I know you guys are good at this..

[J W]

I got hooked on these danged PC games. So I was wondering if you guys could help me out on what I should be looking at with a budget of about 600-800 American dollars.

I was able to pick up a case and a HD on black friday, so I dont need to worry about that. I also already have a monitor and a dvd burner. Other than that, I am open to some suggestions...

Also, the games that I have been playing are half life and BF2..

Thanks
Josh

[Yawgm0th]

Re: I know you guys are good at this..

All hardware should be purchased at Newegg.com unless you know you can get it somewhere cheap.

You'll want to get a socket 939 motherboard based on the nForce 4 Ultra chipset along with a low-end Athlon 64. Go for a 3000 or 3200, and make sure you get a retail one, because they come with a heatsink/fan. You'll probably be best off with a Chaintech motherboard because it will be good, but cheap. The combined price should be between $200 and $240 after shipping. You could spend a little more and get a 3500 or 3700, but the games you're playing won't see much improvement beyond the 3200.

Next up is your video card. I'd suggest you get an nVidia 6800GS. There are a number of different brands, so choose based on price and what retail packages they come with (look at the pictures to see what comes with the card). This should set you back about $210.

Now to one of the most-overlooked components, the power supply. Since this is a socket 939 system with a fairly beefy video card, you'll want a power supply somewhere in the area of 480W-500W. It also needs to have a 24-pin power connector. On the search page of Newegg you can choose 20+4-pin or 24-pin on the PSU search page. The former should get more results. You'll need to stick with a quality name brand, such as Antec or Fortron. This will cost you anywhere from $60 to $80.

Finally, you'll need RAM. There's enough left of your budget that you should be getting a matched pair of 1GB sticks (2x1GB on the Newegg search page). You'll need PC3200 184-pin DDR RAM, preferably with a CAS latency of 2.5 or 2 (the lower the better, but also more expensive). As with the other sections, all of these are options available on the Newegg seach page for RAM. You'd also be best off going for one of the better brands. A few examples include OCZ, Corsair, Mushkin, and Crucial. Depending on what brand you get and how low the timings are, this will end up costing anywhere from $200 to $250. The performance differences between the lower and higher latencies aren't huge, but are significant enough that you should spend more if you have everything else you want.

That's everything, and it should fit in your budget perfectly. I'd say you've alloted the perfect amount of money to build a "mid-range" gaming machine. Granted, this "mid-range" gaming machine should be able to basically max out settings in both BF2 and Source games on 1600x1200, with some anti-aliasing as well.

[J W]

Re: I know you guys are good at this..

Would upgrading to a 7800Gt for another 90 or so be worth it?

Thanks

[Yawgm0th]

Re: I know you guys are good at this..

Yes, provided you get the 2GBs of RAM.