$1600 for a desktop

I just can't see how you can spend $1600 dollars on the computer alone, unless you have some over-the-top needs, like uber-fancy cases, or are just blowing the money for the hell of it. Then again, I'm probably speaking from a build-it-yourself perspective.

What kind of specs do you have in mind? And even better, what do you plan on using the computer to do? It's best to get these questions out so that we can help you get what you need.

Cheers!

How ya doing, buddy?

My suggestion is to buy from one place like Newegg, because you won't get too confused on where you bought from. Buying from 5 different vendors saving like $10 on each item isn't really worth the confusion/hassle, but that's my opinion.

What I'd do (assuming you live in the US) is check some prices on Newegg, and ZipZoomFly. I purchase all my hardware (lots of stuff) from these two sites and never had one issue, even when defective components needed returned (memory once).

That being said, it sounds like you want a gaming PC that will last years to come. No problem. First off, you want to buy Intel Core2Duo, or if you have money to burn an Intel Quad. I don't see Quads as necessary, because even now, there is really nothing outside of professional video/image/audio editing that uses 4cores, and right now there is no sign of that changing anytime soon. You can check this article and see the real world graphs on Quad vs Dual core comparisons and see what I'm talking about. But if you are a power whore, so be it, buy an uber-expensive QX processor for $1000 (seriously don't, it's a waste). The best bang for your buck is the 2.66Ghz e6750 for $190. Though if youve got money to burn and want a bit more future proofing, you can get the Q6600 for $280. On both these processors, I recommend overclocking. Core2 and CoreQuad processors overclock soooo easily and safely it is ridiculous. I'm not saying huge OCs, but moving a 2.66GHz C2D to 3.0GHz is as simple as a changing a few numbers on the BIOS screen. And you could easily clock the 2.4GHz Quad to 2.8 without any hassle.

Moving on to a motherboard. There is alot of great choices out there. But it really depends on what you want video card wise. Mainly, do you want SLI (aka ability to have 2 video cards) on your board or not. This really begs the question would you rather hassle with 2 high-end video cards to get extreme graphics out of your games, or would you rather pay for one expensive card that will get great performance? To choose what type you want, it really depends what kind of screen you use and its native resolution. I will assume you have a screen around 1600x1200 or 1920x1200. This means that you will want at least a 8800GTX if you want to have highest options turned on and a bit of eye candy too. You can see here that in Crysis, one card alone may not give you maximum performance. So really, you need to know whether you want to buy an SLI setup now that you may stick with for years, or buy a card now with plans to upgrade to a different card later.

If you want to SLI right now, I'd recommend two 8800GTXs. It's alot of money ($1000), and will probably last you six years, though probably wont give you top performance in year 3-6. If you don't want to SLI, I recommend either a single 8800GTX ($500), or one of the new 8800GTs($240), with a plan to buy a new card in 1-3years. You can see in the above Crysis test that the 8800GTs are MUCH more bang for the dollar right now than the 8800GTXs as they perform just slightly under the GTX, but cost half the price. My personal recommendation is a 8800GT now, and a 9800GTX later and don't bother with SLI. The 8800GT is new this week, and you will see many more and near the $200-250 range in the next month as they roll out.

Getting back to motherboards, if you don't care for SLI, then get this. It comes with ability to run DDR3, but at the same time doesn't need it and is a killer OC board. It runs the latest Intel Chipset the P35 and does it all well at a cool $240. If you want SLI, then go for this eVGA board for $210. The chipset isnt quite as new, and doesn't support DDR3, but what the hey, it can have two video cards and will run stuff about as fast as the ASUS board above.

I assume you are gonna run Vista, which means I'd recommend a minimum of 4GB of memory, because Vista is an ugly hog. Buy this Corsair memory for $200 and walk away without worries.

As for Power Supplies, I recommend this bad boy. It's rated to handle Crossfire setups, and that draws more power than I want to even think is possible. Oh and it got a raving review too. All for a cool $169.

Other than that, add a few hard drives, like some 300-500GB drives and Raid them or not, and you've got a kick ass system. Now that I stayed up waaaaaay too late writing this, take it all in, and buy to your hearts content. If you buy the most expensive stuff I posted (IntelQuad, 8800GTX, AsusMoBo, Memory, PSU), then you total $1389 before hard drives. If you purchase the 8800GT, that will drop to $1139. And that is for simply AMAZING hardware, noob-friendly over-clocking, and lower than the cost for your custom built PCs.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Dhsu

Any disadvantage to SLIing the 8800GTs? Especially since it looks like it would cost less than a single GTX(!)

Too many tests arent out yet, but the memory is more of the issue. The 512MB can be still be a bottleneck even with two cards depending on your screen resolution. It is an option though. But I can't recommend it because I dont know the OP's screen resolution, and 8800GTs now might not be a good investment for 6 years.

But whatever, itd probably be really kick ass to have two of these babies!!

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

RAID 1 offers better protection of data and better read/seek times. Writing speed is not faster at all, and it essentially halves the amount of storage space you have (ie two 320GB hard drives will only store 320GB in RAID1).

RAID 0 offers no protection of data but offers better writing speeds and subtly better read/seek speeds. There is no penalty in terms of storage space.

There are other forms of RAID such as 0+1 which tries to get the pros from both without the cons. I can't tell you much more than that. Many people swear by RAID and it truly is a more efficient means of data storage. However, it is in general more risky than just standard storage because there is extra setup and user error is more of an issue in a RAID setup. That being said, I would say it is unnecessary and that you should plan to build a RAID if you want any of the advantages listed above.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by Megalith Prime

It's cool how a billion nerds on the internet will collectively shout "build your computer, it's so easy!!!" but none of them bother to link to any tutorials.

So let's see how easy it is.

I like how you didnt bother to post any links either. I did post a link for information on overclocking, and motherboards, processors, video cards, and ram all come with instructions too.

Adol has a good RAID setup. I've never heard of anyone doing that, and I don't know how to do it, but it's truly a great way to RAID. Redundancy and speed. It's a good setup.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by SCHWARZE-2

Beware though, there's the address space limitation which means you might as well go for a maximum of 3GB.

Reader Question: Maximum Memory in 32-bit Windows Vista - Windows Vista help

Haha... This just goes to further my belief that Vista is not the OS of choice for PC users. Until I see something that Vista markedly improves, I'm not upgrading anytime soon.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by Dhsu

Well, it's not like it's specific to Vista...all 32-bit OSes have this problem.

It's not that, but more the fact that Vista is a memory hog. I mean, the fact that you need more than 2GB to get a well performing system is ridiculous. And the 32-bit memory address limit only compounds the problem. Bleh...

FELIPE NO