Hardware Recommendation

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Hello,

I’m beginning my research on building my own PC. This new system will be heavily for gaming and high demand resource applications. This will be my first home-built PC, looking forward to it!

I would appreciate if you could recommend me some hardware parts for the specific needs I listed above. I’m keeping my budget under $2500; already have the monitor, keyboard, speakers, etc. Reading the forums, many people are saying Intel is the way to go at this time. That said, I’ll be building this machine around the Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 2.4 GHz Conroe 4M. Thank you.


Regards,
Steve

[blue60007]

OK, here's something: (assuming USD and from Newegg.com)

ASUS P5W DH Deluxe - $250
Intel E6600 - $320
FSP Group (Fortron Source) FX600 - $140
Sapphire X1950XTX - $430
CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 - $300
Western Digital Raptor WD740ADFD 74GB 10,000 RPM - $160 (for OS and apps)
Western Digital SE16 250GB - $80 (for storage)
2 x DVD-RW (I'd look at NEC's or LITE-ON's) - $60
XP Home OEM - $90 (don't know if you need the pro features of Pro or not)
Creative X-Fi sound card - $120 (if you have a nice set of speakers/headphones)
and a case of your choice (some good brands: Antec, Lian Li, Thermaltake, to name a few - find something you like the looks of)

That comes to about $1740 + case (plus shipping, etc)

A couple things to consider...I don't know how much storage you need...or if you want to do the seperate OS/storage drives, or just put everything on one large drive. Also, do you need the fancy sound card? The motherboard has good onboard sound, so unless you have a good set of speakers you could skip on the seperate sound card.

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blue60007,

Thank you for the reply. I think what you have above (250GB) will work perfectly, with the 10GB for the operating system and applications. I have a question regarding the hard drive; why choose Western Digital SE16 over Seagate 7200.10?

Regards,
Steve

[blue60007]

Now that you metion it, that Seagate looks like a better deal. It's cheaper and I've heard it's pretty fast too.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148144

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Sounds good, if anyone has any other suggestions or comments feel free to reply. If not, I’ll order the above hardware products; thanks again for your replies blue60007.

Regards,
Steve

[newbuilder14]

Looks like that will be quite a powerful machine.