Build me a super gaming rig please --- help!

[Lorgalis]

Need to upgrade the old system - what I am looking for basically:

Looking for a rig that will have longevity - plays games with hopefully no maintencace for the next 2 to 3 years.

No OVERCLOCKING!
No need for Liquid Cooling rig!

AMD? INTEL? Dual/Quad core? No Clue...

2 GB? 4 GB? 6 GB? 12 GB Memory?

Power Supply  --- no clue  800 wat?  700? More ? less?

What sort of (non Liquid ) cooling do I need?

OS???  I heard XP still runs many games as well as or slightly better than Vista and Win 7?  True?  Go Vista?  Win 7?  no clue.

1 GB Nvidia Video Card

The rest - no clue.  Do not think I need a Terrabyte of Disk Space.

I think IBUYPOWER.com has a decent setup for custom rigs.

Help needed and thanks!

[Xondor]

I am an Intel guy. I require all my servers and desktops to have Intel Inside.

Dual core would be just fine for all intensive purposes

4GB max, unless you go to a 64bit OS. 32bit OS will only use 3.25 max. This includes Windows XP and Vista (including premium). The amount of ram is important but so is speed. The faster the ram the better the run.

Power Supply. With a standard machine there is no need for crazy power. You planning on running an insane amount of DVD or hard drives? If not 600+ will do you just fine.

Normal cooling is fine. As long as you get a couple normal fans and have tons of ventilation around the box in there there is no need to worry much about it.

OS - XP uses far less base RAM than Vista does. Thats why a lot of people say go XP. With the 4GB top end limit on ram, you dont want your OS chewing through a ton of it. This is all for 32bit OS...

You have to look deeper than just the ram number on a video card. It comes down to preferance but I prefer Nvidia myself. I like the GTX285. Its phenominal. Youre going to pay a preium price for it... If you dont want to go high end GB card, dont go low end just for the sake of 1GB of memory. Go with the high end 512 card and youll end up with better performance.

Hard drives - Again, the size isnt important... speed is. Truthfully you will get better performance out of smaller faster drives than big slow drives, or even big fast drives... Set a small fast drive as your primary and keep everything but file storage on it. Get a big slow 1TB+ clunker as your secondary storage drive.

Here is where I have in my main gaming PC:

Dual core 2.5 Intel
8GB PC3200 RAM
Windows Vista x64
75GB - 10,000RPM - Sata Drive
GeForce GTX285
700 Watt PS
For cooling I have 2 120mm fans. I also have an expansion bay fan (I think it was like $15 or something. That sits in an expansion bay and throws a ton of cool air directly onto the video card.

Its a pain in the ass running x64... you have to be willing to support it... its not easy... junk doesnt work right. Softwares dont work right... some software like VPN software just flat out wont work unless you have the 64bit edition. But... it lets you utilitze the extra RAM and processing power. Personally I find it worth the effort.

On this machine I can easily get well over 100fps running on max settings in wow. Even in cities.... that being said... I spend 95% of the time playing on my laptop that gets around 65fps. I can honestly say I dont see a difference and its so much more comfy to sit on the couch... I think I read somewhere television is around 24fps and the human eye can only see 32fps max. So why do I need to be over 100? I really dont. Neither do you. Neither does anyone.

Truthfully if I was doing it now, I would set myself a budget and then build a machine around that budget. Its a lot easier to figure out and prioritize what you want that way. At least that would be my advice.

[Greebo]

All you need to know

[Malkaris]

I recently bought a computer from www.digitalstormonline.com  - depending on what you're looking for, you can play with some of the things there I guess. They have some nifty premade computers too, but again, all depends on what you're looking for o.o

[Kazthul]

What Xondor said, though I like to two small super fast drives in raid 0.

[Kazthul]

Just read that part of xondors post.  There's quite a few differences in opinion on human perception and frame rates however.   There's tons of conflicting articles and whatnot, but truth be told there's something about each person and their own visual system that is unique for everyone.   The average person will notice difference between 30 frames per second and 60 frames.   30 frames will be blurry and not as distinct as 60 even though you shouldn't be able to tell a difference.  Some people can't stand 24ish fps because it appears choppy or blurry because your brain isn't filling in extra details or whatever the heck your brain is doing.    I know I feel a difference with 30 frames or 60 because 30 frames bothers my eyes, messes with my focus and I can't  run marathon sessions unless I'm on my 100 fps rig.

The brain is an odd thing, I'd say shoot for 60 fps at minimum for maximum eye comfort though 30 is certainly sufficent if your not pychotic and could use some gamers annonymous.

[Malkaris]

good stuff =).

Good thing you asked at least, Lorgalis.
I wanted to buy something that I wouldn't have to replace for a while.

I went overboard