Part of the PC family

Greetings! I am currently days away from building a PC. Unfortunately I am not too keen on these technical aspects (Have been a Mac user). The budget is 3,000.00 (tower only), and the main focus is for gaming, video and sound editing. Any suggestions about hardware and software will be mostly appreciated. Again, I am computer illiterate with these things so please be specific. Thanks in advance.

Hey there Nomad,

3000, eh? crazy stuff. I recently used 1500 to buy parts for a new PC. While I'm no expert I have built a few.
atm I'm running a
AMD 4400 dual core
Gigabyte motherboard
2 gigs of RAM
Coolermaster Aluminum Case
550W Antec Power Supply
250gigs SATA main HD
500 gigs of media HD (IDE drives that I had)
7600 PCI-E Nvidia GPU

For what I use it for (graphics, and maybe some games ) this works out perfect for me.
Not included in that tally is the cost of the monitor (a samsung 19" LCD) and photoshop (which I already had). I plan on getting a second monitor soon, as I find that professionally its almost a must.

I recommend getting parts from www.newegg.com ...they're really reliable.

Usually my PCs cost about 1,100-1,500 with tax and shipping, and last about 2 years of playing the latest games. Dunno if I'd spend 3k cause the value will always plummet on PCs within a couple years regardless. Could just be that I am poor at the moment though.

Anyway, what CnC said is a good option, for an all purpose PC. It's a fair bit better than what I am on now (had for 1.5 years) and I can run games like F.E.A.R pretty well, though I had to tweak it.

What I would really recommend for primarily gaming is an SLI system, especially if you can afford 3k. You will get double the performance for SLI optimized games, which is practically every new game for the last years. If you don't know much about them you can go here
http://www.slizone.com/
basically it is a system with 2 pci-e cards working in almost perfect conjunction.

For a processor if u are going to be doing video editing its worth spending the extra to get a dual core as they are able to encode much faster. as you can see on the link below the X2's blow away anything else.

http://tomshardware.co.uk/2005/11/21/the_mother_of_all_cpu_charts_2005uk/page67.html

Mobo... well this is entirely upto you and what features you want on it just be careful with the cpu socket, gfx card socket and mem speeds it supports.

Memmory... again if your video editing the more the better 2gb should be alright, and if u want the little boost in gaming go for 2 sticks of dual channel 1024Mb, manufacturer really doenst make much diffrence imo but corsair are top end then crucial/kingston are alright never had problems with either.

GFX... u have a choice here to go ATI or Nvidia... personally im an ATI guy so i only really know about their cards. the x1800 should be good enough to run everything on max details fairly well for the next year. no point splashing out the extra for a x1900 and the x1600 will go out of date soon i feel.

also ATI have crossfire which enabled you to install a 2nd gfx card for increased performance these cards are backwards compatible so if u need the extra performance boost in 6 months u can then just buy another card whereas Nvidias SLI u need the same revision of gfx card so u need to buy the 2 cards at the same time to make sure they are from the same batch but make sure u get a mobo that can support it.

HDD... again since yer vid editing i would go with something fairly big (300gb+) go with SATA and i highly reccomend western digital as a manufacturer. if u have the cash it may also be worth getting 1 of their raptor drives to install windows and use a 2nd slower HDD to store large files this cut my boot time by half.

PSU... anything really 430-500w is ideal though

case and other things i cant really comment on since your the one who has to look at it every day.

monitor... iiyama or hyundai are good makes, if u get a tft make sure its a 4 or 8ms one for gaming the 12's and 25ms look abit dodgy in first person shooters.

dvd burner/player... pioneer are a good make for the price and its very easy to flash the firmware so u can multi region them.

on the whole i reccomend looking through toms hardware guide and reading the reviews/comparrison charts

my rig is...

AMD 64 4000+
Sapphire pure crossfire advantage mobo
Sapphire X1800 xl gfx card
Corsair 2*1024 XMS dual channel mem
74gb WD raptor HDD
80gb WD HDD
Ultra X-Connect 500W psu
Hyundai 19" L90D+

inc. case and all fans and flashly lights this cost me about £1200 roughly 6 months ago the monitor i got about a year ago for about £300

3K is a nice budget for a tower. It really depends on if you want to overclock or not. If no:

Then I would go with a
X2 CPU (250-1000), Thermaltake XP90(25) or XP120(40) <-- Super quiet and cool
2GB DDR400 (150-200)
X-Fi Standard (~100)
SLI MB(100-200) or X-Fire if you go that route
Dual Layer DVDRW(~60)
Seasonic S12 600 PSU(150) <-- Best power supply for money, super quiet too
Nice Tower (150)
7900GTX or X1800XTX (450-600) <--SLI/X-Fire if you really want to spend money
250GB 16MB Cache 7200RPM Drive

If you want to overclock, get a nice dual core opteron and some DDR500 for some headroom.

You could probably spend less money and get similiar performance in some areas, but if you want to go all out then do it right Also, be aware computer hardware lifetime with games is as short as ever, a year from now I wouldnt doubt you not being able to play the latest and greatest with max eye candy.

I run this setup right now:

Athlon X2 4400+
XP90 w/ Panaflo Medium
eVGA SLI MB
eVGA 7800GTX 512 SLI
X-Fi Fatality
2GB G.Skill DDR 500
2 X 80GB Western Digital SATA 8mb
Antec P180 with 4 120MM Fans
Seasonic S12 600W SLI

It hits about 9K in 3dMark06 (~13K in 05, Cpu limited now ). Plays Oblivion maxed with about 45-80FPS outdoors, 100-200FPS indoors.

zooty said:

also ATI have crossfire which enabled you to install a 2nd gfx card for increased performance these cards are backwards compatible so if u need the extra performance boost in 6 months u can then just buy another card whereas Nvidias SLI u need the same revision of gfx card so u need to buy the 2 cards at the same time to make sure they are from the same batch but make sure u get a mobo that can support it.

Click to expand...

Not true, you only have to have the same model card (7900GTX with 7900GTX, 7800GT with 7800GT, etc). You can mix and match brands, clock speeds, etc with SLI. It will just downclock to the lowest common speed. So you can run a BFG Brand 7800GTX @ 480/1130 with a eVGA Brand 7800GTX @450/1100 and it would run both cards at 450/1100. This is was released a while back with Forceware 80 (last year sometime).
Some more info if anyone wants some:

http://www.slizone.com/object/slizone2_rel80.html

  Thanks guys.  Dual Core seems to be the winner so far.  As far as SFX goes... Well, don't know much about ATI nor Nvidia... So I'll be checking them up during the next few hours. The more the performance, the better I say. 

Not included in that tally is the cost of the monitor (a samsung 19" LCD) and photoshop (which I already had).  I plan on getting a second monitor soon, as I find that professionally its almost a must.

Click to expand...

  I've heard good things about these monitors, even from strict evil Mac users  . Pending on how I am setting up the computer, I'll have a better idea of what specific monitor (at least size) to get.  Thanks again.

The main thing to remember with LCD monitors is Native resolution. If you buy a 21" WS LCD that runs 1680x1050, then you will want to run in that resolution on games, which means more power. Running out of native isnt as bad as it used to be, but its still a noticeable difference in quality, since LCDs are fixed pixel displays. I run this display http://accessories.gateway.com/Acce..._21+inch+LCD_381955/1534243_ProdDetail?seg=sb

and love it, but it requires me to upgrade a lot if I want to keep playing the latest and greatest in the future because of the high resolution.

ATI and nVidia both have strong suits. Right now if I were to go single card, I would do the X1800XTX, if you dont mind noise, they are a little loud. But the 7900GTX is just as powerful, they swich back and forth depending on game. If i were planning on buying one card and adding one in the future, or starting off with 2. I would definitely go 7900GTX for SLi. Crossfire and SLI are both good technologies, but SLI is just more mature, it has been on the market about 1.5yrs longer. SLI boards are more rampant, and cheaper. Plus, SLI boards are based on nForce4 chipset which has been king of all AMD motherboard chipsets since nForce2.

Nomad said:

I've heard good things about these monitors, even from strict evil Mac users . Pending on how I am setting up the computer, I'll have a better idea of what specific monitor (at least size) to get. Thanks again.

Click to expand...

the mac monitors are nice, but waay too expensive for what the offer (as usual).

grendelrt said:

I run this display http://accessories.gateway.com/Acce..._21+inch+LCD_381955/1534243_ProdDetail?seg=sb

and love it, but it requires me to upgrade a lot if I want to keep playing the latest and greatest in the future because of the high resolution.

Click to expand...

cool lookin' display. For my second monitor its a tossup between another samsung, the dell 24", and I suppose this one. Thanks

From what I remember CnC , the panel in the gateway is a Samsung panel. The Dell monitors are also Samsung panels too, you really cant go wrong with any of them  The 24" Dell and the Gateway both have Component in as well, which is nice if you dont have a HDTV and get a 360 or something. Personally I am big Samsung whore, 2 monitors, a 46" DLP, cell phone, and a microwave

grendelrt said:

From what I remember CnC , the panel in the gateway is a Samsung panel. The Dell monitors are also Samsung panels too, you really cant go wrong with any of them

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different shapes and sizes, tho. as well as different specs. whatever, tho

CnC said:

different shapes and sizes, tho.  as well as different specs.  whatever, tho

Click to expand...

Oh of course, I was just saying if you were looking for a Samsung branded monitor (because you like the brand or whatever) they are all actually made by Samsung. The 24" dell runs at 1920 x 1200, badass for productivity. I went 1680 x 1050 because it was more manageable for games eheh. My friend has two of the 20" WS dells and they are nice monitors too.

grendelrt said:

The 24" dell runs at 1920 x 1200, badass for productivity. I went 1680 x 1050 because it was more manageable for games eheh.

Click to expand...

Yea thats pretty much the debate thats raging in my head right now (angel vs. devil). I _should_ only aim at productivity but those games sure do run sweet.
At this point I've been pretty unsuccessful trying to slow down my games at 1280*1024, so I'm sure the 24" will be manageable.

Well one good thing to remember is that scaling on LCDs has much improved, so even if you had to run at 1280 x 1024, it wouldnt look terrible. I have no regrets on my 21" LCD, even though I have had to upgrade to keep my gaming addiction at bay

$3000 is a GIANT budget for building your own pc! PCs are much cheaper than macs. For $750 I built:

pentium 4 3.0ghz
80gb hard drive
2gb ram (2 1gb sticks)
dvd burner
geforce 6600gt
heatsink fan
green halogen light
new tower

For the record I am using the soundcard of my old system, as well as its old 40g HD too.

I hiiiiiiiiiighly recommend waiting a bit and not building a pc yet.

Direct x 10 is just around the corner and that means new graphics cards and everything that supports it.

Splurging on a very nice system now wouldn't be the smartest thing because you'll be kicking your own ass when you don't have DX10 and stuff and have to upgrade to see it when you coulda just held off a little while.