Shadowex3

I have OCZ Reaper for DDR2 but I picked that DDR3 specifically because it was good low voltage (less heat, more efficient design) and low timing (higher quality) ram. As for hard drives really Seagate and Western Digital are the guys you want to get, I hardly ever hear about people buying others.

probably the usual very low end non-gaming "just so you have something to plug a monitor in to" card.

As always you could build better by hand but as far as prebuilt units go it's not terrible.

if you get a SATA DVDR/W+-~~==whatever everything-burner for like $20 while building this thing you can just wait till upgrade time and pick up a stack of ~50-100 DVDs on sale for like $10 tops and just burn everything you want to keep. Games, drivers, and so on will need to be reinstalled for obvious reasons but all your configs, custom skins, music, porn, all that stuff you can back up.

The point is newegg's got dirt cheap 3 day shipping that actually does tend to show up in 3 days most of the time, most other places are more expensive for GROUND shipping.

Sponsorships =/= actual quality. Gigabyte and Asus are pretty much neck and neck but if you go to OCforums for example there's more people using Asus for quadcores and high end rigs on their personal setups. Generally gigabyte is better than Asus in the less expensive price levels since asus only makes 1 or 2 super stripped down mobos for that price range while gigabyte actually has products in it. Once you get above that price range into the higher end motherboards Asus seems to pull ahead in terms of who uses what. As for LCDs beating CRTs... it's either in your head or you were comparing very new and high quality LCDs to very old and abused CRTs that weren't warmed up and had been mistuned. CRTs almost universally have a higher color gamut than LCDs as well as true blacks with minimal bleed and even lighting. Trinitrons can be barely less sharp towards the end of their lifetime before the tube starts dying but LCDs use mechanical fixed pixels so obviously they're going to be "sharper", they'll also be locked to certain resolutions and have a much harder time displaying anything that isnt straight vertical or horizontal. Plus its pointless to complain about sharpness when most people go and slap on cleartype and anti-aliasing anyway. Bulk I'll give you, but heat... not so much. I've burned myself touching flatpanels where the backlights are, never done that with a CRT. Good monitors last forever or until you break them somehow and everytime you upgrade your computer you don't need to replace your monitor. You're gonna have to ask someone else for advice on LCDs though, I don't know which models are trustworthy or not. I'm the CRT guy.

For motherboards Asus is currently among the best for overclocking, largely because they tend to have good cooling and their "load line calibration" helps immensely with vdroop and they also have the most experience making many-phase power boards. The asus p5k-E was one of the most popular mobos for benchmarking (overclocking just to see how high you can go) back when the Q6600 was the processor of choice a few years ago. Now... monitors. That's a tricky subject. First off you need to know that most claims about contrast ratios and response times are bullshit and for a very real and surprisingly understandable reason: There's no standardized method of testing or measuring them. Monitor makers basically test a couple dozen ways and pick whatever gives them the best numbers. The trick to picking flatpanels is the type of panel you get. This page has a good explanation of all the panel technologies currently in use, although their list of which monitor uses what is kinda outdated. S-PVA and S-IPS are obviously the two best LCD monitor technologies but they're also kinda hard to find and fairly expensive. For aspect ratios you've got 16:9 which is in general going to give you much lower resolutions than the other two, 16:10 which is the standard for computers because you get 1920x1200 as opposed to 16:9's 1920x1080, that's about 200 more vertical lines of resolution which makes a pretty big difference in image quality. It wont match a CRT in quality or speed but a good quality non-TN 16:10 LCD at 1920x1200 can be a decent workable monitor.

Yeah but the thing is, as I've shown you, you can actually get a core i7 quadcore for less than the dualcore design you'd picked out. Also I know you didn't literally pick it just for the shiny, that's more of a figure of speech for not looking at the hard math too closely since everything you picked seemed to be combo deals. The thing about a comp is you need to plan ahead, you're probably going to have this thing for at least 3 years and while you can upgrade parts like the videocard every other year reasonably ($250ish tops over 2 years is pretty little) the CPU isn't worth changing out that often. So consider that most games now actually DO use all 4 cores, Source's newest engine version has multi-threaded rendering, Unreal Engine 3 (UT3, Americas Army, shitton of other games) use all 4 cores quite heavily, and once you're already using dual cores (which virtually all gamers have now so games do) it's trivial to step up your usage to 4 or 16 or 32 cores. Then consider that even only counting two cores the Core i7's two cores are a respectable improvement over the core 2 duo's two cores and it's only going to get better as the software gets more advanced. Simply put if nothing else for barely $1200 you may as well go ahead and get the quadcore and enjoy left4dead maxed out and UT3 at 90fps with physX enabled and no slowdowns ever. Now. Soundcards and thermalpaste. I use headphones, actual good quality headphones, so a soundcard DOES make a difference to me since it does HRTF processing for me and basically spits out the sound in such a way that neurologically my brain is fooled into thinking sounds come from above or behind me and so on. If you use speakers, really cheap headphones (including those "gamer" trash ones), or surround sound of any kind you probably don't actually need a soundcard as you likely already have full surround sound support or just won't need the audio processing or anything. Thermalpaste... if you buy ANY quality paste from Arctic Cooling or Arctic Silver odds are how good you are at attaching the heatsink will make a MUCH bigger difference than your paste ever will. I've done this literally dozens of times and I still have a harder time putting the heatsink on well than getting the paste right. As long as you use a blot about the size and shape of a grain of generic rice you're probably going to be fine. It's pretty hard to kill a processor by head nowadays if you have even a halfway decent heatsink and the one I suggested is literally the best or second best right now. Super short version: Swap out the soundcard for whatever you want dude it's personal preference, and if you're willing to accept going down to a 650 watt (52amp) power supply you can easily keep the whole design below the $1200 mark, maybe even down to $1100.

isn't that a low-bit TN panel?

They;re probably using an actual battery powered tool that just charges off of usb's rather humorously abused power standards.

Monoprice.com 15ft USB2.0 cable for $1.62

Or we're trying desperately to switch to our primary gun. Letting people change their votes (if possible) may help with the instinctive 1tarding. I've seen plenty of people 1tard for canyon or xpg and suddenly start swearing when they realise what they've done.

Can we get that script on EVERY server?

I said XP64>v64, not xp32 which is as far as I'm concerned the best minimalist windows gaming friendly operating system ever made. At the moment ALL 64bit os' suck compared to xp32 simply by virtue of xp32's utterly overwhelming market share, which will likely stick around until well towards the end of win7's lifetime if win7 has the same gaming problems vista did. Despite this I also know several people who have been using XP64 for quite some time without problems. That's actually the problem really, they're just too damn inconsistent. Maybe it'll work wonderfully maybe it wont. Every single time I've tried vista I've gotten massive framerate losses in every game I play, other people don't. Less don't than do overall but still it's inconsistent and damn inconvenient. That aside I maintain the rest of my advice, especially the parts where I suggested higher quality parts which also costed less money, to be sound.

Cooler master probably doesn't make their own power supplies, very few people do. That's actually why I pointed out that the few antec psu's that used to be decent were actually rebranded seasonic power supplies. Finzz: Honestly dude I need to be a little harsh here and ask "what is wrong witchu mon?!". I was hoping I wouldn't need to go do this because it's a pain in the ass to format all these links but here: GTX 275 for $219.99 Gskill 3x2gb DDR3 1600 for $99.99 Seagate 750gb barracuda for $79.99 Corsair 850tx for $139.99 Core i7 920 (quadcore) for $279.99 Asus p6t SE for $209.99 Creative X-fi Titanium (pciex1) for 99.99 Noctua U12P heatsink for $64.99 all for 1194.92 Which gives you a top of the line processor, graphics card, motherboard, soundcard, power supply, 750gb of hdd space, the only heatsink to best the TRUE, and you are still paying less than if you went with the combo deals that would've gotten you older hardware that was easily half as powerful. See why doing it yourself is better than combo deals? I can shave another $40-$100 off of that just by stepping down the ram speed to 1333 from 1600 and getting a power supply that isn't stupidly, ridiculously, excessively overpowered for anything you'll ever do with it. I'm just scared if I did that you'd stop listening again and go run to pay more for worse stuff just because it has a bigger shiny sticker on it, and possibly lights. I think with this you've got enough to get whatever case you want. Just remember more bigger fans doesnt' always mean better airflow, and when it comes down to it being able to exhaust the hot air from your heatsink and your videocard is much more important than pushing air INTO the case, it's not airtight so it'll suck in air on it's own if it needs any. With cases you want rolled edges on any internal edges, simple design if it's toolless, any features you want (removeable motherboard tray is GREAT), and a nice thick metal design without too much plastic on it. [edit] Also XP64 > V64, Pick your own Thermalpaste (mx-2 FTW), if you install the power supply to the case and plug it into the wall first you don't need an anti-static wrist strap since the case is then grounded by the power supply and the strap is just a metal wire touching your body and the grounded case anyway (hint: make one at home depot from their cheapest wire lol), a good case will come with fans, and nvidia chipset mobos suck. I do this for a living Finzz, and it pays damn well. Trust me on this.

Yep, not new though sadly afaik but professionally reconditioned so basically all the electronics have been replaced for newer ones. I'm hoping to get a 22"er that will do ~2000x1500 @85hz.

Antec 900's a good case if you are going to buy one online, it makes a nice starter case for build virgins. Less blood than others. If you get exactly what I suggested you'll actually be better off overall than that prebuilt unit because you'll have a very nice heatsink and soundcard along with a much more reliable motherboard and probably a best-named videocard with a decent warranty. If you want to show us stuff without pasting a billion links your best bet is to use newegg's wishlist feature to make a public wishlist and try sharing THAT with us. Last thing: I know it's tempting but if you listen to absolutely nothing else any of us has said DO NOT GET A CRAPPY POWER SUPPLY. Everything else can go to hell but do not buy a power supply that isn't from Corsair, Seasonic, or PC Power and Cooling preferrably the Corsairs we've mentioned. It's the only part that can take out other parts with it when it fails and it's the only part that can and will kill you. Crappy power supplies are the reason many people don't work on Dells, you get zapped by what SHOULD have been a cold wire.

Anandtech is considered more reliable and neutral than Tomshardware, and I base my choices on three objectively measurable standards: 1. Parts quality 2. Warranty quality 3. Performance level I'm not brand loyal to Corsair, they're just the cheapest of the reliable PSU makers. And before you bring up antec those used to be made by Seasonic, they aren't anymore.

Velociraptor HDD's rotate their platters at 10,000 RPM instead of 7,200. It's very unlikely you'll notice the difference. Honestly $1500 you can easily build just about the best computer in the world, I rebuild every few years for only $1000ish and I get better stuff than 2/3rds of the post in this thread. Rather than give you a bunch of links and make your eyes glaze over here's a summary instead: Core i7 920 6gb DDR3 1600 from OCZ, Corsair, Gskill, Geil, or Mushkin 750mb hdd's from Seagate or Western Digital Corsair 750TX or 850TX power supply ($109, rock solid psu, corsair is respected) GTX 275 videocard from EVGA, XFX, or BFG-Tech only Any FULLSIZE (not mATX but ATX) Asus core i7 motherboard that uses 120mm fans Any MIDTOWER or larger case to fit your ATX mobo Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme heatsink X-fi Titanium from Creative (specifically titanium,the fullsized card, not the halfsized card.) All of that should actually wind up being less than $1500, theoretically you might even have enough leftover to buy a set of Sennheiser HD555's. ^^^THAT is, from an objective standpoint, the most technologically capable computer you can build for $1500. All of this you can get from newegg except the case which you should buy from somewhere local since shipping is a bitch and you really want to handle it.

There's a few differences. Arctic Silver is slightly capacitive, MX line is not, IC Diamond uses industrial diamonds in a medium for heat transfer.

Has to be ps/2, serial was always spread out more rather than next to each other. You're using some old stuff if it's ps/2...

Yeah but TCP's not a manslut, just Fet. He just wants him some COOKIES.

Confectual favors are accepted, see TCP-kill for more information.

It's paste gator, it's the little goopy paste you put inbetween your heatsink and your CPU to keep the CPU from overheating and letting out it's magic smoke. If you can't fit it in your case you're probably confusing your computer with a small wad of tinfoil.

Almost, they've said "NO U" to at least one person.