So many MOBOs....

[bobschm]

Good news: I got FSX Deluxe for Christmas.
Bad news: Gotta rebuild the old Pentium 4 3GHz, 512 RAM, IDE drive system.

So can I piece this together for less than $500 to Newegg? I'd want a Core 2 MOBO, SATA drive, 2G RAM, and decent PCIe x16 graphics. (Bigger power supply?) How do I choose a decent MOBO out of that flock? What should I be looking for?

Or should I just scrap the whole system, bite the bullet and go into debt for $1500+ for a new desktop altogether. I hate buying a new box all built as I spent a lot of effort building this one with a really slick full size case, decent monitor, keyboard, mouse, DVD drive, etc. etc.

Boston Bob

[noell]

IMO you would be better off re-building. That way you get to utilize that "really slick full size case, decent monitor, keyboard, mouse, DVD drive, etc. etc. ", as you put it and get what you want.

You will not, however, do it for $500. It will be more like $1,200 or so.

Here's what I'd go with for a mid-range system:

Mobo - aBit AB9 $125. I like other brands but I've seen very good reviews on this one and it saves about $75 compared to an ASUS P5B.

CPU - Core 2 Duo E6600 $320.

RAM - CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800. $275.

Video Card - 7950GT $280. Also consider a DX10 card if your budget can handle it as you will liklely want one anyway not far down the road when you upgrade to Vista.

Hard Drive - Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD2500KS 250GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s. $80.

Power Supply - Should be at least 400 Watts. A Seasonic 430 Watt is $95.

Prices are approx. and from Newegg.

The above components are similar to those described in this Extremetech article on building a mid-range system:
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...2002778,00.asp


....Noell

AMD Athlon 4000+ (San Diego) @ 2750MHz
CoolerMaster 'Aquagate 120' Liquid Cooling
ASUS A8N-SLI Premium
2GB Corsair TwinX2048-3500LLPro @ DDR500 (2.5-3-3-6&1T)
BFG 7900GTX OC (512MB) @ 670/1640MHz (Driver: XG93.71)
2 X 36GB WD Raptor (RAID 0)
74GB WD Raptor
120GB WD Caviar
SB Audigy Gamer
OCZ GameXStream 700W
Antec P180B case

[bobschm]

Thanks for the reply.

Interestingly, I was homing in on the same motherboard.

Now, however, I'm thinking I'll see if I can find something with acceptable on-board graphics and put off buying a video card altogether until DirectX 10 prices drop out of the flight levels. Acceptable means flying stutters with all the sliders pulled back, but I think it's a better plan than spending $ for a video card that is already obsolete.

Boston Bob