Hardware geeks Options

[impala454]

I haven't really kept up with CPU/Mobo stuff lately... what's the scoop? Which are the best for Intel or AMD? (i'm not doin SLI).

[impala454]

What are you using the computer for? just games?

Why do you need 4 gigs of RAM? Why do you need a $300 video card?  Why do you need a 500W power supply?

Games mostly, but I do often have lots of other apps open. I'm getting 4 gigs for a couple reasons. Gonna run 64 bit windows, and preparing for the next windows that's coming out as well. 64 bit windows can address up to 16 TB. Basically I'd rather get all of the ram for the thing now, in matched pairs that were manufactured around the same time rather than getting 2GB now, then 2 later.

On the video card... $300 is a fairly cheap, middle of the road card for games. If you're going uber high end those are on the order of $500 or more. 500W power supply because all these newer components need that juice, plus the whole preparing for the future stuff.

most everything on his wish list was high end ... but there was just one optical device and one hardrive.

I'm not building the entire thing from scratch, just mostly. I already have the case I'll use and a couple of other hard drives and an optical drive that will go in the thing. I highly recommend that case btw, very nice setup and roomy. Also never seen anything with a better hard drive location/setup.

Basically I've got a little extra scratch and felt like building a monster system... haven't done that in a long time.

Here's a pretty cool article on 64 bit windows performance on a dual-core system:
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1857478,00.asp