New Computer, Suggestions/Opinions?

[Tsyr]

My computer died. Again. And rather than trying to repair this ~3 year old piece of Dell crap again, I'm biting the bullet and getting a new computer.

I'm getting it from iBuyPower.com, which is kind a poor-mans Alienware... Except in some ways I like them better (More selection on individual components, etc, and you aren't paying for the brand name). I'd like to build my own in a way, but frankly, I'm lazy, and I don't really have a ton of time to spare (And I'm in kinda a rush to get it, as I have very little computer availibile to me right now... a crappy install of linux on a tiny hard drive on an old computer)...

So here is what I have right now:

Intel D875PBZ i875 800mhz FSB 8x AGP motherboard (With USB 2.0)
RAIDMAX 8 bay aluminum case
420 watt power supply
P4 3.0 ghz processor (800 mhz FSB, HT ready)
1024 mb Corsair XMS Pro Series DDR-400 RAM (+ heat spreader)
Two serial ATA Seagate 120 gb 7200 rpm SATA-150 hard drives (8mb cache buffer each)
8x AGP NVidia GeForce FX 5950-Ultra 256mb graphics card.
Mitsumi 3.5 Floppy Drive
Bay-mounted 6-in-1 Flash Media Card Reader

No optical drive, I know... I JUST bought a Sony DRU-530A 8x DVD +R/+RW/-R/-RW/CD-R/CD-RW drive... It hasn't even arived here yet (should arive monday)... just as my computer died. D'oh. And I figure I'll pull my CD burner and DVD drive out and stick them in the computer too, as hey, the more drives the merrier, and this computer isn't salvagable really (I normally hand old computers off to family or friends, but this computer has been nothing but problems since day 1, and it's been almost completely replaced since then, and it still gives me problems)...

On the RAM... They also have Kingston DDR400 Hyper-X PC3200, which is 20 dollars cheaper, and "crap shoot" ram, which is about 70 bucks cheaper than the Corsair, but it's unnamed...

Any other comments or questions? Suggestions on things I should do differently?

 

[Fenlock]

a few comments

i dosn't seem you are trying to save money, but if you were i would suggest:

P4 2.8GHz instead of 3.0GHz
a 128mb gfx-card instead of 256 (you are paying very much for a few frames extra).

this article compares most modern gfx-cards.
http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/20031229/index.html

apparantly you can turn a fx5900 card into a fx8950u
http://www.explosivelabs.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=913

it looks like a heave gamer rig, so i suspect you'll be running windows xp. but if you are thinking about running linux you might want to read up about sata and raid 0 (if you want to run them as a raid setup).

/f

 

[Tsyr]

Actually, iBuyPower is remarkably affordable... That's still under $2K.

I was initialy going to go with the 2.8 GHZ CPU, and I may still... I save about 100 dollars, but in turn, I would need to upgrade that much sooner. So it's a toss up.

The graphics card I'm uncompromising on... I'm a graphics fiend. If I can't have every option on at the highest possible setting (Except resolution... anything above about 1280 gives me eyestrain), I get testy. I should have stated that before.

 

[Cergorach]

Prsonally i would go for the AMD 64 3200+ or even the FX-51, for graphics card i would prefer the ATI 9800XT.
The proc will allow a 64bit win platform to increase performance even further in the future.
The proc would be a personal preference, i have a better experience with ati then with nvidia...

As for the eye strain, still using a CRT? If so at what kind of refresh rate do you run it at?

 

[Tsyr]

64 bit ones are out of my price range... I tried to configure one Icould afford, but 2K is my absolute price limit...

I still use a crummy dell monitor at 60 hrtz refresh rate... anything higher and I get eyestrain. I've tried.

 

[Aeolius]

Any other comments or questions? Suggestions on things I should do differently?

Get a Mac?

 

[Tsyr]

Get a Mac?

Right after I shoot myself in the head, thanks...

I'm a gamer. I want to play the latest and greatest games when they come out. Not 1/20th of them, 6 months later.

 

[Tsyr]

Any comments on the motherboard? I dunno much about them... likewise on the ram, is the Corsair worth it? And a friend thought I might wanna upgrade the power supply... thoughts on that?

 

[Aeolius]

I'm a gamer.

That would have been helpful info from the start. In that case, I would recommend an X-box, Gamecube, or PS2

 

[Tsyr]

Bah. A) I have all of those B) Most of the games I REALLY want are PC games ;p

It's not just that I'm a gamer though... Most of what I do involves PC software. Yes, in many cases, there are Mac equivilants, but they are either more expensive (I don't know of a Paint Shop Pro-level software package for the mac until you get to Photoshop, which is more than I will spend), or I would just rather not have to learn a whole new program to do the same thing I can already do.

And that assumes they exist. I know a lot of the programs I use have no mac equivilants... a mac-user friend of mine (The poor soul ) has searched in vain for equivilants to several programs with no luck.