What do you think of my build? It comes down to about $820 minus about 200$ in rebates = $620 Intel Core 2 Quad Processor Q9550 1333MHz 45NM Asus P5K SE CORE 2 QUAD 1333MHz FRONT SIDE BUS DUAL CHANNEL 8GB (4x2GB) DDR-2 800MHZ PC-6400 500GB SATA2 7200rpm 16MB CACHE 22X DVD-RW DUAL LAYER W/LIGHTSCRIBE nVidia GeForce 8500GT 1GB DVI/HDTV PCI-Express Video Card OKIA A-POWER 550 WATT ATX POWER SUPPLY You think I should pull the trigger with these parts or wait until black friday???
8GB of memory is kind of overkill. I'd buy 4GB, take that leftover money and put it to a better video card such as the 4830 or the 9800 GT. You'll want a more reliable power supply like a Corsair or such so you don't blow your whole system. What OS are you planning on running? Edit: If it was the seagate hard drives you were looking at make sure you pick up the 7200.11 version, not the 7200.10 version. It has a 32MB cache and runs quieter. The 7200.10 is even a little more expensive on newegg right now.
For 98% of people out there you wouldn't even use 8GB of ram. Unless you're using a 64-bit OS your computer won't even see more than 3.5GB of ram. It's a simple limitation of all 32-bit systems. Now naturally XP 64-bit isn't worth a nickle so the only real option is vista-64 if you're going with windows. As far as rebates most people usually get them, but never count on them actually coming through, unless of course it is an instant rebate from the retailer. Mail-in rebates are sketchy. Basically with the CPU/GPU you have picked out it's like having a 3-legged race where you pair up a professional runner with a 12 year old girl. The Q9550 is nice, but it won't be able to live up to it's potential as much with a weak GPU being the bottleneck for games, graphically intensive apps. Personally I don't think the $ difference between the 2.4 Ghz Q6600 and the 2.83Ghz Q9550 is worth it unless you plan on doing some serious over-clocking. Even if you are just a casual user you can likely change one setting in your BIOS and have the Q6600 overclocked at 3.0Ghz using air cooling and a stock CPU fan. It seems like you're trying to keep the build cost fairly low so spending 320$ on the CPU alone probably isn't the best balance.
I will be running Vista 64 bit. Should I go with a nVidia GeForce 9500GT 1GB DUAL-DVI/HDTV PCI-Express Video Card instead? Would have made a difference in the GPU? As far as rebates, I think most of them are from Live so it should be legit as I have gotten all of them so far. What do you recommend???
It really depends on what you're planning to do with this machine. The more gaming/video rendering tasks you do the more I'd balance out your CPU and GPU. If it's mostly the day to day stuff or number crunching tasks I'd spend the money moreso on the CPU than GPU.
Get rid of the Okia PSU, or suffer the consequences, they're horrifying units. Get a Corsair VX 450W. 450W is plenty, but the Okia unit will probably go bang before 150.
