building a new rig, ideas?

[xXxCriminalClassxXx]

Well, i've been gone from this site for a while but now im back.

My current computer has a amd 3500, nvidia 7900gs, 1.5 gb ram, blah blah

 

im looking to build a new pc, not a manufacturers overpriced ..

 

im aiming for $1600 and lower

 

i wanna go all out, 8800, dual core processor, 2 gb of ram, around 200 gb hd, 7.1 speakers, high end sound card.

 

i was looking at quad core but from what ive heard its a waste.

 

what are your guys thoughts on it? put in your 2 cents, maybe put your own rig and the price it cost you.

 

im planning on ordering all the parts and putting it together with my friend psychotic_god on this site.

 

im looking to be able to play all the new games coming out. im actually looking for a new mmorpg also, something that can

 

keep me interested, something new. but fps are big on me too. I was also looking at those HeadPlay things...the virtual

 

reality headsets. www.headplay.com, any body know if those are good?

 

thanks

[Comp Dude2]

are you going to be selling your old rig and adding the money to the pot or anything like that?

[ThunderChicken]

For harddrives i suggest raptors, if its mainly a gaming machine i would suggest getting two of them. Then if you need data drives getting seperate drives.

 

Right now i have 3x36gig raptors 2 are in raid-0 other is just for more data. then i have 3x160gig and 1x250gig 1x120gig i plan on basically doing this setup once i get the funds....

 

2x36gig raptors*ones i have*

then

 

2x1tb wd drives raid-1 (eventually 4x1tb :thumbs-up: )

 

that way games and applications/os are running on the faster drives and data is one slower drives. So id suggest getting the size generally the bigger the size the faster it will be so if you get a 74gig raptor vs a 36gig it will be faster. You could also look into sas drive which are 15k rpm instead of 10k like the raptor.

 

As for mobo/cpu and other stuff i couldnt give you a good idea since i havnt been paying attention to latest hardware as of late.

[Gr4vitas]

As far as your processing goes quad core is certainly viable. You just have to decide what you prefer. With a Q6600 you can OC to 3.2ghz easily. And on good water upwards of 3.6+ good air 3.0-3.2ghz so thats what I'd be getting if I were you.

 

New games such as Crysis and others clearly state that they WILL in fact be utilizing the quad core processing. And if you went with a Q6600 I have no doubts you can get to 3.0 at the very least and past that perhaps. Which is the equivilant to like a E6850 or something. But 4 cores! I'll be buying the Q6600 when I build my new rig pretty soon. (And please buy your Q6600 from here and get the guaranteed G0 stepping for maximum overclocking performance.