Building new PC ~$500

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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
 
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
 
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
Click to expand...

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
 
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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