Tux

I to am looking at building a computer but fortunately I have a little more lee-way for spending, mostly around 700-900 bucks.
I do have some questions about what stuff i should get and what brands are the best. For instance what kind of power supply and what kind of processing, duel or quad? I'm leaning toward 4g of ram rather than 2 or 3g because vista is such a memory hog.

Your help will be greatly appreciated

Tux

Here is the stuff I have already picked out.

Case: Antec Nine Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Retail
At: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811129021

Mother Board: ASUS P5N-D LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 750i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail
At: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131232

RAM: CORSAIR 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory - Retail
At: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820145184

HDD: Seagate Barracuda ES ST3250620NS 250GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM
At: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822148155

Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 5800+ Brisbane 3.0GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM2 89W Dual-Core Processor - OEM
At: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103274

Power Supply: Antec BP550 Plus 550W ATX12V V2.2 Power Supply 100 - 240 V UL, CE, TUV, CB, FCC, CCC, C-TICK - Retail
At: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817371016

DVD Burner: LITE-ON Black 20X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 8X DVD+R DL 20X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 12X DVD-RAM 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM 2MB Cache SATA 20X DVD±R DVD Burner with LightScribe - Retail
At: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16827106265

Video Card: PNY VCG96512GXPB GeForce 9600 GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Retail
At: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814133216

All in all I think it adds up to be 704$

Im still not sure about the power supply, mother board, and the video card.
Help will be greatly appreciated.

Iplop

I'm still catching up on current hardware but here's my two cents.

Here's some info on power supplies from another thread (regarding brands):
As far as duel or quad core, unless your planning on doing 3D rendering or extensive image editing I'd stick with the dual core models. There are very few apps on the market that actually utilize all 4 cores. Not many apps (including games) even use two cores.

PaddyN

also dude if ur going for the 4gb go for xp/vista 64bit.. otherwise stick to 3gb..32bit OS dont see all 4gb

Tux

Thank you both, I'm planning on duel booting with Ubuntu and Vista I know they both have 64bit versions so I'll be sure to install those.
Still worried if I have the right motherboard though, any suggestions?

By the way PaddyN how do you like Fedora8 never gave it a try.

Tux

I have decided to go with this power supply
CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX 750W ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply 100 - 240 V UL, CE, CB, TUV, FCC, CCC - Retail

If 750W is to much for the computer im building let me know ill be happy to cut down on cost.
Still not sure about the mother board

wrench97

For a 9600 card you could drop it back to a 550-650w but if you think you may want to upgrade to a 4850-70 or a 8800-9800 you might as well bite the bullet now, as it's cheaper in the long run.

You may want to look at the AMD 7xx boards as the Nvidia 7xx series is buggy.
This story has been around for awhile denied by Nvidia but it's not going away.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/mainboa...in_Danger.html

Tux

Thanx for the warning with the motherboard I'll look into another one. I'm still debating about a better video card.