Would this work?

[BaldEagl]

I'll vouch for the 250/16 Seagate.  I'm running two of those on my new machine; one as my primary boot drive and the other for machine specific unshared data.  Plenty fast and not a blip out of either one.

I've got two 500/16 Seagate NS series drives that I'll be installing this week as network back-up drives.  I hope they work as well as the 250's.

[Shamus]

I would go with a 256 bit video card Gava.

shamus

[Anaxogoras]

Thanks shamus.  I looked at the nvidia 9600GTs and found this one, which I intend to purchase instead of the radeon.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125099

[TilDeath]

The main reason why I selected a seagate hd is it's a brand that I trust, and the reviews that mention how many times these things are doa seem to confirm my opinion.

I like WD.  Most so called DOA drives are user error.  For instance a SATA drive on an old XP disk install and the problems associated with this.

As for reviews on Newegg and other sites, I never pay attention, you don't actually know the users true knowledge.  They may tinker with their system daily and therefore think of themselves with a high amount of knowledge.  Reviews from most "sites" are not reliable since they are advertiser driven in some fashion (free samples that do not have to be returned, banner adds etc versus, here is out product but after the review send it back).  Also anyone can post on these sites, some companies do make posts about a competitor's product in a negative way.

We talked about PSU's here are some better choices then what you had looked at
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817341010 60.00 after rebate plus free shipping.  I can get it for you for less but no free shipping and PSU's are heavy so they are costly to ship.  I figure after the rebate and free shipping this will save you about 5 bucs

Cases find one within your budget that has the ability to add the most amount of fans

[BaldEagl]

I've had so many hard drives I can hardly count; both Seagate and WD.  Of these the only ones I've ever had problems with were two of the WDs.  Seagate all the way from now on for me.  If you don't care about having to replace them periodically then WD's are fine.

[Anaxogoras]

Thank you all for the tips and advice!  I'm typing this with my new box.  It seems like I set everything up correctly on the first try, and I've never built a system before.

Now I'm downloading stuff like crazy...can't wait to try AH and Il-2.


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Bleh, during system bootup it recognizes 4gb of ram, but in xp it says I only have 3gb...