~$600 build -- look decent?

[Animal Farm Pig]

My computers are all fairly old. I want something modern. I don't have a large budget, but I want something fast with room to expand for the future. It will be primarily for home media and for the occasional game of Counterstrike.

I'm unsure whether to go AMD or Intel on this, but most of the other components have been chosen. The considerations for the motherboard were on-board graphics with HDMI out, more than 2 DIMM slots, at least 2 PCI slots, and gigabit ethernet.

Here's what I've got:

AMD:
Phenom II X4 920 2.8GHz (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103472)
Foxconn A7GM-S 2.0 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813186165) - 780G chipset w/ integrated Radeon HD 3200.

Intel:
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115017)
Foxconn G45M-S (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813186162) - Intel G45 chipset w/ integrated GMA X4500HD

Common Components:
G.SKILL 2 x 2 GB DDR2 1066 kit (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231166)
Dell Perc3 U160 RAID Controller (have already)
2 x 36 GB 15k RPM Fujitsu U320 hard drives (have already)
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 750 GB (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148298)
Generic DVD burner (have already)
Antec Three Hundred case (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129042)
Antec earthwatts 380 Watt PS (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371005)


Total cost before shipping and tax -
AMD: $503.91
Intel: $527.90

[hazmat]

Id swap the hdd for a 7200.12, the .11s were having firmware issues. If you dont mind loosing a few gigs the 500gb 7200.12 is a good bet because its on a single platter. Pair up two of those and you got a really fast TB array.

If yer going intel I'd go with an E8400 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115037), unless you have a need for those extra 2 cores and 2mb of cache on the q6600 this is a better chip and it will save you a few bucks. The 65nm tech is good, but with a quad its easier to cool a 45nm part, so in that case shelling out a few extra bucks for a Q9400 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115131) might be worth it.

You also might want to get a better power supply. If you are going to drop in a video card at some point it would be good to have at least 450w.

[Animal Farm Pig]

Id swap the hdd for a 7200.12, the .11s were having firmware issues. If you dont mind loosing a few gigs the 500gb 7200.12 is a good bet because its on a single platter. Pair up two of those and you got a really fast TB array.

If yer going intel I'd go with an E8400 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115037), unless you have a need for those extra 2 cores and 2mb of cache on the q6600 this is a better chip and it will save you a few bucks. The 65nm tech is good, but with a quad its easier to cool a 45nm part, so in that case shelling out a few extra bucks for a Q9400 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115131) might be worth it.

You also might want to get a better power supply. If you are going to drop in a video card at some point it would be good to have at least 450w.

Cool. Thanks for the advice.

I changed from the 380 watt to 430 watt Antec power supply from the same energy efficient series. Adds $10 to cost.

I've had good experience with Seagate for hard drives in the past. I've had a 7200.9 for a couple of years now. Heard about the firmware issues with the 7200.11's, so to get the .12 revision sounds like a good idea. I don't see any .12's listed on newegg, so I'll need to make a trip to Fry's at some point.

I have a feeling that software is going to become more parallel in the future, so I want to stick with a quad core. I'm not planning to do any extreme overclocking. If I'm just using the factory cooler, how much advantage will I have from using the 45nm part instead of the 65? It's been a long time since I've built a system-- will the faster FSB on the Q9400 make much of a difference?

[hazmat]

Newegg has the 500GB 7200.12, link (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148395&Tpk=7200.12).

Granted, software is becoming more parallel, but at this point most apps still benefit from faster clocks that a dual can get. Hopefully we will see more end user software in the near future that can effectively choke all those cores, but some things are still inherently linear in operation and cannot benefit from parallelization. And hopefully by the time we see good multicore use, your current build isnt outdated.

Im just say that if the heaviest stuff you are going to run are games, then for current and most games in the forseeable future you will have a better experience and more fps on a easy to cool/overclock 65w 45nm duo at 3.6 or 3.8 (even with stock cooling) than a 65nm 105w quad at 2.8 or 3.0. And when you oc a quad, you get twice the addidional heat than you would from a dual. So that 105w can get to 130w pretty quickly, while the dual would be less than 100w with a good oc. Sure, the 65nm parts hold up a little better under heat than those 90nm chips. Even if a game has a seperate thread for physics, thats still only 2 cores really getting used. Watching high def movies and the like doesnt use more than half of what a dual can offer. If you plan on heavy video editing, they yeah you would notice the benefits of a quad.

Theres just a lot of hype around all the quad core stuff imo, and the AMD camp didnt really complain about only having duals for a while before theyre triples and quads came out.

[reidy-]

basically everything hazmat has said.

quad will be better for the long term, however if you can see yourself upgrading in the next 2-3 years just go for the e8*00 series