[Davis0079]

Having said that, if your hell bent on building a bad ass computer then you need to remember that everything matters. From the case you buy to ram timing. Everything matters. First I would price motherbooard/cpu combos. I run a p5n-d nivida board with a q6600 proccessor. This is a good base because my board is SLI board. Which means two graphics cards for one monitor, almost double the FPS in some games. Next is ram. If your going to overclock, pay attintion to timming. Get good ram sticks, it matters. I got my rig used and I can tell the boy who owned it first skimped on certian things, like ram sticks, because he bought 2 gig sticks, but with a speed of 667, instead of what I would say should have been atleast 800 or better. This is holding me back alittle when it comes to overclocking. Then there is your pcu( power pack). Once again the formor owner of my rig was running low on money and put a 450 watt unit in it. I blew this up the first week of overclocking. I put in a lsp650 watt, but if I ever get dual 260gt's I will probally need a 750. After all this you look at your projected tempetures. That will determan how much money you need for a case, fans and if you should run liquid cooling. I got liqiud (thank god the boy atleasd bought that) their for I can do serius perfomance overclocking with out worring about burning my rig to the ground. Alot of cases can be bought set up for such things and some cannot. Once again, everything matters.

Now this all sounds abit overwhelming , but with a little bit of homework and some help from the forums you can end up with a computer that will dim the lights when gaming. I paid $450 for my complete rig off of craigslist. But this is not the norm. I thing the boy needed the money pretty bad because I am going to estmate that he spent $1000 building it. Looking for deals online is a good option, but like me you might get stuck with a few low end components. But its a good base to start with.

Good luck and keep these guys updated as to your progress and you will most likely get help every step of the way.

P5N-D w/ q6600, 500gig hard drive, 4 gig ram, liquid cooled, SLI 9500gt's, $450 on CraigsList (not the norm)