First off, I'm new to the forums. Name's Chris, I'm 21. I am in the Air Force, it's alright here.

I've been doing a bit of research to help me understand how a computer is built, what exactly I would need to get to build one. I just wanted to have some opinions on the parts that I picked out. Critiques are always welcome. I do agree that the item(s) that I picked out are rather expensive but I am looking forward to the future and being able to upgrade with ease was something that I had in mind.

I'm not going to build the rig for a little while (the wife said that we didn't need to be making payments.) So looks like I need to save

All from newegg.com, haven't had the time to shop around much:

CD DRIVE: Pioneer 20X DVD±R DVD Burner Black IDE Model DVR-115DBK $29.99

CASE: COOLER MASTER COSMOS 1000 RC-1000-KSN1-GP Black/ Silver Steel ATX Full Tower Computer Case - Retail $189.99

HARD DRIVE: Western Digital Raptor WD1500ADFD 150GB 10000 RPM SATA 1.5Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM $169.99

MONITOR: SAMSUNG 2253LW High-gloss Black 21.6" 5ms (2ms GTG) Widescreen LCD Monitor - Retail $269.99

POWER SUPPLY: PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750 Quad (Red) 750W Power Supply - Retail $139.99

SPEAKERS: Logitech S-220 17 Watts 2.1 Multimedia Speaker System - OEM $20.99

KEYBOARD: Logitech G11 Silver & Black USB Standard Gaming Keyboard - Retail $58.99

MOUSE: Logitech G5 2-Tone 7 Buttons 1 x Wheel USB Laser Mouse - Retail $49.99

RAM: OCZ Reaper HPC 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory - $132.99

MOTHER BOARD: ASUS RAMPAGE FORMULA LGA 775 Intel X48 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail $269.99

VIDEO CARD(S): 2x SAPPHIRE 100247L Radeon HD 4870 512MB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card - Retail $569.98 ($284.99 each)

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale 3.0GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor Model BX80570E8400 - Retail $169.99

OS: Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 64-bit English 1pk DSP OEI DVD for System Builders - OEM $179.99

SOME EXTRA CRAP: Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 Licensed for 3 PCs - Retail $84.99

Grand Total: $2,390.20 (with shipping)

Thanks for any advice/critiques you might have.

If you aren't going to build for a while, scrap that rig, since when you are building, core i7 might be out, and you might be able to get much better value for money.
However, for a system nowadays.... I see nothing wrong.
ah, and you said upgrading with ease is what you want: in which case you should wait, since Intel's current platform is.... very shortly to be out of date (due to i7) and I doubt you want to go AMD.

It looks like the 4870 X2 is going to be cheaper than 2 4870s with improved performance (double the available memory) so you might want to add that to your list instead of 2 4870s, since you're not building for a while

Hi Chris,

First of all, ask again when you're read to buy. Any advice we can give you now may no longer be the best solution available 3 months from now.

I'd avoid IDE drives. A SH-S223F SATA burner would be better, for example.

COOLER MASTER COSMOS 1000 - nice. However, an RC-690 would save you about $100.

A WD6400AAKS is better (4 times more room, half the price, faster with large files, just a bit slower with small files).

Monitor: nice.

PSU: The Silencer 750W is one of the best PSUs ever. I got one myself right now. Still, I'd recommend a 750TX instead for you because it's $40 less. The only disadvantage is that the 750TX blows vertically, but with a RC-690 it's not a problem because the case fans can handle it.

He he, you're a Logitech fan, right? Personally I'd spend more on speakers and less on KB/mouse. For example my Logitech speakers cost $220 on sale, my Logitech mouse $40, and I got a $22 Microsoft keyboard that does the job just fine. A matter of preference, of course.

RAM: save some money getting DDR2-800.

Change this to P5Q Pro ($140) plus HD 4870 X2 ($560). You save $140 and get twice the video RAM.

E8400 is a good choice. Vista 64 is good too, but maybe you can downgrade to Home Premium 64-bit.

With all these savings, maybe the wife will approve it faster Good luck!!!

Thanks aevm! You definitely helped. I don't have the time to look at all of the stuff but you can bet that I'll be checking out all of your opinions tonight. I see some good options there. Thanks.

one more thing, I understand IDE drives are slower. How could I connect a SATA drive to a mobo that has an IDE connection? Through one of the SATA 3.0mb/s slots (the ones made for HD's?)

Thanks, Chris.

Look here:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] =P5Q%2bPro

It says:

That means you have connectors for one IDE cable, which can have two IDE hard disks attached to it. It also allows 8 SATA cables (going to hard disks or burners).
By the way, I like the P5Q Pro because of this "8", among other reasons. It's rare these days to have that many ports, and I'm using 7 myself these days.

A SATA drive will just be connected to a SATA port using a SATA cable. Ideally, you wouldn't even use the IDE header or IDE drives. Are you asking because you have some older IDE disk and you'd like to reuse it? It's possible. It's just bad for airflow because IDE cables are very wide, but it's not a serious problem.

IDE drives are slower, true, usually because they are older and have lower densities.

Thanks again. I assumed that the SATA connections were only for HD's. I now know that you can connect a SATA Drive to the SATA connections. Noob mistakes. I'll get a SATA Drive now.