Recommendation needed

[Capper]

I'd recommend waiting, if for no other reason than we should see a decent drop in prices on current hardware, as retailers try to clear stock.

[drew and not u]

Originally Posted by chepibe

Thank you all! I learned a lot so far on this forum and I'm thinking to give it a try Thanks Capper for your input as well , I'm in no hurry , do you think I should wait for the new Nehalem components to arrive? like i mentioned before I would like to have a systme that will last me a long time so if the Nehalem parts is the new wave to the future I rather wait.

They'll be expensive, but with your budget I think you'll be good. And then you'll have a solid upgrade path as well. And even if they're too pricey, you'll get even better deals on the current stuff.

[LaKraven]

At least if you do jump aboard a new architecture, you'll have a more futurproof PC... easier to upgrade at a lower cost. I've spent around £5000 building my current main PC (so around $10000 US) and I must admit that even though in the end it's the most powerful desktop PC currently available on the market, I still regret my choice of platform!

For one my system uses DDR2 1066MHz RAM and not DDR3, so there's no chance of improving the RAM later on without buying a new CPU and Motherboard. I chose the AMD Phenom 9850 Black Edition CPU, which, whilst being a great processor, uses the AM2+ socket... a socket which is not long left for this world... and thus again, no real futurproofing there!
I also made a massive mistake by buying 2x ATI Radeon HD 3870X2 graphics cards instead of waiting two weeks for the release of the 4870X2 graphics cards (which are a hell of a lot more powerful and only a tiny amount more expensive). This decision more than any has made me kick myself as now I've had to spend another £700 to bring the system back to the "top of the range" status. Basically.... I ended up spending at least £1000 more than I SHOULD'VE spent because I made some poor choices on parts for this system.

Some people would say that my system is a little OTT, but I justify it by the fact that I only do a full "top of the range" system build for myself every 5 or so years, so if you say that I save £1000 per year for the build, it's really no different to a lot of PC geeks who spend that every christmas on a single upgrade.

That said, I set out to build a system which can handle Crysis at full resolution and graphics.... and I have! Another criteria I had was that I wanted to be able to render HD 1080p CGI video frames in less than 30 seconds per frame.... and at 12 seconds per frame, I've more than amply achieved that too! I also wanted to build a system capable of utilizing 7.1 surround at 24bit 196K quality to get the most out of my MIDI interfaces.... and with the Creative X-FI Fatal1ty Platinum soundcard, I've done just that.

Yes... I've spent a lot of money on parts, and I did have to replace the first case with the Coolermaster Cosmos S because the case I purchased initially did not allow for optimum air flow (and thus the PC was getting too hot)... I think the ends justify the means.

Bottom line here is.... if you research the market a little better than I did before choosing your parts, you may be able to avoid stupid and expensive mistakes such as those that I made (especially given that to replace the graphics cards cost almost as much as your entire PC budget). And in the end all we ever really need is a system which lives up to our expectations and does exactly what we want it to do :) Another good thing to take away from this message would be that going absolutely top-of-the-range isn't always the best choice! For most people, spending as much as I have on a system is pointless as less than half as much spent would still build them a PC that achieves every goal they set out.

Here in the UK I can build a PC that does everything you want it to do, and maybe a bit more besides, for around $800 thanks to last year's top of the range graphics cards now being absurdly inexpensive by comparison to their initial market price! When you consider that most people who bought the GeForce 8800GTX cards soon after release are still using them today (be it one or two of them - information based on a poll I run every week in the Crysis Wars chatroom to help people decide their optimum graphics settings for the game), it does show that at least these old war horses still keep up today.... even if only just!

I think that covers just about everything I wanted to mention, so I'll stop taking up screen space now :)