Need help building a new computer

Hey guys, I haven't been here in a looooong while.... med school is eating up my life.

It looks like my desktop finally died... I want to replace it, but I've got no idea what's what in the computer world anymore. I would just make my life simple and get a laptop, but I just bought a 24 inch LCD a few months ago, so I'd like to continue to use it. I'm not looking to do any gaming on my system - I haven't got any time for that. At most, I might get Spore and muck around with it here and there. Or something like Civilization now and then. Really though, I doubt I'll be playing much, if any games.

Basically what I'm looking for is a system that is strong enough to play back 1080p without stuttering, and will be Blu-Ray compatible should I ever choose to get a blu-ray drive. I think my HDDs still work, so I shouldn't need to get any more, but I think I need to replace the rest (case included?).

Could I get some advice on systems that will suit my pretty basic needs? I use my pc for watching movies, listening to music, web browsing and Microsoft Office style apps. I really don't need anything special, but like I said, I know nothing about the current world of computer parts and I don't want to go into the local computer shop and have the dude there try to rip me off.

Again, I need: a motherboard, an Intel CPU (Core 2 Duo is the lowest I want to go), memory, a graphics card (my Radeon 9800 PRO is a little old now...) and... a case/power supply.

After some quick browsing I was thinking of the following:

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Dual 3.00GHz 6.0MB 1333FSB S775
mobo: ????
case/PS: Antec Sonata III 500 or Sonata Designer 500
memory: ??? I'd probably want 4 GB
graphics card: ???
optical drive: already have one
HDDs: have 2x SATA drives

Jam it back in, in the dark.

So you won't play games but you may play games like Civilization and Spore sometimes?

If you absolutely won't play games (and no video editing etc), you could buy something very cheap.

Don't know if you need all of E8400's performance. E7x00 would be cheaper.

Graphics card is much about what games you want to be able to play. Radeon HD4xxx should be new ATI cards now, and NVIDIA's naming is messed up (their new cards are geforce GTX 2xx and a bit weaker geforce 9800xxxxxxxx). Perhaps they can also do something movie related but I don't know about that. I guess a non-gamer would be happy with integrated(=very cheap).

2x2gb kit is a good choise for RAM now. 800 rated DDR2 should do it fine.

ASUS, Gigabyte and MSI mobos are probably good choises, in that order (though with mobos it's more about reliability than performance, and that's always difficult to tell). P35-chipset based mobos were common a while ago, now P45 is replacing it.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

The all important question...what is your budget?

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

Ya, I won't be doing much gaming aside from MAYBE randomly playing Spore or Civ every now and then. Those aren't super high end graphics games, so I don't think I'll need a top of the line card to run them.

My budget is probably 600-800$ (Canadian). I'd be shopping at either MicroBytes Montreal Computer Ordinateur or Informatique Sigmawave Inc. . They have more or less the best prices I can get in Montreal, and they'd be able to set up the Mobo for me (since I have no idea how to do it and don't really feel like wasting time figuring it out). I don't really want to spend a lot, but I want something of decent quality that will last me a few years.

I don't even know if I actually need a new case or not. I currently have an Antec Sonata - but I don't know if computer parts have changed sizes since I bought this machine in 2004.

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

I'd go with at least 4gb of RAM. This is increasingly becoming the "consumer" starting point, with enthusiasts going for 8gb. It's a pretty cheap addon too.

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I dunno about that Antec Sonata. It's stylish and quiet and all but personally I don't think it's worth it (having bought one myself previously). You could get something like Cooler Master for much less and it'd be more spacious.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

The Sonata III ain't bad for the price, considering it comes with a solid 500 watt power supply. The Gigabyte EP45-DS3L and Radeon 3850 are obvious selections for motherboard and video card, respectively, and any DDR2 800 RAM should be sufficient; the performance boost from buying fancy low-latency or high speed RAM is more than matched by spending the extra money it costs on a faster processor or video card. Just don't waste money buying 8GB of RAM unless you have a 64 bit operating system and are willing to deal with its annoyances.

Are you at all interested in overclocking? All of the Core 2 family processors will overclock like mad, and as such you could get tremendous performance out of even a lowly E5200 with a stock cooler, not that that processor is a slouch even at stock speeds.

Finally, if your hard drives are more than 2-3 years old, it might be prudent to buy a new one to use as primary storage, and use the old drives as backup storage.

FELIPE NO

If you won't be gaming much, why not take a look at AMD? Motherboards with 780G/790GX chipsets feature quite competent integrated graphics and can decode 1080P content without a hitch. As for the CPU, you can get a quad core for the same price as the E8400.

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