Building a gaming system on a budget.. comments on parts used..

[sTR8_Sh0t]

Building my first pc, and am on a budget of around $1300. Only built for gaming everything else is down with my Mac.. Photoshop, Final Cut Pro.. etc.. Can't afford the best system, just something to play Far Cry and Doom 3 at a decent resolution. What do you think?

AMD Athlon 64 3000+
K8N Neo Platinum
Saphire Radeon 9800
Antec 430 watt PSU
Lite On black DVD Drive
Western Digital 120GB SATA
Mushkin 512*2 DDR 3500 level 1 pack
Kingwin black aluminum 10 bay case

What should I expect in terms of OCing, only with air cooling? I already have a copy of Windows XP.
Thanks for you time....

[masterofpuppets]

I don't know much about AMD systems, but for the rest:

Sapphire 9800 - A good choice. I can play FarCry at 1152x864 at max settings at around 60fps (this is the 9800xt btw and running with a P4EE@3.8GhZ).

Antec 430 - Maybe try the next rating up, not sure.

Lite On DVD - Lite On drives are really fast and really cheap. Good choice.

Western Digital 120gb SATA - Western Digitals are the HDDs in my book and 120gb is enough for lots of games, but maybe an 80gb one would be better suited if its a dedicated games machine. I get on ok with 1 74gig HDD and I have lots of games and quite a few programs.

Mushkin 1gb DDR 3500 Level 1 - I dont know much about ram other than the OCZ stuff so I dont know.

Kingwin black alu 10 bay case - Dont know as I havent seen the case.

[MeltedDuron]

I'd reccomend:
Athlon xp-m2500
radeon 9800 or geforce fx 5900xt
minimum 512mb ram (i reccomend corsair xms 3700)
2x 80gb raid 0 (sata or ide)
lite- on drives ar eccelent
lian-li pc65 and antec 430
Swiftech Heatsink.

[stasiu]

Obvoiusly buy the best video card you can afford...first and foremost. I hope that's a 9800 pro you have ... and not the SE...which is worthless imo.

If i were you i'd also change the motherboard to either a K8N-pro or the gigabyte nForce 250 gigabyte 754 board(name slips my mind). If you're on a budget i'd recoment the K8N-pro because you wouldn't notice any difference real between the chipsets. If you can wait until the end of next month, DFI's 754 board will be out by then.

PSU wise...Fortron is an awsome PSU, what ever size you get. The 550 watt is in the neighborhood of $70. Cheaper than Antec and just as good if not better performance.

I'd consider buying two 80 gig 7,500 RPM HD's and putting them in Raid 0 not for the capacity, but for the speed. Smokes any single drive and comes close to the performance of Raptors in Raid 0.

RAM is the toughest choice...prices are way inflated. Obviously if this is for games you'll want 1 gig, but keep the timings they're rated at in mind. 2-2-2-5 is BH-5 league, and unavailable from stores anymore. Look for something with timings as tight as possible.

[Chris0288]

looks good imo, shouldnt struggle with doom 3 atall, 9800np is about same speed as 9700pro and my 9700pro copes fine at High Detail, looks like a good alround sys.

like said above, aslong as it isnt a SE, a 9800np can be overclocked to pro speeds most of the time so thats ok

[boshi]

I would not use the MSI K8N motherboard. They are full of problems.