Need to buy a pc

[chevzilla]

Alright guys, I need some help building a pc. I can spend around 800-900$ maybe even 1000. I want it to be able to do some decent programming and gaming. I also need to be able to graphic and model design on it. All suggestions are welcome.

[DamegedSpy]

Get an i7 920(300 bucks)
An ATI 5870(300 bucks)
Get 2 1GB sticks(80-100 bucks)
Any DVD Burner(Around 25-50 bucks)
And your fav case/motherboard from a computer shop.(50-100 for the case, and 100-150 for the motherboard)

Something around 128-512 GB will be good for your HD.(40-100)
This is about 1K bucks. And perform very good in graphics. Aslo you can safely OCed the 920 about 5% without upgrading your cooling.

If you wish to add more(after the 1K):
Get other 2 1GB sticks and if you are into serious gaming/3D graphic design and rendering get an extra ATI 5870

[thetan]

Get an i7 920(300 bucks)

uhhhh, waste of money i'd much rather have http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819103226 or even better this http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... CatId=3496 I can spend the extra cash on dual SLI graphic cards too

Get 2 1GB sticks(80-100 bucks)

i'd say go for at least 4 now a days (i have boxes with 8)

[neuromanta]

It all depends on what you want to do, and with what. You said you want to play, and do graphic design and modelling, and programming. The most significant quiestion here is the video card. nVidia have better support for the open grapchics libraries (OpenGL 3.0), and Ati/AMD have better support for the newer closed graphics libraries (DirectX 11). So, if you want to program open source games, or casual games, then you should go for nVidia. Also, if you want to get into 3D modelling, nVidia is your choice (a card with GT200 chip, or maybe wait for Fermi), cuz the modelling softwares like Maya, 3DSMax and Blender, use OpenGL. But if you want to program with the newest DirectX, or if you just want to play the newest games, then get an AMD card (5870 is the best now).
Get a motherboard with a decent chipset, a CPU with 2 cores (you won't get benefit from more cores, if you want to use the PC for the above purposes), at least 4GB RAM, and a 64bit OS.

[thetan]

Get a motherboard with a decent chipset, a CPU with 2 cores (you won't get benefit from more cores, if you want to use the PC for the above purposes), at least 4GB RAM, and a 64bit OS.

Yes, chipset is more important then most people realize. However the bit about not benefiting from more then 2 cores is only some what true. I can understand how people would mistakenly think "i have 4 cores so my computers magically going to run 4 times faster" when in reality this is far from the case. Utilization of all cores must be engineered at the software development level (or compile time for some languages such as haskell). Simply, a program that wasn't designed to operate on multiple cores will only be executed on a single core. Also the average user doesn't entirely understand that load balancing across cores (or any load sort of load balancing really; clustered nodes and such) incurs additional overhead on the load delegating system as well as adding to complexity to software developers.

All that aside though, their is a lot of potential in parallelism. It's a fairly new thing (not really to the scientific community though) to most developers of client software and has caused a move towards a major paradigm shift in terms of how software is designed. Effectively using any given number of multiple cores isn't exactly possible in some situations as some problems simply can't be parallelized at all, also the opposite holds true with problems that can be parallelized endlessy (known as "dumb" parrallelization).

This is a "fairly" new grounds in terms of mass adoption and it being such, little is known how to effectively deal with problems in parrallel. We remain far far far away from anything Automatically Parallel (which has been dubbed as the "holy grail" of the topic). However, our understanding on how to exploit more and more cores increases everyday and some day (just not today) we might see the day where we primarilly measure CPU performance in core quantity

[TheNightFox]

While I can't really help you with specs, I can help with the actual purchase.
Try to find one of those small, foreign stores that sell parts really cheap. In New Zealand, we have DragonPC, and they're much cheaper than all the big stores.
If you don't want to spend money on a new case, keep your old one, that's what I did.
Furthermore, the deals at the small shops are better. My computer which I built over a year ago is still superior to the ones advertised on TV, and it was obsolete when I bought it.
Often buying from the Asian stores is good, because they can get their stuff imported really cheaply because it is already obsolete in Japan/wherever they import it from.

Not really sure this helped, but I hope it did.

[DamegedSpy]

Let it die my friend. Let it die.
I only support local companies;This brings better economy to my region =P

[Martyy]

...
I want it to be able to do some decent programming and gaming. I also need to be able to graphic and model design on it.
...

Well i couldn't keep my nose out of this :p
We would really need to know what are the real requirements..like, "Cant you still program decently on a system +10 years old?"

Nvidia sells a "decent" barebone kit for ~$500... includes everything but the Operating system

I got myself i5 750 @3.2Ghz, 4Gig PC3 10600 RAM, MSI P55-CD53 Mobo, Antec 650W PSU, GeForce 8800GTS(640MB), basic dvd/cd writer, some seagate 320HDD and Windows 7 Pro 64bit... that should still be within your $1000 limit...

[DamegedSpy]

I got myself:
Athlon x64 4200+
ATI x320/x520 (Total of 128 MB VRAM)
1 GB of SDRAM
A Cool x16 DVD ReWriter
4x 2.0USB Inputs
1 Panasonic mini plastic mobile speakers(Got it for free from a contest)
A SyncMaster 710n
Stock everything.
An anonymous motherboard with a cool in front reset button

This rig FTW!

>_> Really you should be better than me.
I feel like driving a washing machine.
Either way it is beautiful in its own original way <3