Topic: Planning to build a powerful PC

[Canceler]

i've done a bit of searching just today, and my budget is about $1200. This is because I am young and have no concept of responsibility or retirement savings. And I am willing to take about year saving for it.

CPU: Intel Core i7-860
CPU Cooler: COOLER MASTER GeminII S CPU Cooler
Mobo: ASUS P7P55D LGA 1156 ATX Motherboard
RAM: OCZ Gold 8GB (2x 4GB) 240-pin DDR3 1333 RAM
GPU: VisionTek Radeon HD 5750 1GB Video Card
PSU: OCZ ModXStream Pro 700W ATX12V Modular Power Supply
HDD: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 7200RPM SATA 3GB/s Hard Drive
Optical Drive: ASUS Black 24x/8x/16x 2MB Cache SATA DVD Burner
Case: COOLER MASTER Elite 335 ATX Mid Tower Case
Misc: (1) APEVIA 120mm Blue LED Case Fan; (2) Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Grease
OS: Windows 7 64-bit (free for college students >8D)

opinions? >.>

[Matthew]

Personally I think Intel's processors are overpriced, and AMDs are better at overclocking, but it's not a *bad* choice per se.

Again, Intel isn't my first choice for mobo, and that looks more like a workstation mobo than a gaming one. I'd suggest something like this: Gigabyte. This one also has a buttload of various connections on the back to connect to pretty much anything you can dream of.

RAM looks fine.

GPU is a bit dated but if you already have it why not.

Sound card I can't really comment on, but that board I linked has an 8-channel realtek card onboard, which in my experience is more than sufficient. But I suppose if you do a lot of sound stuff (and it's a b-day present ) a sound card would be useful. Just make sure the board you get has the space for it. Some boards have the PCI-E slot literally right on top of the slot for the sound card (PCI?).

PSU looks good.

Case is pretty irrelevant in my opinion Get what you want.

HDD is, again, fairly irrelevant imo. Get what you want.

Personally I'd get a blu-ray drive just for posterity but that looks fine

OS, well, meh, not much choice there.

Not really sure why you're going for an mATX mobo for an ATX case, I had a horrible time finding a decent mATX mobo for my semi-planned rig (darn HP and their tiny cases!), and they might be more expensive, but I guess if you found one you like go for it.

[Canceler]

well, since i already decided on CPU, the mobo suggestion becomes unusable, but i do appreciate the consideration. i don't actually know what makes the difference between a workstation mobo and a gaming mobo, since i thought the processing units would take care of that. the only thing i would like to know is the bridge speed (i think), which doesn't seem to be listed in the specs. ;o;

the case, btw, is mATX, but it does fit a full ATX PSU, which is what i'm getting

[Matthew]

Well that mobo has a ton of HDD slots but not much in the way of A/V connections or PCI slots which makes me think its more for a workstation than gaming.

[Canceler]

hmm i think i'm just going to expand my budget another $150 (lulz easy to do when you have nothing ) and get a new VisionTek Radeon HD 5750 video card and sell my old computer for some pittance.

[Fennecfox]

Sweet
Nice ram looks like mine lol
The video card you just chose seems to be dual slot, and I don't think that goes well in a mini ATX Case, covers up slots.  I didn't realize this when I made my build so I have 1 PCI 2.0 slot covered (I didn't know anything about mobos until I had one) 

Have a happy birthday!

[Canceler]

don't worry about me, it covers up a PCIe 1x slot, which i have no use for.

[VANGUARD]

I have always liked AMD over Intel, and NVIDIA over ATI.

That's me though. The one or two times I had ATI; one time for sure, I had problems loading games properly.

Windows 7?  I think that's better than Vista; but I am only going by what people have said about the two.