I'm a college student seeking to spend some of my hard earned summer cash on a new Desktop system. I've been doing research for 2 days and still don't know where to start. I use notebook for school work etc. Primarily, I hook my desktop system to my HDTV (Westinghouse 720p LTV-32w6 Supported Resolutions: 1366 x 768 @ 60Hz;1280 x 1024 @ 60, 75Hz; 1024 x 768 @ 70, 75 Hz) for gaming and to watch DVD and itunes movies etc... I am looking to build a system with a blue-ray drive have my eyes on http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3538928&CatId=3634 (read-only is fine). For gaming I play Half-life 2, FEAR, COD4, want to actually be able to play Crysis with good quality and a reasonable frame rate. Although I don't have a lot of time to game so it’s not an absolute top priority. Budget is $1000 dollars, however of course I would like to spend as little as necissary without too much sacrifice. Any suggestions would be extremely appreciated.
Fortunately, since you're using a TV for your PC, you only use a low screen resolution, so graphical power isn't so much a problem. I'd recommend using Newegg for the parts over TigerDirect. Q6600: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115017 Ep45-DS3L: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128345 4GB Corsair: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145194 Sapphire HD4850: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102747 750GB HDD: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152100 NZXT Alpha: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811146041 Corsair 550W: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139004 Bluray Drive: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827136133 Total cost around $1040, but with $60 of mail in rebates. This system will manage an average frame rate of about 30 in Crysis with all settings 'Very High', in any other title, it will be at least 80, if not over 100.
Thanks a lot for the reply. What do you recommend for a power supply? And also for OS I am thinking Vista Home Premium 32bit or should I go with 64 (don't plan on having more than 4GB mem).
I've included a power supply that I recommend. For the OS, I prefer to still use XP as it's faster. If you don't mind sacrificing a bit of performance and want the extra features, use Vista. As for the 32 or 64-bit versions, the 32-bit will be slightly easier to find drivers for, but the 64-bit should run quite a bit faster. Your call really, if you intend to use lots of third party peripherals like game adapters, USB modems etc, you ought to check to see if they have 64-bit drivers before you take the plunge on a 64-bit operating system.
