$1500 to spend on a new computer

[Akaru]

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explanation of all the panel technologies currently in use, although their list of which monitor uses what is kinda outdated.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.

 

I know that Asus is one of the top motherboard companies, but, correct me if I'm wrong, but Gigabyte is better? Most overclocking competitions use Gigabyte's Ultra Durable series.

 

I personally think ALL LCD are better than CRTs. Every CRT I had so far, compared to this Samsung SyncMaster 933BW, is dull in color, bad contrast, and has very un-sharp images. Plus they are bulky and get very hot.

[Finzz]

Could you show me any good LCDs that you find? I don't really wanna spend more than $200 on a monitor.

 

I would get a CRT, but I would have trouble finding one locally, and paying $50 to ship one isn't cool...

[Shadowex3]

I know that Asus is one of the top motherboard companies, but, correct me if I'm wrong, but Gigabyte is better? Most overclocking competitions use Gigabyte's Ultra Durable series.

 

I personally think ALL LCD are better than CRTs. Every CRT I had so far, compared to this Samsung SyncMaster 933BW, is dull in color, bad contrast, and has very un-sharp images. Plus they are bulky and get very hot.

 

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.

 

 

Could you show me any good LCDs that you find? I don't really wanna spend more than $200 on a monitor.

 

I would get a CRT, but I would have trouble finding one locally, and paying $50 to ship one isn't cool...

 

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.

[Finzz]

How big do crts get? Most I've seen are only like 14 inch because its standard I guess, if you wanted a bigger one, how much would it cost?

 

Also, Shadow I picked almost identical parts of your build except i changed the RAM to

 

OCZ OCZ3X1600LV6GK 6GB PC3-12800+ (DDR3-1600+) Triple Channel Memory Retail

 

And the Hard Drive to

 

SAMSUNG Spinpoint F1 HD753LJ 750GB SATA 7200 RPM 32MB Buffer Hard Drive Bulk

 

As you can probably tell I was looking on ZZF and also getting the PSU and Motherboard through them

 

ASUS P6T SE Intel X58 Core i7 Extreme/Core i7 Socket 1366 PC3-16000 (DDR3-2000) ATX Motherboard Retail

 

CORSAIR CMPSU-850TX 850W SLI/CrossFire Active Power Supply Retail

 

Altogether I can save like $50 if that matters :/ unless you think Samsung or OCZ sucks.

 

Also I would prob save more if i used ZZF cuz they have free ship so maybe like $75 cheaper. What do you think?

[Pasickshooter]

I just built a comp for round....450....but it keeps a steady 200 fps on css. You dont need to spen so much on parts....just get the good ones.

[Akaru]

I just built a comp for round....450....but it keeps a steady 200 fps on css. You dont need to spen so much on parts....just get the good ones.

 

He has 1500 dollars to spend on a computer that will last him more than a few months, like your 450 dollar computer.

[Finzz]

Also Shadow I will wait for the Windows 7 Beta, for now I will have to use Windows XP 32 Home because I'm not gonna waste $100-$150 on Vista,

 

Problem is, how can I easily upgrade it to the Windows 7 when it comes out? I suppose I could back up my stuff on an external hard drive or something....

[Shadowex3]

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.

[Finzz]

Ok, do you think the OCZ Ram and the Samsung Hard Drive I posted are still good replacements for what you suggested?

 

They are the same thing spec-wise im pretty sure, just wondering what you think about those brands.

 

I know OCZ makes good ram and Samsung is a big name so I don't think they would make bad hard drives.

 

I can't wait till the Solid State Drives get cheaper........

[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.