Help needed building my own PC

[H-Man]

I got a 9500pro ... and am pretty happy with it

Unfortunately the rest of my pc is a bit pants ........ resulting in some dodgy fps

[nips]

I've got a 3 GHZ Pent 4, 512 DDR, Hercules 8500 FDX LE 64MB, Two HDD, One 60Gig, the other 20 Gig, both 7200 RPM (I think), a DVD-ROM and a 48x CD-RW, a 19" CRT Monitor, Rounded IDE Cables, 300W power supply and a pretty powerful extractor fan on the back, just for fun!

That'll run UT2003 at a solid 45FPS with EVERYTHING ON (Inc Blob Shadows), with 2-6 bots on, so not bad... If I can get a 9500 Pro, or 9700 Pro, I'll be set!

[TommyG]

Just thought i'd bring this to your attention. It's way outside my price range but boy does it look good!!

http://gear.ign.com/articles/422/422141p1.html

[Ciaran]

I'd go with Adrock's advice on everything! 8)

The NF7-S(V2) nForce 2 has a a brilliant sound chip installed with DD5.1 support, an optical out and line out. Dual DDR controller, two sata connectors and two IEEE1394.

If you get that chip and motherboard combo with Twinmoss w/winbond from komplett it'll easily run at 200Fsb(400DDR).

As for Gfx card I'd get at least the 9700 to be futre proof.

[Super Stu]

Check out the doom3 benchmarks I posted elsewhere. 9700 now? I'd rather get a 9800 pro or 5900 ultra in 6 months time when they're half the price.

[Valken]

I suggest that you go for the highest RPM you can get. Maybe go for a slightly smaller HDD with a really high RPM for games, no less than 30 gig I'd suggest. And maybe another HDD for other things such as music etc... It may save money... but that is personal opinion...

I was thinking of doing that but someone told me that if you have both drives on the IDE channel it just defaults to the speed of the slower drive. Do you know if there's any truth to this?

[nips]

No, I don't sorry. I thought that they run independantly... But, I could be wrong...

[evilmatt]

I'd go with Adrock's advice on everything! 8)

The NF7-S(V2) nForce 2 has a a brilliant sound chip installed with DD5.1 support, an optical out and line out. Dual DDR controller, two sata connectors and two IEEE1394.

Plus a Serial-ATA RAID controller - two serial-ATA hdd in a RAID-0 array = a hard disk over twice as fast as an ATA133 disk (very handy if you play CM4 )

[rjpageuk]

TommyG: Maybe you can sum up at the end here all the parts you have decided on, and how much each part will cost you (and the total) so that all of us who are also interested in the same thing can see how much it will cost!