Building a new computer, suggestions wanted

Defiant · Post by **Defiant** » Thu Jan 13, 2005 3:27 pm

I'm going to be replacing my current 4.5 year system in the next month or two and am looking for suggestions on parts. The high end stuff I'll be needing the system for is video capture/editing and playing games (though with more of an emphasis on games that use less resources, but I would like to be able to play higher end games (if not smoothly) for a long time without needing a video card upgrade).

I'm thinking of getting the following:

Mid-Tower Case & Power Supply
Preferably easily openable (eg, few or no screws), room for maybe 4 5.25 drives and 6 3.5 drives. Quiet Power Supply. Sufficent cooling/ventilation.
Motherboard and CPU (most likely intel)
Motherboard should be compatable/stable/upgradable. At least one PCI-E 16x slot. Raid, onboard ethernet and modem would be nice, but not essential. Room to add plenty of IDE devices. Maybe the GA-8I915P Duo or GA-8I925X-G? Is hyperthreading worth looking into? CPU Cache? What kind of cooling should I look at? (I won't be overclocking)
1-2 GB of memory
Preferably in larger size modules so I can add more memory later. Are the various options (ECC, speed, etc) worth looking at?
Video card
Probably the X600 All-In-Wonder, although I'd like to consider alternatives or possibly consider a video card and a seperate TV capture card.
A hard drive
High Cache, fast, decent size (160GB+), Quiet, 3+ year warranty.

I'd like to spend less than $1000.

(I've already got a couple of DVD drives, an audio card, modem, second (and third) hard drives, etc.)