Beginner Buyer Guide

[Trunks]

Hey all

Im in the process of buying a new box, and ive read a lot of the posts on this forum, and let me say you guys are amazing. Ive read lots of posts saying this is the requirement for 2+, 5+ boxing. Saying you need this system req ect.

What i hope to acomplish in this thread is 2 things, A guide to going to your local retailer(best buy ect.) or your favorite online site(newegg.com ect) and buying everything you need to get started.

A challenge to the best of the best. Go online, customize a box as cheep as you can for 5 boxing and post the results here. Ive seen people say they can buy one for under 800$ then prove it!

This means retailer box lists or just a full list of complete parts.

Also one last thing, i see many people saying they use XP, what about vista? If i go out and buy a new box more than likley it will use vista, is that going to cause me problems?

[fling]

All my stuff is from Newegg, I'll post a wish-list with all the components in my current system soon. As far as Vista, it works fine for me, but if I was doing it all over I would go XPPro, possibly 64bit edition, and a Core 2 Quad instead of duo. I may still go with the quad, but I'm trying to be nice to my budget for a change ;-)

[kadaan]

Didn't actually go through and double check everything, but here's just a quick idea of how cheap it can be from newegg:

Case (Item #: N82E16811145077) $13
CD Drive (Item #: N82E16827106063) $17.99
250G SATA HDD (Item #: N82E16822152025) $62.99
512m GF8600GT (Item #: N82E16814127310) $109.99 (-$20 rebate)
500w PSU (Item #: N82E16817708001) $12.99
4g (2x2) Dual Channel DDR2 (Item #: N82E16820227187) $109.90
LGA775 MB (Item #: N82E16813138055R) $39.99
C2Quad 2.4ghz CPU (Item #: N82E16819115018) $265

Grand Total: $611.85 (monitor/kb/mouse not included)

[Gallo]

www.slickdeals.net is an excellent resource to look at on a daily basis for some incredible deals. Every so often theres a dual or quad core system on there for $400-500 that includes 2gb RAM, 100gb+ HD, and a crappy video card. You could buy an 8800GT and you have a system that could run 5 WoW's.

Theres a regular amount of incredible deals on monitors too, like a 22" Widescreen HD monitor for $249 and such. Search the front page and the forums.

This is all if you have some time to wait and snipe the good deals.

[Bollwerk]

Only thing I would warn people about is getting a cheap PSU. You don't need to spend a lot, but you should be wary of getting a power supply that is that cheap. Your entire system depends on a reliable power source and you don't want it to just up and die (or worse fry your board/cpu/etc). Just keep that in mind. =)