Newbie needs advice on bldg a budget media/gaming PC

[dstrain]

Hello there everyone. This is my first post so go easy please. Looks like there's tons of great advice on these boards, so I'm sure I'll get some good answers. We'll, here goes.

Primary Goals:

I'm looking to build a nice, relatively inexpensive system ($500-800 not includig monitors or hard drive) that will be primarily used for light gaming, recording some basic audio, listening to music, watching dvd's, burning dvd's, recording/playing TV shows, etc.

I'm also keenly interested in having everything take up as little space as possible. I'm seeing these MicroATX cases around these days. They look like small, squarish boxes with usb/firewire/audio ports on the front and sometimes come with handles.

Not so interested in overclocking and "pimpin' it out", but I would like to be able to add lots of memory over time.

Gaming (light to medium use): I'd like to play games like Call of Duty 2, Battlefield 2, Doom III/Quake IV, etc. without too much difficulty and without having to have all the bells and whistles turned off.

Media: I'd like to be able to record TV shows and burn DVD's. Also maybe do some line-in guitar recording. Another thing I'd really enjoy is having the capability to use this machine as a media center, somehow being able to stream audio and video files from the computer to the TV, preferably wirelessly. Not at all sure how to accomplish that.

Miscellaneous: I'll also be doing some website design, Photoshop stuff from time to time, so dual monitor capability is nice along with being able to have a bunch of different things happening at once without slowing to a crawl (itunes, photoshop, dreamweaver, firefox, tv tuner, etc).

I guess that's about it for usage. Now on to the suggestions from you guys. First I'll list what parts I already have to use, then I'll list what I need.

Currently I have the following:

Western Digital WD3200 Caviar SE 320GB Hard Drive
NEC ND-3520A 16x DVD-RW
WinTV Go Plus Model 1033 PCI Card
A basic sound card, model unknown
An older Dell 17" Digital/Analog Flat Panel Monitor
An older KDS 17" Analog Flat Panel Monitor

Parts I need suggstions on:

Case:
PSU:
Mobo:
CPU:
HDD (if one I have is inadequate):
RAM:
Pri Optical (if one I have is inadequate)
Sec Optical:
Sound Card:
Video Card:
Network Card:
Monitors:
Anything else I need, but haven't thought of:


Thanks guys!

[jfk]

Wow! For gaming use, when you say COD2, BF2, Doom III or Quake IV, NONE of them would be considered "light to medium use". To get a computer that plays them WITHOUT "turning off the bells and whistles" is going to take a little more than what you budgeted. If you can accept more than a couple settings at medium, you can probably do it for $5-800. But if you expect to do it with most/all settings maxed, you are going to need to up your budget a little. Basically, a good video card that will do a decent job on those games (again, a few settings at medium) will cost a minimum of $2-300 and they go up from there. Doesn't leave a lot of wiggle room in your budget. Not trying to discourage you, but those four are some fairly demanding games.

[jayb1234]

Here are a few places to reduce the cost. Reuse the harddrive you have, the optical drive, the tv card, the sound card if it is any good and one of the old monitors. You can upgrade any or all of those later when you have more cash. Network card isn't needed unless you have to use a wireless setup, that is something you can also add later. Secondary optical drive, wait on that too.

Those little cases are not the easiest to work with and can have heat issues, but if that is what you want, go for it. Look around at newegg.com for one.

Do you want an Intel or AMD setup?

You can start with a decent motherboard, processor, video card and power supply and then upgrade the other parts as you can afford to.

[dstrain]

Thanks for the input so far. As for the games I could deal with playing them on medium settings for now and upgrading the video card later on. Say I could eventually go high-end on the video card, what sort of motherboard, cpu, and memory would I need to enjoy the games on higher settings at that point?

I have no problem reusing what I have available at the moment and upgrading over time. For now, what are some good brand/model choices for the following, for an AMD system:

PSU:
Mobo:
CPU:
RAM:
Pri Optical (if one I have is inadequate)
Video Card:
Anything else I need, but haven't thought of:

[jayb1234]

That burner is a pretty good one and will be fine for now.

Take a look at the 939 socket Asus boards for best quality and upgradability. You can get an SLI or crossfire board that would allow you to use two video cards together or a regular board and stick with one card, the second card could be added later if you choose that option. Nvidia chipset unless you want the 2 crossfire option.

Ram, start with 1Gb (2 x 512) of Corsair value select that matches the board, chech the QVL list or the motherboard manual at Asus or use corsairs configurator to find compatible madules.

Processor, I'm not real familiar with AMD's line, but get the best that the budget allows, because it is one of the costliest parts to upgrade.

Power supply will depend on the motherboard choice, but brand is important, Antec, Enermax, fortron sparkle and a few others are good. Take a look at the first two sticky threads in the general hardware forum. Probably 50-80 bucks there.

Vid card: get the best the budget will allow. EVGA for a nvidia card, or any maker for ATI.

You might need a floppy drive at some point in the setup.

For the OS the OEM version of XP Home with SP2 will run about 90 bucks at newegg.

Take a look around newegg and see what you like and post a list and someone will help fine tune it.

[BrokenKingdom]

Well it seems to me that it will be very very hard to get everything you want with that budget, if not impossable.

But as far as video cards go I would recommend the geforce 6800 gs, its a great little card for the money and you should be able to plany any of those games at very reasonable settings, also if you decide to get a motherboard with SLI you can always buy another one later on for a cheap upgrade

For a CPU I suggest the athlon 6700+. This is a GREAT CPU and you really can't beat the price for the preformance.

I would go with a paired gig of corsiar value select. Its awesome ram and SO cheap at about $70 right now on newegg. Unbelievable!

The mother board is soley up to you, depending on what you want out of it. Do you want to overclock? Do you not want to mess with the board at all? Either way ASUS makes great motherboards and the suggestions so far for them are really good. Personaly it sounds to me like you are more of a gamer and i would spring for an SLI board.

For the PSU antec makes a nifty and cheap sli ready 500W PSU for about eighty bucks. You cannot go wrong with it.

As far as your case goes, unless you REALLY need it to be a micro atx I do not recommend getting one. It limits your motherboard options severely, you have to buy certain parts that will fit, and they do tend to overheat something aweful. A case is a case is a case you can find a cheap one with great airflow for anywhere between $25-$45. Hey it might not look like a million bucks but it's whats on the inside that counts

As far as line in guitar recording Check out creative livedrive, its awesome! I've had one for years and its so convienient and easy to use I love it. Plus creative makes some fantasitice products! (Like the creative Zen micro which makes Ipod look silly)

Your multi tasking might have to hold for a while, the AMD 6700+ will do an ok job at it but dual core CPU's handle multitasking WAY better. But they cost WAY more :/ The 6700 will do you well.

All together that should cost you about $750-ish and will be a very reasonable rig.

[glc]

You aren't going to be able to get a micro ATX case that will be able to fit a power supply strong enough to power a strong video card and be able to cool the beast too. Even with everything turned down, any video card less than a 6600GT won't play those games well at ALL.

[jfk]

Alright, I'll try, but it will be difficult.

Case: Antec Sonate II with 450 watt PSU-$92.00
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811129155

Mobo: ASUS A8N5X-$84.00
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131569

Memory: Corsair Value Select 1GB (2X512) -$70
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820145440

CPU: AMD 3200+ Venice-$166
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103535

Video Card: eVGA GeForce 6600GT-$135 ($115 AFTER rebate)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130214

OS: Windows Home OEM with SP2-$94
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16837102059

This is using all the things you mentioned. That included your old hard drive, optical drive, monitor, keyboard and mouse. It includes using onboard sound instead of a sound card, which could be added later. Total, BEFORE shipping, is $641. Shipping will add ~$36 for a total of $677. If you add a little less than $100 to this sum, you could upgrade to a 6800GS video card, which would be a big step up. With that vid card, you could play the games you mentioned reasonably well, though you WILL have a fair number of settings on medium to get acceptable frame rates. It will be a decent gamer, but it will suffer at times, especially in games like BF2 and COD2 that run better with more ram and better video cards. Anyway, just an example of what could be done. Anything you add (newer SATA hard drive or DVD ROM) will, of course, add to the cost.

[dstrain]

Thanks again guys for the great suggestions; I have a few follow-up questions:

I have a friend that has offered to give me a free stick of ram. It's a 1gb sp3200 stick. Will that work for me? Also, I have a Dell Precision 330 desktop with a P4 1.4ghz processor that I can cannibalize. I can also pick up a WinXP Pro/sp2 disc from work, so there's no cost there.

My question now is whether the P4 processor from the Dell can be used, and if so, is it worth it? If it can be used, along with the free memory, I can save a decent amount, and add in the free XP disc and a low priced case, then I'm getting close to saving something like $260-300. I could apply this towards a higher-end vid card and more memory. Right?

What do you guys think? Any mobo suggestions to go with the P4?

Sorry for all the questions. This is my very first build and I don't want to screw anything up.

Thanks!

[glc]

Nope, that 1.4 is a socket 423, obsolete, lousy performer, and motherboards are hard to find. None of them would work with your DDR ram either - they would be only sdram or rdram.