So, here's what I'm getting...
You're not the only one who's getting a new computer mostly so that he can play NWN. I'm doing the same thing. Been saving for about a year now, and I'm getting ready to start ordering stuff as soon as my CD matures again. The following info was from Pricewatch.com about two weeks ago; prices may very well have changed a bit.
Anyway, here's what I'm getting and what I'm looking at in regards to price.
Components I Need (Total Cost : ~$500)
- Motherboard – nForce Chipset (Abit NV7m) - ($120)
- Processor (Athlon XP 1.6 GHz) - ($140)
- Case w/ 400 W Power Supply - ($40)
- 512 MB of DIMM DDR RAM - ($100)
- 40.0 GB 7200 RPM Hard Drive (WD or IBM?) - ($80)
- Fan/Heat Sink/random extra bits - ($20)
Components I Have
- Floppy Drive
- 12 GB Hard Drive
- DVD-ROM Drive
- CD-W Drive
The nForce chipset motherboard comes with quite a number of parts built-in - a good sound card, a good-but-not-amazing video card (I believe it's a gForce 2 MX, not entirely sure on the specs), and a network card. It's going to be a very solid machine, but I'm working on a limited budget, so it's not quite everything I want. If you were looking for the best of everything, I'd advise you get a GeForce 4 Ti, as was mentioned above by another poster. Depending on how NWN ends up running, you
might need another 256 meg stick of RAM in there. I really can't see it being that useful, though. A 7200 RPM hard drive will help out performance notably over a cheaper 5400 RPM one. I would definitely advise AMD over Pentium - they're just better procesors all told.
Also, keep in mind that this price is for a pile of parts. I have the technical know-how to turn that pile of parts into a working computer. If you don't, you're going to have to figure the cost of hiring somebody to do so into your total cost.
