Your best bet is to search Tigerdirect.com and Newegg.com for various deals. I'd look local for cases because of their bulk and I like to know if the one I'm buying is right for what I'm looking for.
- Probably going to stick with XP for now. Howl about the alternatives in other threads, thank you. So 4Gb RAM is max, then again that's still plenty for now.
XP is fine and cheaper than Vista, although people on these very boards have said that Windows 7 might just be swanky so, but that can wait.
At any rate, if you buy XP you can send off for the 64-bit version at about shipping cost, which would allow you to upgrade beyond 4gb when the time comes (I balk at anyone who ever tells me there is an upper limit to the amount of RAM I need, especially if you're going to be working with Photoshop et al)
- I don't have any fixed desire for newer gimmicky items that are not yet fully supported by current and imminent-release software, i.e. dual core, dual graphics cards slots, etc. However, I am not specifically against these either (except perhaps dual graphics cards slots).
Hey, don't knock the dual graphics cards slots. It's a great way to extend the life of your current video card when you ugprade.
That said, a few quick nuggets off of Tigerdirect.com:
XFX nForce 680i LT SLI Motherboard CPU Bundle This is pretty much what I have, and it's a helluva lot of power for what you need. Down the road if you need an upgrade, you can just pop out the chip and put a new one in and you're good to go. A bit pricey at $299.99 right now, but Tigerdirect has new deals every other week on stuff like this.
BFG GeForce 9800 GT Video Card Perhaps the finest graphics card ever made, it's more than enough power for what you want to do. TF2, Age of Empires 3, etc will run smooth as butter at the highest resolutions with everything turned on. Trust me.
And at $99 that is a steal. We're up to only $300 and got two big ticket items out of the way.
Corsair Dual Channel TWINX 4096MB PC6400 DDR2 800MHz Memory 4gb memory for only $20. Memory is so cheap these days it's not really going to break the bank to hit 8gb even though omg who needs that much so blah blah blah.
If you already have a hard drive, sound card and case, that's pretty much your new PC for less than $400. Of course, that's without windows XP which will run you about, oh say,
$100That bumps us up to $420 (hehehhehheehehe).
Of course, as an illustrator it would be simply crazy not to have a backup drive plugged in.
1tb Seagate drive for $90. By the time you fill that up, you'll be able to purchase something larger for cheaper. That brings us up to $510.
I might be missing something, but that looks like a fairly good PC to me.
Almost forgot, your old power supply probably won't be adequate to power all of that, so here's
750w for about $100 that is boss enough for that machine.
Still pulls in at under $700, minus shipping. Anything else you feel like adding to it?