Help with new buiild

[vaderboy]

Hi guys, I new to posting on pcmech although I have been reading the forums for about a year and was hoping for some advice on a new build I'm planning. It's been a goal of mine for a long time to build a computer but never got around to it. I was planning to replace my 5 year old Dell with a gaming computer to last about 3-4 years. Now that I have a 360 I dont game on the computer as much but enjoy an PC game every now and again as well as movie and cd editing. My buget would max out at $1300. I aready have a moniter and keyboard/mouse combo. Here is what I have so far.

Microsoft Vista Premieum system builder OS $120
Intel Core 2 Duo E6400
Asus AI Lifestyle P5B Deluxe P965 $250
Corsair 2Gb XMS2 6400 $270
160GB Barracuda HDD $73
A 9 in 1 with floppy card reader $40
Pioner 16x double layer DVD+- ide drive $60
Radeon X1950 XTX 512mb $400
X-Fi Gamer sound card $100
Cooler Master Centurion RC-534 ATX case $75
Corsair CMPSU 620HX ATX 12v power supply $170.

I got all the prices from newegg.com and microcenter.

Thanks in advance for the advice.
Vaderboy

[freakitchen]

Welcome to the forums! My suggestions are as follows:

1) You might consider dropping down a step to the E6300 processor. At stock speeds, the performance jump between the 6300 and the 6400 doesn't warrant the price difference. The next 'logical' jump from the 6300 is the 6600.

2) The Seagate 7200.10 hard drives are the ones to get right now. 250GB / 320GB are in the 'sweet spot' in terms of price per gigabyte

3) Let me point you to this sticky thread by our forum admin. He points out that the 3rd party IDE controller on the p965 chipset boards isn't the greatest, and it makes sense to go completely SATA - hard drive AND optical drive

4) My most important suggestion: I wouldn't drop big bucks on such a powerful video card at the moment. You're buying Vista, and Direct X 10 is just around the corner; the XTX is a Direct X 9 card. I'd recommend getting a placeholder video card until the full range of DX10 cards is released, and you can choose yourself a more powerful one. I'd suggest an eVGA Nvidia 7600GT for this purpose

FK

[glc]

That price seems high for the ram - get the CAS 5 stuff, not the CAS 4. Those are also awful high prices for the motherboard, card reader, and DVD burner. Perhaps those are the Microcenter items?

I'd wait on a sound card - build it with the onboard and see how it goes. You can add later.