Building new computer, whats hot!? Options

[Hanyo]

Hey everyone,

Its been a while since i have built a new computer. I'm still stuck in the mind set that the AMD xp2500 barton is king. But obviously that is way way out of date.

So my current research shows is, the intel price cut will happen on july 22, so i'm hoping to shoot for the intel q6600 or q6700 quad core cpu.

I plan on runing windows vista home premium, and windows one care. I know I know, its gonna be buggy and everything, but i don;t want to waste money buying xp and changing over to vista. should i go 32bit or 64bit? hmmmmm...

With that all said and done, I will be using this machine as hardcore photoshoper/websurfer/storage server/ and very light computer gamer. So video card power does not have a super importance.


I really need your advice on compatitible motherboards. ddr2? ddr3?

any help is appreciated.

[Hanyo]

well the main reason for geting vista is because I lilke the security behind it. getting vista and one care is imo a whole lot more secure then vista and norton. I'm building this computer for a family member, and i dont trust them to run the usual schedule virus/spyware/adware scans.

I personally have used vista on my laptop. I do like it, and i know there are some terrible hardware problems. I just don't want to buy XP because it is an older OS. Its like buying windows 2000 when XP came out. Vista will be the next generation operating system.

I have read reviews about how DDr3 is not worth it currently because of the ram prices. But once it has gotten cheaper, and you have around 4 gigs of ram, the over all results will be much better compared to DDr2.

My friend has a simular set up as yours creis, he had some ram problems. He ended up needing to increase the volt to the ram modules to solve the problem. I dont want to do that because I like to build silent computers and i need to keep heat down as much as possilbe.

I'm still not certain on which mother board brand i will stick with. Currently trusty ASUS mother boards seem to have problems dealing with the next generation CPU's.