http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=5497649 Thats my stuff, it includes everything I intend to buy. If there is any way to keep performance while reducing price? Any suggestions will be much appreciated. I plan to purchase by tonight. Its my first build ever, So THANKS in advance
Swap the video card for a 4870. It is only $20 more. If you want to save money, get the 512MB version of the 4850. The 1GB version is barely better than the stock 4850 and you are spending $50 more!!! The 4870 will outperform the 4850 1GB in pretty much every game, by a considerable margin. One more thing: 2x4850 > 4870 > 4850 1GB >= 4850 2x4850 will cost $240 and offer maybe 1.5x the performance of the $180 4850 1GB. How large is your monitor? As for the Power supply, wait for someone more knowledgeable on that front. I think you can shed about $10 - $20 and get a better Power Supply. Do not only look at wattage. If a PSU has cheap components it can be 1,000,000watts and still blow your system. Hold off on making the final purchase, or don't purchase everything together. I do not know if OCZ makes good PSUs. The RAM seems good, although that is DDR2-800 and you can get DDR2-1066. What Motherboard do you have? Do you have a PC now? If you do, you can avoid buying Vista. Every PC I have seen with Vista uses nearly 2GB of RAM idle without anything launched. I don't know if it would reallocate the resources if you launch a game, but I would be afraid of that... Also, it is possible to use DX10 on Windows 2000/XP if that is a concern. Usually, XP will run games faster than Vista. On most games it will not make a difference, but some of those graphic card destroying games like Crysis, it might mean 30FPS vs. 23FPS... Overall, it is good. Hold off on the RAM, PSU, and Video card. Wait for more feedback on those. If you can save $80 by not buying Vista, $50 from the Video card, and $20 from the PSU, you are looking at $150 savings. $150 + $130 (4850) = $280. That means for what you are currently paying, you can upgrade to something like a 4850x2 or 2x 4850, or 4870. The video card is the most important part of your build.
Avoid the HD103UJ hard disk, they are unreliable, which for hard disks you can't afford. Get one of these instead: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136151 That Power supply is also very mediocre for the price. While it may well power your system, it is far from a 700W unit, and can also be noisy and unstable. Get one of these instead: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139001 This is a better (and easier to install) CPU cooler: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835154001 and this is a better value graphics card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102797 This setup will work guaranteed for up to a 24" monitor. You have chosen good RAM and 4GB will be ample for any system, Vista or XP. The rest of the components are fine
Yes, that video card is an Extra $20 off!!!! TODAY ONLY!!! You can have it for $179. That is insanely cheap. If you are going to put this together, buy this card today. I can give you the coupon code for the extra $20 off, but it ends today. I would have bought this card had that deal been available a few days ago. I mean, mine was $130 for a 4850 and this one is only $50 more and a much better card. It will blow away that 4850 1GB in just about every game. Crysis, is the only game where they are about even. Make sure you get a motherboard that supports Crossfire. I bought a EP45-UD3P for $100 after rebates. It has 2 PCI Express slots with ample room for two 4870s. Say next year you want to play the latest game at good quality, you can buy another 4870 and BAM, you're good to go. Even if you cannot buy this card today, at $199 after rebates is still awesome!
It is indeed a good price, good to see that AMD cards are starting to become appropriately priced in the US. However, there's not a huge need to focus on crossfire as if you run such a resolution that you need two cards, you will also be likely to need more than 512MB RAM per card, so in all honesty, your better off either buying one 4870, or one 4870X2, complete with 1GB per GPU.
