Hi,
I want to buy a pc for gaming, my budget is 1500 US dollars.
Thanks a lot.
Ah, recommending hardware, one of my favourite things.
One question, does the $1500 budget include having to buy a monitor, input devices, speakers etc?
My recommendations for a decent gaming system on a budget would be:
CPU: intel core 2 duo e6750 ($200)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115029
GFX card: factory overclocked nvidia 8800gts 320mb ($280 - 320mb cards seem to also score better than their 640mb cousins)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150172
Motherboard: Tricky, depending on if you might want to go sli. Since you have the money for it, you could go for an nividia 680i sli board. such as this evga for $220: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813188013
Abit, Asus, Gigabyte, and certain EVGA boards are all good brands. MSI is okay too. Also, if you are certain that you do NOT want sli, then a p35 board would be a better option.
And then there is of course memory. For gaming, Crucial Ballistix is supposed to be bery good: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148069 $154 for 2gb should be enough.
You’ll also want a decent aftermarket cooler for that processor. Tuniq Tower is one possibility, but on a budget, if you are not going to overclock, then the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro would be just fine.
PSU. You’ll want a decent power supply for that. 650w will be more than enough, even for sli. Something like this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151028
Again, if you know you do not want sli, then 500-600w is ok.
And as far as creating models on blender or windows, just use whichever operating system you are most comfortable with. Take in mind that in rendertime, you may get a good performance boost using 64 bit linux and 64 bit blender.
whatever you do, dont get ati!. thay may opensorce there drivers, but thay will still take time to fix
ive just bult a new pc, but i haven’t had time to do any propper benchmarks with it yet
the asus p5n 32-e is a good mobo.
ive got a q6600
if you want to use linux on it, resertch allot before buying anything
blender usaly proforms much better on linux than windows, i get aprox 2* polycount before vewport laggs, no clue why tho
the 8800 sometimes has problems with linux drivers
Why not AMD ? Why Intel ?
Get a quad core. How about the AMD Athlon FX 64 Quad core processor?
When buying a new PC, the cheapest way to go is NewEgg, buying individual parts.
Sheer power… Check it out and see who’s on top: http://www.eofw.org/bench/
I prefer AMD as a company - I feel more sympathetic for them than for intel, but power-wise, Intel just floors AMD. A gaming rig, sure you could go for an AMD if you wanted… But with a budget of $1500 you may as well go for a good core2duo… They also have better power consumption to performance ratio.
This is what I managed to put together, is it good ? Do I need to change anything ?
Core 2 Duo E6750, 1333Mhz, s775, 4MB
Striker Extreme nForce 680i SLI s775 Conroe
2x1GB Kingston HyperX CL4
8800GTS 320MB GDDR3, HDTV, 2xDVI, PCI-E
320GB 7200RPM, 16MB, SATAII
Armor Extreme Edition VA8004BWS
Actually, the 640mb ram is good use if you have a lot of high resolution textures on a scene, so the 8800 GTS 640mb will do better in that sense in 3d-modelling. But for games the 320mb is more than fine.
Looks good to me. Falgor is probably right about the 640mb 8800 gts being a bit better for games with lots of high-res textures. In the end, you’ll probably not notice a terrific amount of difference between them. If you can afford the little bit extra though, might be worth it.
Get an ASUS brand Motherboard. They are the best around. I have one and it hasn’t died (yet?). I had an SIS brand and it did die. Even if you don’t get ASUS, don’t get SIS! This is like saying don’t get Intel graphics.
But I was probably not very helpful. Maybe there are some good SIS motherboards but I wouldn’t risk it.
Hello Dan, I would like to ask you a question about Hardware. I have about 2500 $ and want a PC which will be used only for blendering. I dont need any sound, Firwire, WIFI and other stuff. Only fastest CPU, relevant memory, HD around 100gig, power supply, ethernet card (which is probably onboard most of the cases) and thats it. Could you help me on that please? Thank you
Lorem
Well for that amount of money, you’ll probably have enough left over for dual monitors.
Processor you could go for the Intel q6600 quad core ($300). The higher clocked quads are at least double the price for relatively negligible performance increase. You’ll also need to go for an aftermarket cooler. Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro at the low end. Tuniq Tower etc at the higher end.
Memory, go for ddr2 1066mhz ram if you want 4gb ($250-300) or if you want 8gb, you’ll need to go for ddr800, which shouldn’t have much performance difference compared to 1066mhz ram. As far as I can see, ddr800 is the maximum speed for 2gb memory chips. And you need 4x2gb if you want 8 gigs of ram, as most mobos have 4 slots for memory. If you look here you’ll see the sorts of prices for sets of 2x2gb ram, of which you would need two sets to take you to 8 gigs. Total cost would be no more than $600 I imagine. The brands to choose are OCZ, Corsair, and Crucial Ballistix. Kingston and Geil are OK, but wouldn’t be my first choice.
Motherboard, I’d think of going for one of the Intel P35 chipset boards. You’ll get onboard sound and Firewire with a good mobo anyway. Gigabyte, Asus and Abit are good manufacturers. With the P35, you don’t get SLI. If you want SLI, then you’d probably need to go for a motherboard with the nvidia 680i chipset. Whichever you choose, the motherboard would be anywhere between $150-$350 for a decent one. Depends on the options you’d want with it.
Graphics card - go for an nvidia 8800 gts ($280+) or even an 8800gtx ($570+) if you can afford it (which you probably can with that budget)
Hard drive - May as well get a 320gb hard disk, the price difference between a 80 gig and a 320 gig is maybe $30-40…
Power supply - 600w should be enough, unless you decide to go for 2 graphics cards, then maybe 750 watts to be safe I suppose. The price of a good psu is from $150 up I believe.
Anyway, PM me if you want to know more about the specific parts that would be best. To be honest, I’m sure you could build a really powerful Blender workstation for a little under $2000. Then you’d have money left over for other stuff, depends on how heavy the work you’re going to be doing will be. 
What ever you do dont get an ATI video card if your going to run linux
drivers for linux suck for ati
if you can fit it in get a tablet like wacom
oh and go with Dan and buy from newegg
if you have to drop the processor chip down 1 from what ever you going to get
and get max ram
make sure you max ram
if your super fast on the precessor and bottle necked in between it doesnt perform
if your neck is wide open and you processor is taking a hit you got the shit
Hello Dan, thanks a lot! thats very helpful as far I am a mac user and was used to buy everything already inside the box 
I would like to ask you some more questions if you dont mind.
Is there a possibility to build a 2x Quad computer for that price? I dont need monitor I already have one.
And also what operating system is the best for blender? Vista? Linux? Heard that on linux is much faster…
thanks a lot!
Lorem
I’m not too sure on this, but I believe there are no motherboards available that support dual q6600s, or any of the other consumer quads. You would have to go Xeon quad cores if you want a dual socket setup. But I think the Xeon requires a specific type of ram. They’re also very expensive. Maybe even the new AMD quads would work well in a dual socket setup - but they are very new - i.e not yet in the shops…
And for running Blender - if you like Windows, you can use Windows XP - I wouldn’t waste my money on Vista if I were you… Of course Linux is the better option, as for your amount of ram, you will want a 64bit operating system. If you are using more than 4gb of ram, you will definitely need a 64bit OS. I think it would be a good idea if you went for 8gb of ram and chose one of the more popular 64bit distros.
Dan, thank you a lot for your suggestions. I will probably go for WinXP and Linux to have opportunity to test the speed of booth systems.
Thank you
- Should I create 3D animations under windows or linux ( I use ubunto ) ?
The cool thing is that Linux is free, you do not have to choose one or the other, you can have both 
I would go with a multi core 64 bit CPU if you want to get the “biggest bang for your buck”.It is especially nice for rendering. You will need 64 bit linux to take advantage of blender 64 bit.