First timer here, please advice!

[badfella]

Hello Fellow PC-Mechanicz,
My current PC is 4 to 5 years old, bought it from Dell, pentium 4 with 256 RAM, 40GB of hard drive and all the basic stuff. 1 year ago did some upgrades, added 512 RAM, so now it's running on 728 RAM and also threw a GeForce 5500 FX vdo card. Got tired of this slow crap machine and now i m ready to build my own rig.

Been reading alot of magazines like How to Build, PC Guide, How To's and such....visiting different sites to check out the latest techs.....long story short, i wanna build a PC but don't know what to pick....

Now about me;
1- I am a gamer, web-designer, filmmaker, photographer and editor. So for me i need something very powerful. As far as my budget is concern, i can save the money and then buy it.

* I need a powerful processor about 3 GHZ, which will not slow me down when i am editing photos or designing a website and will still let me play my recent games when not running any other apps. (Intel or AMD....dont care, dont even know which one is the best)

* I dont like to visit my studio all the time to edit my movies, i would like Final Cut Pro in my PC, now i have heard that there is one app that can run MAC softwares in windows, is that true ??

* Now Gaming requires; a powerful video card.... now i am thinking two powerful PCI's or PCI express ??

* Need crazy surround sound speakers, like four or six, so i can set them up in my room and watch a movie like i am in a theatre, will need a powerful sound card too..

* Have no idea about Cases and cooling ?? Need something quiet, and dont care about neon lights .... something with usb ports and few ports for like the HDD, DVD Drive & CD/DVD burner...all that Stuff.

* Will need a bigger HDD, coz of music, lot of softwares and games.

* Will need about 2GB of RAM maybe ??

* Need a wireless mouse, wireless keyboard and a flat screen monitor about 32" which can also be mounted on a wall.

Did i miss anything ? well that is what i am looking for, any help, advice and links would be a great help....i know few websites like tigerdirect and newegg ..... just dont know what to buy coz i need the latest and the fastest. Please help, thank you for your time.

Badfella

[Cricket]

Originally Posted by badfella * I need a powerful processor about 3 GHZ, which will not slow me down when i am editing photos or designing a website and will still let me play my recent games when not running any other apps. (Intel or AMD....dont care, dont even know which one is the best)

Currently Intel Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad processors rule the roost as far as performance goes. For what you need the computer to do you may want to consider a Core 2 Quad processor. And don't let their speed rating fool you, these are very powerful processors. You don't judge processor performance by their speed rating anymore.

Originally Posted by badfella * I dont like to visit my studio all the time to edit my movies, i would like Final Cut Pro in my PC, now i have heard that there is one app that can run MAC softwares in windows, is that true ??

Sorry, don't know the answer to that question.

Originally Posted by badfella * Now Gaming requires; a powerful video card.... now i am thinking two powerful PCI's or PCI express ??

You're thinking SLi or CrossFire which involves using 2 identical PCI-Exress 16 video cards. If you can afford to run 2 NVidia 8800 Ultra video cards in SLi you'd have all the video power you'd need for gaming for quite some time. But that kind of power doesn't come cheap...a computer with specs like this would easily cost over $3000.

Originally Posted by badfella * Need crazy surround sound speakers, like four or six, so i can set them up in my room and watch a movie like i am in a theatre, will need a powerful sound card too.

Sorry, can't help you here.

Originally Posted by badfella * Have no idea about Cases and cooling ?? Need something quiet, and dont care about neon lights .... something with usb ports and few ports for like the HDD, DVD Drive & CD/DVD burner...all that Stuff.

Take a look at the Antec Sonata III.

Originally Posted by badfella * Will need a bigger HDD, coz of music, lot of softwares and games.

1 terabyte hard drives (1000 gigabytes) just became available. Available from several different companies too.

Originally Posted by badfella * Will need about 2GB of RAM maybe ??

That's fine to start with but you may want to upgrade in the future.

Originally Posted by badfella * Need a wireless mouse, wireless keyboard and a flat screen monitor about 32" which can also be mounted on a wall.

Sorry, can't help you with this.

Originally Posted by badfella Did i miss anything ?

DVD burner? DVD reader?

Originally Posted by badfella well that is what i am looking for, any help, advice and links would be a great help....i know few websites like tigerdirect and newegg

You'll want to get your parts from Newegg...TigerDirect is one of the worst on-line vendors to buy from. Do yourself a favor and stay away from them.

Originally Posted by badfella just dont know what to buy coz i need the latest and the fastest. Please help, thank you for your time.

I usually don't spec out systems unless I'm really going to build them, but other forum members can help you pick out all the right parts for you.

Good luck.

Cricket

[badfella]

thanks for the quick reply and thank you for the help,

You're thinking SLi or CrossFire which involves using 2 identical PCI-Exress 16 video cards. If you can afford to run 2 NVidia 8800 Ultra video cards in SLi you'd have all the video power you'd need for gaming for quite some time. But that kind of power doesn't come cheap...a computer with specs like this would easily cost over $3000

what kinda motherboard would be compatible with Intel core 2 duo or quad core and at the same time have 2 PCI Express slots ??

[Cricket]

Originally Posted by badfella what kinda motherboard would be compatible with Intel core 2 duo or quad core and at the same time have 2 PCI Express slots ??

Something like this.

Cricket

[Katreat]

Really think hard before investing in SLI. A year from now there will be a new single video card that will out perform two 8800 ultras in SLI. The new generation has always out performed two older generation cards so just upgrading in a year will keep your system fresher. Of course if money is no problems you can always upgrade to two of the next generation cards

If you go SLI I would suggest the Antec 182 case for quite. Little bigger than the sonata and you can put your own PSU in it. The sonata comes with a 500w and with two ultras you will need more like 800w.

[badfella]

i was just looking on these two, can someone explain me the difference and prefer me which one to get ?? I am confused, does GHz make any difference ?? thanks for the help

Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 Conroe 3.0GHz 4M shared L2 Cache LGA 775 Processor
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115028

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz 2 x 4MB L2 Cache LGA 775 Processor
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115017

[Cricket]

The Core 2 Duo has two cores...it's like having two CPUs to do the work.

The Core 2 Quad has four cores...it's like having four CPUs to do the work.

The CPU with more cores can do more things at once.

Cricket