How-To Geek

Alright, so here are the specs I'm thinking about for my first PC.

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400
eVGA nForce 750i SLI FTW Motherboard
4 GB DDR2 Ram (Using Vista 64-bit)
XTX GeForce GTX 260 Black Edition
Maxtor 500gb HD
XION Simple Power 630W
Apevia X-Cruiser Case
Basic DVD Drive

I'll obviously be using this for gaming. However, even though I'm thinking of getting the GTX 260, I'm not really a hardcore gamer. I just thought it would be nice to be able to play modern and future games without any problems. Plus it comes with FarCry 2.

I already bought the power supply because I found it at an unbeatable price elsewhere. One issue is that it doesn't have any 8-pin connectors (which the cpu would require). I did some research and a 4-pin connector will work fine. Apparently the situations where the power an 8-pin connector supplies is significantly better than that a 4-pin connector supplies, are few and far between (at least I hope). Any comments on this? I think 630W should be ample and leave a bit of room for future upgrades.

I'm choosing this motherboard because it is a fair amount cheaper than its 780i counterparts. The main difference is that it does not support 3-way SLI, something I don't think I'd implement for many many years if at all. It is a year old, but it seems to have a fair amount of features for its price (I can probably get it for $160).

I'm not interested in Blu-Ray or TV-tuners, but may get a wireless adapter as it would be a pain to run a network cable into the room I'm going to be keeping this.

My budget is supposed to be $1500, but I realize that I will go over this if I get a good monitor, keyboard and mouse (I have good speakers already). This is alright though.

Any feedback or suggestions?

EDIT- Also note the above prices are in Canadian dollars.

i'm upgrading my e8400 to a q6600 quad core. probably will over clock it to 3.0. seems to be rated high at newegg and i hve it n an xps. huge difference in what all i cn do at once

I'm already pushing past my budget as it is. I was debating a Quad Core, but I don't think I'll need it for my purposes so I chose a faster Dual Core.

RAID is definitely something I should upgrade towards (although I've heard the performance difference isn't all that noticeable?). I'd probably be more interested in using it to backup my data. For now though I already have a 500GB external harddrive I'm using to back up my media, and important files. So for the moment at least I'll stick to one HD, again mainly due to budget.

Thanks for your comments, anyone had any experience with using a 4-pin connector to power the cpu when the motherboard calls for an 8-pin one?