[mnatole]

Hi everyone,

I am looking to put together a new gaming rig with a budget of around $1500 give or take a few hundred. I could use some help deciding what components will give me the most bang for the buck. Also should I go with Intel or AMD? I want to use this PC for gaming and basic office tasks such as word, powerpoint, excel, quickbooks, and browsing. I would like it to be able to be upgraded in the future as well if necessary. Any suggestions are appreciated, thank you.

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Hi mnatole, welcome to Geeks to Go!

For around the $1500 price, you could be building quite a nice rig together. Does this budget include a monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, OS? Or is this purely for the box?

Currently Intel processors are the way to go, you could either go with a Core 2 Duo (perhaps the E6750), or most probably Core 2 Quad (Q6600). Also, depending on how soon you are intending to purchase/build, it may be worthwhile to wait, as there are some new processor releases being scheduled within the next few months. These may very well be worth waiting for

Have you any idea what parts or brands you want in particular? If so, then suggest them here so we can incorporate these into the build. For example, if you specifically want an ATI card, then we can consider this. If you want something that has Firewire ports, then we can add these in.

Let us know, and we can get down to business

Cheers

[Troy]

Hi mnatole, welcome to Geeks to Go!

For around the $1500 price, you could be building quite a nice rig together. Does this budget include a monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, OS? Or is this purely for the box?

Currently Intel processors are the way to go, you could either go with a Core 2 Duo (perhaps the E6750), or most probably Core 2 Quad (Q6600). Also, depending on how soon you are intending to purchase/build, it may be worthwhile to wait, as there are some new processor releases being scheduled within the next few months. These may very well be worth waiting for

Have you any idea what parts or brands you want in particular? If so, then suggest them here so we can incorporate these into the build. For example, if you specifically want an ATI card, then we can consider this. If you want something that has Firewire ports, then we can add these in.

Let us know, and we can get down to business

Cheers

[mnatole]

Hi thanks for the reply. To answer your question, that budget does not include a monitor or speakers or anything for that matter besides the box. I have these things already, except for maybe a good mouse.. but I will worry about that later. I have a 19" viewsonic lcd display now and some decent logitech speakers.

As far as being able to wait for a few months for new processors or parts, this is not a problem but I am thinking that when these come out they will be too expensive anyways so im not sure if that is going to help much. Unless it makes the parts that I want to use cheaper, which it certainly may. Basically I do not have any preference on specific parts such as ATI or Nvidia, or intel or AMD. I am looking for the most for my money. I am also wondering if 2 cheaper video cards perform better than one top of the line card? And for performance reasons where should I consider spending the money for superior products, on the video card? Hard drive? Ram? Thanks guys any suggestions appreciated.

Oh any opinions on nvidia based vs. ati cards helpful too.