Building Desktop, would like recommendations.

Hello all. This is one of my first posts. Im more of a reader on forums and take in everybodys points of view but ive been using this forum for about a year now.

I would like help with building a desktop. I kind of know what i want but i dont know what products to get. My laptop just isnt cutting it anymore. It is a HP 1.3 ghz celeron, 512 MB ram, 40G HDD and external wifi with external 16x DL DVD/RW. Everytime i DL a big file from p2p it restarts saying a critical error has occured and i would just like to build a new pc instead of reformatting and reloading. So on to the good stuff...

I read the stickys about the dream machine and the budget dream machine so i have an idea about what i want.

1: i want a nice case with 2 bays and a 9 in 1 memory card ready, 2 front usb 2.0's and 4 usb 2.0's in back, 1 firewire.

2: 2.8 ghz or greater processor, looking at pentium D or 4 HT.(open to suggestions of course)

3: As for MOBO i have no idea what to get. i would like something with 4 ram slots and an agp slot, also a good sound card with maybe some audio inputs.

4: 2 Gigs or ram. not sure what kind?

5: enough cooling for extrenious use.

6: 128 mb video card, prefer geforce.

7: two 100 gig HDD.

8: dual monitor display, i would like two 17" flat screen monitors.

like i said im open to suggestions. please tell me what i should get that wouldnt be too expensive but at the same time isnt bargain bin last year stuff. Im not too into gaming, im more into video editing and picture editing, copying DVDs and website design.

any help would be greatly appreciated. thank you - Jared

 

Jared, what's your budget?

I'm more of an AMD fan, but I use it for gaming. For video and photo editing and encoding, the Pentium is a good choice. If you can swing it, try one of the Pentium dual-core processors. Video and photo editing software is some of the only stuff that can actually take advantage of multi-processors.
For video editing, the more memory, the better.
Are you locked into AGP? The newer videocards coming out are all PCI-E. You'll be limiting your future upgradability if you stay with AGP.

Unless you need Raid for stability/ backup purposes, use one larger hard drive. It will be cooler, cheaper, quieter, and use less power.

 

thanks for the response trgrpullr. My budget is about $800-900 USD for the cpu. As for the agp vs pci-e... i wouldnt mind going with the more advanced technology as long as it doesnt make a huge dent into my budget. My reasoning for two HDD's is because i have the adobe suite and they recommend using a different hard drive that your OS isnt on for there video and photo editing software, also i would like to be able to back up and not worry about the main HDD crashing.

Is brand name ram better in my case than generic ram? Ive heard alot about overclocking but i have no idea what it is, i know name brand ram is better for overclocking purposes but is that all?

thanks for the help.

 

bump

 

when you say "$800-900 for the cpu" do you mean just for the processor,or the whole computer? If you can afford $1045 for just the processor, get this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819116214. Personally, I think that would be overkill.

If your total budget is $800-900 then try this:

Processor- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819116213 Intel Pentium D 820

Mobo- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813121288 Intel 945PSNLK

DVD burner- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16827152047 NEC 3540

Card reader- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820176815 Atech flash reader

Memory- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820141211 PQI 2x1GB DDR2 667 memory

Hard drives- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144414 western digital 120 GB SATA x2

Video card- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814150098 XFX 6600GT w/ Dual DVI

Case- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811119068 Coolermaster Centurion 5

Total= $952
You're stuck with the onboard sound here, but the new Intel sound is supposed to be pretty good

You can tweak it a little bit if you don't mind spending more or shop around for deals on some of the components, but I'm a HUGE fan of Newegg, they've always done right by me.

 

thanks for the help. i appreciate it. Im going to check around for prices but everything you selected is pretty much what i need. the only thing i can really give ya for the help is a gmail account invite but you probley already have one. thanks agian