Hello! The Time has arrived!! After years of long waiting and painful laptops the time has come for me to finally build my own desktop.


I have around 1200 price range that I would like to stay in but, I was wondering for one, suggestions of what type of hardware I should look into, and two if its a good idea to stick with windows 7 ultimate or not? What do you think anyone?

Hello! The Time has arrived!! After years of long waiting and painful laptops the time has come for me to finally build my own desktop.


I have around 1200 price range that I would like to stay in but, I was wondering for one, suggestions of what type of hardware I should look into, and two if its a good idea to stick with windows 7 ultimate or not? What do you think anyone?

The hardware depends on what you want to get out of your pc. What are u going to be using it for? You could save on certain areas and then spend more in an area that will benefit you.
If you actually have a copy of windows 7 ultimate why not stick with that? no point in downgrading

The hardware depends on what you want to get out of your pc. What are u going to be using it for? You could save on certain areas and then spend more in an area that will benefit you.
If you actually have a copy of windows 7 ultimate why not stick with that? no point in downgrading

Ah, well I have windows 32-bit I was just thinking of getting the ulimate version of windows for my new computer.

I specifically play games, listen to music and watch movies/videos and surf the web. Thats what my computer is used for now and I want one that can do all of the above great, andwith relatively no problems

Ah, well I have windows 32-bit I was just thinking of getting the ulimate version of windows for my new computer.

I specifically play games, listen to music and watch movies/videos and surf the web. Thats what my computer is used for now and I want one that can do all of the above great, andwith relatively no problems

Well i would personaly say that windows 7 ultimate is not going to benefit you for any of the things you do. Windows 7 Pro has some nice little extras that can be handy such as XP mode but im sure you would be fine with Home Premium. I would also go for the 64-bit version, that way your computer can use more than 4gb of RAM. The 32-bit is limited to using 4Gb and even then it will prob only use 3.5Gb.
This link should help http://www.microsoft.com/Windows/windows-7/compare/default.aspx

As far as hardware is concerned on your budget i would opt for getting a good graphics card and save a little on the processor. A decent dual core is going to be fine for gaming unless ur die hard, thats my opinion.
I recently built a pc, i knew i wasn't going to game on it so i saved on the graphics card and got a good processor and really good RAM. Have a good think about where the main parts you want to spend you money are gonna be.

For 1200$ you should be able to build a quite powerful machine. I will get into more details than the previous posts. My main question, is if you are going to use any of your previous parts. Case, hard drive, mouse, keyboard, etc, or do you want to replace everything? My recommendation is assuming you already have a case, power supply, monitor, hard drive, keyboard, mouse. Let me know if that is not the case.

First of all, the motherboard. I just went through building a system myself, although I had less to spend. What I went with, and highly recommend, is the GIGABYTE GA-EX58-UD5 which has an LGA1366 socket.

Next, you can't go wrong with the new core i7 processors, they are beasts and will allow for major multitasking, gaming, etc. There are also several platforms to choose from based on your price range. Although there are several platforms, I would recommend the core i7 920 (LGA1366). It's a quad core that is clocked at 2.7Ghz I believe, but is extremely overclockable for future performance upgrades. The other major advantage of the core i7 chip is that it has a build in memory controller. This means that you can run triple channel memory.

That leads into my next recommendation. Go with a triple channel memory configuration, this will allow for the most bandwidth and would help you get the most out of the core i7 processor. Typical configurations are 3GB, 6GB, 9GB, etc. Kingston or Corsair are good choices.

If you want to play games, the video card will usually set you back quite a bit. Of course it will either be Nvidia or ATI. But I wouldn't skimp in this area or you will probably regret it later. The advantage of going with ATI, is that they have DX11 cards out right now. And as far as I know, Nvidia does not but will soon. If you decide on ATI, the Radeon HD 5830 is a good choice and has DX11 support. If you decide on Nvidia, the GTX 275 or GTX 285 is a good choice. However, it is a DX10 card.

The last thing I would like to say from personal experience, is to make sure that you register all your parts. These days manufacturers require it in order for them to honor the warranty. Hope you enjoy the new system!

EDIT: I forgot to mention the operating system. As the previous posts have stated, in order to use the full amount of your RAM over 4GB you will need 64-bit.

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