Assistance needed for new PC purchase
 

This nice tax return money is about to make it over here, so I'm looking to finally get rid of my current piece of trash PC. I would appreciate some assistance on what to get (since I have no idea what I'm doing). My budget is around $2000 and I'm looking to use it as a gaming PC to last me for a good few years. Thanks in advance for any advice!

Well, heres the setup I went that went about 1000 bucks (before rebates...about 870 after) for me so

Case :
Newegg.com - Antec Nine Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Computer Cases
Mobo :
Newegg.com - GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS4 Rev. 2.0 LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Ultra Durable II Intel Motherboard - Intel Motherboards
Processor :
Newegg.com - Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 Conroe 2.66GHz 4M shared L2 Cache LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor - CPUs / Processors
Power Supply :
Newegg.com - OCZ GameXStream OCZ700GXSSLI ATX12V 700W Power Supply 100 - 240 V - Power Supplies
RAM :
Newegg.com - OCZ Platinum Revision 2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory - Desktop Memory
GFX :
Newegg.com - XFX PVT84GUDF3 GeForce 8600GTS 256MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Desktop Graphics
HDD's :
2X Newegg.com - Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD3200AAKS 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - Internal Hard Drives
Newegg.com - Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD4000AAKS 400GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - Internal Hard Drives


I also got myself a Zalman heat pipe cooler and its running pretty sweet in my case. At first I thought it would have been too big/just small enough but amazingly enough it fits very nicely in my case. I find the blue lighting to be very pleasant as well.

The Case and Mobo are pretty sweet too because the mobo comes with a eSATA bracket for two eSATA drives and also has room for 6 sata drives. The Mobo has ports for 8 satas so you can put some pretty awesome storage in there.

I've also discovered that having everything on the low speed setting still runs VERY cool and VERY silent...I mean extremely silent. I walked back in my room in the morning and thought I didn't turn it on so I wound up pushing the power button and turning it off.

Here's what I ended up going with.

Newegg.com - Once You Know, You Newegg

Stuff just came in the mail today too. I hope I don't run into any serious problems...

You got ripped hard on the processor. You could have gotten the superior Wolfdale for close to $200.

The motherboard is also a little insane.

I personally would have gotten a Wolfdale and an ASUS closer to $200, and spent the rest on Corsair Dominators (RAM).

Newegg.com - Arctic Silver ACN-60ML (2-PC-SET) Thermal material Remover & Surface Purifier - Thermal Compound / Grease

Wow, this is scary...putting eye drops on your CPU? Is this normal.

Well, we're going to be using thermal paste on the top of the processor. Figure I might as well have added that in there. The Wolfdale processor sold out while we were in the middle of checking out. I didn't really want to go under a 3.0 ghz so I went with that.

Luckily, the fan I ordered (Arctic Cooling) came with the thermal paste already embedded onto it's base. Otherwise, I wouldn't know what the hell to do with it.

I feel ya. The only direction I've been getting is from a very trusted friend of mine. We're gonna build it tomorrow.

My Zalman CPU cooler came with thermal grease that could be applied with a brush..it was EXTREMELY nice

The CPU is factory overclocked. Why pay more for a dual core when you can get a quad and OC it to the same speed, I will never know.

Q6600, please.

According to the research we did, Dual Core is currently better for gaming than quad core since there still isn't any PC games that fully utilize thread lining.

So the PC is built and runs like a dream. My mobo came with Stalker so I ran it on max settings. Very impressive!