Figure out what you want to do with it, then check reviews as to the specific card Viper. In that case, check reviews on the AMD 7750.

I'm out of touch as to wtf each series is on from the respective camps now.

That is super duper overkill.

Something like this: Newegg.com - PowerColor Go! Green AX5450 512MK3-SH Radeon HD 5450 (Cedar) 512MB 64-bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card or similar card. I just looked that one up real quick.

$28 is all the graphics card you will need, but only if your motherboard doesn't have an onboard GPU. If it does (with an HDMI port) than you don't need a graphics card at all.

BTW a similar Nvidia card if you are set on one of those: Newegg.com - XFX GM-210M-YNF2 GeForce 210 512MB 32-bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card

The days of needing a huge case are long gone.

15-20 years ago I had a fancy full-tower case. In it I had a CD-ROM, two floppies (5.25" and 3.5"), a tape backup drive, a Maxoptix Tahiti (5.25" writeable optical), some 3.5" rewriteable optical (can't remember the name) and a ZIP drive, plus three or four hard drives, one of which was a SyQuest (5.25" removable platter) and another of which was a full-size (double-height) 5.25" fixed drive. I also had a half-dozen expansion cards (modem, ethernet, VGA, soundblaster, SCSI controller and proprietary CD-ROM interface.) That sucker was all steel and it weighed a ton. Remember when PCs had a "turbo" switch and a physical key-lock on the front? It was one of those. Hardcore early-90s geek machine.

These days, a typical "big" computer has two drives (one DVD-RW and one hard drive) and, optionally, one expansion card (video). In my home PC, I also have a second hard drive as a backup drive.

My media server PC is a MicroATX with two hard drives and zero expansion cards.

My work PC has one DVD-RW, one hard drive and zero expansion cards. It's one of those tiny little "small form-factor" Lenovos that has a laptop-style CD-ROM drive and a single half-height expansion slot. I have an external 2.5" USB hard drive sitting on top of it as the backup drive.

I really don't foresee myself ever needing another "big" computer case.

Just pick something nice in the $40-$60 range. CoolerMaster makes some nice aluminum mini-towers that have fully ventilated front panels (all perforated metal with a filter media behind it). This is the current model of the one I use for my main PC at home: Newegg.com - COOLER MASTER Elite 330 Upgraded RC-330U-KKN1 Black Steel / Plastic ATX Mid Tower Computer Case Looks like they changed the perforations on the side cover. In mine, I blocked them off altogether to encourage front-to-back airflow, as my CPU cooler is of the fancy heatpipe variety which draws air in from the front side and exhausts it straight back at the rear case fan. I have no front fan, I just cut away as much of the unpainted steel as possible to fully open it up.

Joe,

USB external drives more than serve my purpose personally. I don't even have a 5.25" drive in my current desktop shockingly!

Newegg.com - LIAN LI PC-Q25B Black Aluminum Mini-ITX Tower Computer Case

This was my last case. I love it so much I'm going all-out Mini ITX if I can from now on.

Don't discount mini ITX. If I had gone with a slightly different Lian Li case, I could have had a full-sized video card and an i5 or i7 in the form factor with a 5.25" drive bay. And room for 3 or 5 3.5" hard drives, or something ridiculous like that, to boot.

I thought about using that case for my driving simulator i'm building. ^^ Seems ideal. Looks good. And can fit where i want it. Gotta shove a big ol video card in it, which shouldn't be a problem.

I agree, you don't need a big full tower monster. It's nice to have the room inside for people like me with liquid cooling 4 internal HDD's, video cards, sound cards ect.

You also don't NEED a video card. I have not looked, but i'm sure they make motherboards with HDMI / DVI outputs. It would be crazy for them not to.

Alright, looks like they do make motherboards with HDMI out and built in wireless(something I will need). Which is nice for me because that makes my hardware list shrink a bit. I was sure all of these things were going to be separate pieces. Or would it be better to keep them separate in case/when I decide to start gaming?

Ok, I'm still stuck at the part of trying to decipher the specs. I will post some here.

Buy.com - Intel Desktop Motherboard DH67BL, Media - Micro-ATX
ASUS - Motherboards- ASUS F1A75-I DELUXE

I like the asus board a bit better then that Intel board. Honestly that asus board looks like it has the PCI-E slot you will need for a better graphics card if you ever decide you want one.

For actually buying hardware I highly suggest sticking to newegg.com I have been ordering computer parts from there for years and have never had a problem.

The Asus board is ITX form type. So you're going to need a case that is ITX format (not that fancy white one you picked out). Not sure what that slot type is. But it won't work with the 965 or 955 processor you were going to go with.

Do this.

Newegg.com - ASUS M5A88-M AM3+ AMD 880G HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

Then get yourself a PCI or PCI-E wireless card (with antenna) and have great range. They're not expensive. Then you can use your case, because it's ATX form.

You don't need them to be separate. If you decide to start gaming, you can just put in a new video card and go from there.

This package: Intel i3-2120 3.30 GHz Dual Core CPU and Gigabyte GA-Z77-D3H Intel 7 Motherboard and 2x ADATA 4GB DDR3 RAM and LG 24x DVDRW and Ultra 550W PSU and 1TB HDD and Thermaltake Mid Tower Case Bundle at TigerDirect.com looks like it would do well with just the addition of another two 2G DIMMS and an operating system. The motherboard includes HDMI and DVI, and has plenty of expansion slots including two PCIe-16 slots.

I honestly would stay far far away from tigerdirect. Back in the day they were notoriously bad with rebates and most of the things they sold had them. I do not know if they have gotten better or not, but from their past history I personally will not give them any business.

True that I find the 'Egg a little more to my liking, but I've bought a lot of stuff from both and never had a bad experience with either.

When i bought my case TD was the last place to have it in stock. I ended up getting some memory or some crap along with it, and it had a $20 mail in rebate. Never got my rebate. That was at least 6 years ago though.

The Asus motherboards seem to be good stuff, so I will start looking at those.

Wow, thanks for the heads up on the case fitment. I'm pretty set on that nice case, haha.

The one you linked looks nice. Should be perfect for what I need and accoding to Lars I can add a different/better card later if needed.

Is there any real difference between the PCI and PCI-E?

Thanks. That is what I wanted to hear.

I've bought a lot of crap from Neweggg and it's all be good so far.

Asus, Abit, and MSI used to be the holy trinity of hardware manufacturers for me and quite a few others.

Abit is now out of business, and MSI, I don't even know. Right about this time, DFI went big.

Now I've stopped worrying about any specific manufacturer, and I even have an ASRock motherboard which has worked rock-solid for me for years. I just look if the mobo has what I need, and unless it's some crap like Foxconn/PC Chips, pick it up.

Anyways, just my :2cents:.

From a functional standpoint, the two are essentially identical for something as simple and low-bandwidth as a network card.

In general, the industry is migrating away from PCI and towards PCI-e, largely because PCI-e reduces manufacturing costs (fewer pins, fewer traces.) So in the future, expect to see motherboards with no PCI slots at all and only PCI-e, much as happened when ISA slots were gradually replaced with PCI slots during the early Pentium era until you could no longer buy a motherboard with any ISA slots at all.

At present, the availability of PCI expansion cards has already been overshadowed by PCI-e cards in many applications.

PCI-e is advantageous from a performance standpoint principally in high-bandwidth applications, such as server-grade SCSI controllers and gamer-style video cards, where the ability to parallel multiple PCI-e channels on a single slot allows for the card to communicate with the rest of the system at a much higher bandwidth.

Thanks for the insight, Joe.

Okay, so far this is my list.

-Fancy smancy Corsair case
-Antec 500W power supply or some other...I guess
-ASUS M5A88-M AM3+ AMD 880G HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard or one similar
-PCIE wireless card -if I don't find a motherboard with one built in.
-HD tv for monitor via HDMI
-shit...

We actually had an interesting discussion about wireless adapters in this forum recently, Viper.

You'll want to find it before you buy one - many desktop wireless cards are crappy was the end result.

List looks good. You're going to need memory, hard drive of choice, and CD/DVD drive.

Plus a copy of windows. I will speak of no such ways you will acquire this, but it's needed.

A couple of notes:

Don't forget the CPU. Personally, I vastly prefer Intel CPUs (and thus, Intel-style motherboards) over AMD given the very small cost difference, but I also recognize that this is a religious topic and I won't attempt to prostelyatize.

You can always use a USB WiFi dongle if you need to. I play TF2 across WiFi all the time, as my internal WiFi card proved to be incompatible with my fancy new video card. Yes, I recognize that you don't get as nice of an antenna and there's probably some measureable performance decrease involved in transacting across the USB host as opposed to the PCI-e bus, but in reality it's good enough.

On the subject of using an HDTV as a monitor: don't do this unless you absolutely need to. HDTV sets are inherently limited to either 720 or 1080 on the vertical resolution, whereas proper computer monitors often have higher resolutions. Likewise, you can get computer monitors in a 16:10 aspect ratio, which I find preferable to the 16:9 of HDTVs for doing computer-stuff. They also aren't generally intended for up-close viewing, so they can get away with silly little things like having a broader gap between pixels.