im building a pc for a friend of mine... he cant spend more than $900, so this is what i decided to put in it:

if you dont feel liek going to newegg, this is whats in it:

amd 3500+ 64
radeon x1900gt
ecs rd480 ati radeon xpress 200 crossfire mobo (future upgrades)
160 gb sata hardrive
cd/dvd drives
600 watt (44a on 12v rail) psu (future upgrades)
1gb stick value select RAM (future upgrades)

all for around $870, with shipping and tax

details:

case:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811208015
hard drive:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822152020
mobo:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813135008
gfx card:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814102022
cd drive:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16827135066
dvd drive:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16827135086
psu:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817190007
memory:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820145505
processor:
http://www.newegg.com/product/Produc...82E16819103533

i just want to be sure that this will work... i dont want to mess this up for him :P.
if you have any suggestions on anything, just tell me.
i wanted to give him so room for expanding his pc. so i gave him the ability to have multiple GPUs, and plenty of room for RAM upgrades.

i did research on the crossfire, and i know something about the "shunt" card, i also have enough knowledge about PSUs... but id liek to know about the radeon xpress 200: willl you be able to skip the x1900 crossfire edition GPU (in the future with new drivers) or will you have to use a radeon xpress 3200? x1900 crossfire edition are expensive... this is all for the future btw... so it doesnt really matter right now.

i think i have the proper setup, but you neve know what might come up :|

hi nice setup i think you will need to use the 3200 xpress..... windows os? not on the list??? recomend windows home for know my freind good setup go for it

well... the radeon xpress 200 comes with a "shunt card" that basically lets you have one gfx card in there... you just install the shunt card in the secondary pci-e slot... and the gfx card in the primary slot. so that is good...

i got windows covered.. no problem...

***update from the first post***

oh... i looked at RAM, and we (me and my friend) decided that dual channel will do fine, so we made some changes on our RAM:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820220006

this is a patriot 1gb(2 sticks 512mb). i read some things on RAM timing... and found out that CAS latency matters quite a lot... instead of 3, its 2 on this thing... not to mention dual channeling...

on the old the card, the timings were.... well i didnt even say... but the CAS latency on the patriot were 2-3-2-5-T1, which is good for the $90 price...



we also decided on a x1800xt instead of the x1900gt... its actually better in most games:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814102007

and if you want the performance on this card in games:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/vid...r-x1900gt.html

here it shows the fps in games... on most the x1800xt out performs the x1900gt...not to mention the $40 price difference... and yes i know about the higher noise/watt consumption vs. the x1900gt. so we decided on that one...

and one more thing: the dvd drive is enough, you dont even need a cd drive, just a dvd drive. i thought dvd only played dvds, and cd drives only played cds... my friends co-worker pointed this out to him after mi amigo showed him the specs... and then the co-worker told me that the dvd drive would play cds; i felt li3k a big n00b... ... it was embarrasing

so this is the update...

oh yeah... mobo is a little wierd... it might have problems. but i trust the peoples opinion on n3w egg... so i think it will be fine. asus is the best aparently, but the lowest xpress 200 is $90... so that budget is holdin it back ... :|

I haven't had the time to review your potential system but just wanted to let you know that not only is it being read but your details are also educational for us all!

Thanks for the input and the links. You are helping others whether you know it or not.

Hope you keep posting here at D-A-L