hay guyz I'm planning on building myself a new rig

[Beckwin]

Looking for reccomendations/advice. I built the machine I'm on now about 4 years ago, and it's time to re-modernize. I don't want to spend more than 1k if I can help it, but if there's something really worthwhile that would put me over a little bit, I'd consider it. I don't need a monitor, but I'm considering a new OS- currently running a not-kosher WinXP pro (can't really update it >_>).

Stuff from my current rig I can possibly keep using:
1 GB of ram (decent stuff, Corsair?, on 2 sticks iirc)
DVD burner
CD burner
an 80 gig HD

My current gfx card is kinda dying and out of date, and I figure a new mobo would be necessary to accomodate a new processor. I also have an audigy2 soundcard, but something is messed up with the output (staticy) and tbh I don't care all that much about sound.

What I want: I play games (naturally) and I do computer animation, so thats what I have in mind for building this. I'd also appreciate advice on OS.

[thestalkmore]

If you don't play FPS, more ram.
If you do play FPS, more ram and a better GFX card.

[Stromgarde]

Don't go overboard on RAM if you're sticking with a 32bit OS though, I built myself a rig a few days ago and of the 4 gigs I have in there only 2.75 is shown by windows. I enabled PAE, but that didn't really do anything visible either.

[Beckwin]

I figure 2 gigs of ram should be enough. Looking at maybe a gforce 8600 for a vid card. Processor I'm not too sure of... right now I'm using an AMD 2700, but I'm hearing the intel duocores are the shit, not to mention they sound really nice for rendering. as for mobo, I'll probably just get a package cpu+mobo deal.

Any Vista users out there? Is it worth the trouble at this point? For my purposes I'm guessing I could just get by with an XP home edition.

[Stromgarde]

If you do get Vista, the first thing you do should be to disable UAC. Definitely the most annoying OS 'Feature' I've ever seen. As for Vid Card, I went with this (HiS Radeon X1950 512MB with IceQ3). Blazing fast, and you can barely hear the damn thing. You won't really save too much by reusing old optical drives, you can get one with anything you could possibly want for less than forty bucks. My rig ran me ~$1300, but I got a gigantic widescreen monitor with it, but aside from that the rest of it is probably within your range. If you like, I can give you the details on the rest of it.

[Beckwin]

Hah, a widescreen monitor is really tempting. It's a godsend for working with Maya. Post your rig if you don't mind, I'm interested in seeing what you setup. Does that $1300 figure include an OS? I could live with my 14 inch monitor and keep it closer to 1k if so.

And yeah, opticals are real cheap but I do like having 2 drives for disc->disc burning and whatever multitasking I'd want to do, so no real need to buy new ones.

[The_OG_Nelta]

where's devek?

[Stromgarde]

Nah, my dad hooked me up with a copy of Vista via a filthy rich friend of the family. XP is still good for the time being, however.

As for the rest:

Motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813188019
EVGA 122-CK-NF63-TR LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard

CPU
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819115003
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 Conroe 2.4GHz 4M shared L2 Cache LGA 775 Processor
(Will overclock with stock fan to 3.0GHz easy with stock fan)

GPU
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814161093
HIS Hightech H195PRQT512DDN-R-V2 Radeon X1950PRO 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 IceQ 3 Turbo HDCP Video Card

HDD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822136073
Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD5000AAKS 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM

Memory
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820145015
CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 675 (PC2 5400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory
(x2 for a total of 4GB)

Optical Media Drive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6827135146
SUS Black 18X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 8X DVD+R DL 18X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 14X DVD-RAM 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM 2MB Cache SATA DVD Burner with LightScribe

Case
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6811119068
COOLER MASTER Centurion 5 CAC-T05-UW Black Aluminum Bezel, SECC ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

PSU
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817182059
Rosewill RP500-2-S ATX12V v2.01 500W Power Supply 115/230 V CSA, TUV, FCC, UL (has a blue LED!)

----

Monitor
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6824116075
ViewSonic Optiquest Series Q20WB Black 20" 5ms DVI Widescreen LCD Monitor 300 cd/m2 1000:1

DVI-D Cable
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6812186011
SYBA 6 Feet DVI-D Male to DVI-D Male Cable, Gold Plated Connector, RoHS Model SD-DVIDL-MM-6