The title pretty much says it all. My computer is getting up there in age, and the recent WoW expansion has it coughing up RAM chips with alarming frequency. I did initially want this to be the last computer I ever bought, but I never got around to upgrading it–first because it didn’t need it, and then because Owls’ machine needed it more. So at this point pretty much everything has to be replaced, including the case*.
Basically I’m looking for something powerful, but not top of the line. Harddrive space isn’t important–I may put in a Raptor drive for a new C:, but I will be putting my durrent drives into the new machine. Other than that and the DVD/floppy drives, it’s all fair game. I’m not sure what’s out right now, and picking parts seems more complicated than ever.
My heaviest uses are gaming (WoW, mainly) and video editing. Dalaran on a 3.5 year old machine sucks.
*While I’m thinking about it, is it possible to get one with the air intake on the right side?
Well, I just did this, and put together a machine based roughly on the guidelines from this article:
It came it at around $600 bucks - is that within your budget?
One of the main reasons I built it was also for WoW and I can run with tons of addons at 60fps with no drops (although I haven’t been to Dalaran yet…). Haven’t done any video editing but everything else I’ve thrown at it has been very impressive.
I think the MoBo, CPU, and graphics chipset are in the sweet spot right now, but YMMV.
Oh, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a case with an air intake on the right… in fact I don’t think it would be possible without having all the MoBo connections coming out the front.
Well, crap. My desk, for some reason, has a wall on the left side of where my tower goes. My current case has heating problems anyways, though, so I’m not sure if that’s actually as much of an issue as it’s seemed (I currently have it pulled out beside my chair so it doesn’t overheat)
With that kind of budget I’d recommend a quad core GPU. the Q6600 is great and cheap. the Q9550 is not much more and delivers better performance. For video I’d say go for Nvidia. their cuda hardware support is being used by more and more video editing apps. the 9800 GT or GTX will fit your budget nicely as will the GTX 260.
For mobos’s an intel based one will do, just make sure it has all the features you need (built in gigabit ethernet, Hd audio, etc).
there are many cases with an air outtake on the top, which might help your overheating issues.
Yes, the case that is in the linked article above (Antec 300) has a top fan and at the lowest setting keeps everything nice and cool (and reasonably quiet).
With the higher budget you can certainly get a quad-core and quad-core motherboard and be in great shape, future-proofing wise.
I think the Radeon HD4850 generally outperforms the NVidia 9800GT/GTX, but the GTX 260 will beat them both. I don’t really have a preference between the two main graphics chipset manufacturers - I’ve owned both and had success with both. Kinthalis may be exactly right on the video-editing issue - I have very little experience with that.