Com-Central.net

Time for a new rig.

All about gaming.

Suggestions? Post them here please!

I'll check back here as much as I can as I look for a new ride.

Combat

Question 1:

How large/small is your budget ??

Question 2:

Do you want the Ultimate gaming rig?

Question 3:

What time frame do you have in mind? (now, summer, end of the year)


fled

I'll be watching this thread for the same reason Combat posted....

I'm building a new rig shortly and as I can't afford the gear that's just been released nor is it possible to wait for new stuff coming out (If I did, I'd never get to upgrade)

So I intend to build the following...

AMD 64 Bit 4000 cpu (single core for now)
Asus A8N-SLI mobo
Corsair matched ram
Nvidia 7800 graphics card (just one for now)
600Watt PSU
Case (made from lego)

Since todays games are not yet fully dual core compatable I'm going for the single core option to start with, the mobo will support both single and dual core cpu's so later in the year when the prices have fallen again, I'll upgrade to a dual core cpu.

Like wise with the graphics card, what I consider to be the best present day one, then later buy another and run them in SLI mode.

I know what you are all thinking and we all have our own preferences, personally my route is AMD/Nvidia, others will choose different.

The point being, if you wait for quad cores or DDR2 memory or the next generation of graphics card, you'll never upgrade, unless you've got pots of money.

Just my thoughts...

ABIT KN8 SLI NVIDIA Socket 939 ATX Motherboard / Audio / PCI Express / SLI / Gigabit LAN / S/PDIF / USB 2.0 & Firewire / Serial ATA / RAID IMO best for stabilty and overclocking approx $100 US
AMD Athlon 64x2 ideal for mutithreaded apps (price varies on speed and core type) $330 - 960 US

Samsung / 120GB / 7200 / 2MB / ATA-133 / EIDE / OEM / Hard Drive $80 US
Ultra / V-Series / 500-Watt / ATX / 120mm Fan / 20/24-Pin / SATA Ready / Power Supply $60 US
XFX GeForce 6800 GS / 256MB DDR3 / PCI Express / SLI / DVI / VGA / TV-Out / Video Card $200 US

You can ease up on the vid card to save and get two decent ones for SLI
Get a nice case and you are SMOKIN for a grand

Question 1:

How large/small is your budget ??

Question 2:

Do you want the Ultimate gaming rig?

Question 3:

What time frame do you have in mind? (now, summer, end of the year)

OK here I am ....operating from safe mode.

Willing to spend up to $1500 but may need to really convince me to go that high. Would gladly spend a grand. Keep posting suggestions. Basically want the best gaming rig I can get for between $1,000 and $1,500. AND I WANT IT NOW! lol

Dude, while you'll get a bunch of good suggestions on building your own rig, if you just want to a real good perfomer without screwdriver time involved, here's what I did.....went down to CompUSA and located a nice Gateway rig they had with a fast CPU, lotsa fast memory, and a big hard drive. And a pukey, low-end vid card. That bit was like, $800 or more, don't recall.

Then I bought an ATI Radeon PCI Express XL800 video card - lotsa memory, great specs. That was like, $350 at the time or somethin'. Put the card in myself which doesn't void the warranty.

That was about it. I ended up with a warranty, a fresh Windows XP install with service pack 2 out of the box, all the support you can eat, tons of free HD space (you DO have to reinstall your old programs).

The only thing I didn't get was my old data, documents, files transferred over and THAT is the key part. I had two fully-running computers tho, so I hooked 'em together with a crossover network cable and configured a littel private network so they could see each other, and pumped the data files andsuch over that way. But you DO want to justdo a re-install one the actual programs themselves, so they configure properly to yoru new hardware and windows registry is proper, all that. When you see folks pump CFS3, IL2 or FS2004 over in whole doing a data transfer, that's when problems seem to start. But the data files they use should make the trip OK.

There maybe other, better ways to do that (and if you can only run in safe mode, networking is not an option for you I believe) and comments on that bit would probably be appreciated....anyway, hardware-wise, not wanting to fuss around with cases, mobos, memory, drivers, and all that, (I can, but my time is more important to me) I went out the door easily under your price goal.....actually I had enough left over to get me a big ol' 19 or 20" CRT monitor and was still under 1500 I believe.....runs like a striped-@ss ape, tons of FPS, and rock solid.

And if any little burp or something happens I don't have to worry that it was my 'puter-building skills or parts choice.....

I'll have to concurr with Stoopy's suggestions.

If you want it NOW, this is the fastest, cheapest and most uncomplicated way to get you up and running asap.

Personally, alltough I'm contemplating also about a "new" rig, I wil hold me horses till approximatly the 3rd/4th quarter of this year.

Reason for this beeing, having read the specs and stuff about fsX and Vista, also looking at what's going on at the moment with the various hardware, if I buy now , I could be looking at a outdated rig within six months from now.

what I had in mind would look something like this:

64bit system
3,8 P4 dfb 1G
Asus mobo
ATI X1900XTX in sli config (that's 2 of those babies)
4 G's of RAM
4 x 160 G drive SATA and in RAID 0 cfg
750 Watts PSU
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 7.1

When I inquired around here at this moment including OS, case and the rest of the bits and bobs missing foem that it would set me back approx 3,500-4,000 Euro's times 1,22 you'll know the US $ involved.

Therefore keeping my patience probably will get me the stuff a wee bit cheaper and god knows maybe even higher spec's

Keep the suggestions rolling in gents!

I'm taking notes!

well i guess alienware is outa the question then eh?.....I built my dream machine on their website and by the time all was said and done it was about 8000,,,lol,,,,not including the 500 for shipping,,,,,,but to my knowledge alienware seems to build awwesome gaming platforms.....check out the website and see what they have to offer ya'


www.alienware.com

Alienware is NICE STUFF!!!!!!!! Rich for my blood, but NICE!!

Here's an example Gateway system (and no I don't work for them, it's just that they seem to be decent, non-proprietary stuff, unlike Dell, Compaq, HP or Sony which I wouldn't frikkin let my worst enemy touch)...just an example of building something on their site, except they don't offer the ATI card I'd go with, but it comes with a decent NVidia GeForce 6200 128MB vid card that would do the job until you could upgrade for your birthday. Here's the system and the options I poked into it, and note the date...dude it would ship right after the Superbowl

I have no idea why it wouldn't let me remove the surge protector.....

System
Gateway® FX400S

Additional Items
Intel® Pentium® D Processor 940 featuring two processing cores (3.20GHz, 800MHz FSB, 2x2MB cache, non-HT EM64T) with 400-watt power supply [ +US$390.00]

1GB (1024MB) 533MHz DDR2 SDRAM Dual Channel (2-512MB modules) [ +US$155.00]

250GB Serial ATA II/300 7200rpm hard drive w/ 8MB cache [ +US$90.00]

48x/32x/48x CD-RW/DVD combo drive [ +US$29.00]

Belkin SurgeMaster 8 Outlet Surge Protector (6614906)
[ +US$29.99]

Base Price
$799.99

Additional Items +$693.99

Total
$1,493.98
As low as $58.27/month¹

Shipping and handling info
Estimated Ship Date 2/6/2006


Anyone think why that wouldn't do the job for starters?

You mean other than that it's a Gateway?

See? Opinions will vary!

Wattaya suggest Dakota?

bat just ask the wife for the extra 1000 bucks, then you can get the big dog. tell her that if she allows you to spend 2500 on the rig you will repay her by spending more time gaming and she gets the kids all to herself for hours and hours.


its a win/win

arch

hope this helps

?.....I built my dream machine on their website and by the time all was said and done it was about 8000,,,lol,,,,not including the 500 for shipping,,,,,,

OK HOPPA YA WISE GUY! LOL I got this thing in safe mode and can barely make out the text I'm looking at! Is that a 3,000 or 8,000??? LOL ....and if it was an 8,000 that's pretty sick! Especially when I used to be able to pop your head off from about 200yds in COD UO with my $1,200 rig that I was using! lol

if she allows you to spend 2500 on the rig you will repay her by spending more time gaming and she gets the kids all to herself for hours and hours.

Now...Archie! lol. Thanks for the suggestion! lol I am driving the wife and kids nuts being that I am going bannanas without a damn keyboard in front of me. Your suggestion might actually work! lol

See? Opinions will vary!

Wattaya suggest Dakota?

Yeah wise guy???!!! Whatta you suggest?

Stoopy and Kit! Right now you got my attention!