2. memory speeds have improved a great deal since last year. so il have to do some reserch into that. i might just go with ddr2 just because its cheaper and i can test my old memory to see if its good or not.

as for testing some of the potentially fried hardware in the beast, im gonna be able to test the cpu no mater what. if the new mobo is ddr2 i can test the ram as well. if both ram and cpu are good then il build another lower end machine and chuck some of the older machines i have laying around.

so far i like this board

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131294

it will let me test my old hardware and has good specs too boot.

also theres this one, its pricier and doesn't really have anything special about it. the cheeper one has the same features. seems to be a newer board too, judging by the lack of reviews.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131255

looks like ddr3 is too ****ing expensive right now. maybe in a few years. my math says id get a double in price for perhaps a 10% performance boost. il still have better performance than my already insanely fast old rig used to be before it self destructed.

$250

for memory i found a nice corsair 4gb dual channel kit of 1066. comes with a cooler fan, dont really need it. latency is 5-5-5-15, i was running 4-4-4-12 @ 800, so i guess il trade in some latency for some more bandwidth there. looking for something with a lower latency but it either doesnt exist or is really expensive or requires smaller capacity dimms. i may upgrade to 8gb later on and dont want to do that.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145197

theres some cheaper memory but id rather go with a brand ive used before.

$140

onward to cpu. from my perfered mobo's specs, the best chip will have an fsb of 1333. it looks like its between these

Core 2 Quad Q9450 Yorkfield 2.66GHz

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115042

vs. Core 2 Duo E8500 Wolfdale 3.16GHz

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115036

they both have 6 megs cache. other than that the differences are about 100 bucks and 500 mhz. im looking for a side by side comparison of the performances, but im not seeing one.  il have to think about this, read reviews, ect.

$270 or $330

now i liked my old psu, it was very stable and very german. the brand was a noname but it was a good psu. id get the higher wattage version of it but it looks like it dont exist anymore. but i like this thermal take so there we go.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153038

$170

onward! just need some 1337 storage now. its got a good rating is less than a hundred bucks and its 640 gb. must have!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136218

there you have it. feedback would be good, especially concerning the cpu. no way il be able to afford ddr3 related hardware. anyway i added up the cheapest stuff and im 25 bucks short. looks like i gotta wait till next payday. so i got till then to finalize my decision as to what i want to buy.

[Stormkeeper]

Sweet. This is really awakening the dead.

[colecampbell666]

Memory looks good, don't know much about mobos, the Q9450, and the rest looks good.

[CP5670]

Are you actually planning on using SLI for sure? Since the 780i boards are ripoffs otherwise. There are plenty of P35 boards in the $100-140 range that still have better stability and overclocking ability.

As for the dual/quad question, that depends a lot of what programs you use. There are basically two games that make use of quads, Supreme Commander and FSX. Those have been the only ones for several months now and it's unlikely that any more will be released before the Nehalem is out around the end of the year. Of course, any sort 3D rendering or video encoding also benefits immensely from a quad. The quad is only really worth it if you use some of these programs, as the cheaper dual otherwise hits higher frequencies and produces much less heat.

The memory looks fine, but you might as well save some money and get one of the 800mhz packs instead. Those are still good enough to max out any current processor. The latencies are pretty much irrelevant on Intel platforms.

The power supply you selected is a poor buy for that price. This is both better quality and has a single rail. (although it used to be $110 only a few weeks ago; not sure why the price increased)

[Nuke]

fsx uses quads, cool, maybe it wont suck now. i also find photoshop loves more cpu cores. so making those monster 4096^2 textures will be smoother. any rendering will also like the thing too. i find i do that crap more than playing games. i think i have enough to get the faster quad core. i just got a check for $420 for some side jobs so i just got to run it to the bank then order it. maybe, its still a week from payday.

sli, i was planning on it as an upgrade. my plans were actually to get a high res 30" screen this summer. i was gonna sli a second video card if my 8800gts was incapable of driving that many pixels. but since my gaming rig died on me, those plans are postponed.

i have 4gb of 800 mhz ddr2 unknown working condition. but if im gonna blow another $1000 on computer parts, it might as well be an improvement. the old rig was supposed to last me 3 years, but thanks to bad house wiring (should get into the attic and run a ground wire to the power box), and a major surge its a pile of rubble. gonna step up to 1066 also make room for a second 4gb kit for 8 gb ram (my 800 mhz chips would fill all the slots making such an upgrade impossible).

i really dont know **** about psus.  i usually just use the ratings to decide what psu to buy. any better buys would be cool. i dont like that one though, i perfer modular wiring. i liked my old power supply, had pretty lights, was german made, and was stable as ****. but i aint gonna trust it after my parts got fried. il still use it in lesser computers though.