FWIW, if buying a whole computer from scratch it too daunting (of you just want a smaller case), you may want to consider Shuttle 'barebones' systems. They are so-called "XPCs", which are much smaller than regular PCs - toaster size, basically. That's always been a huge selling point for me, but I live in a rather tiny condo in the city.

Anyway, I'll vote for Newegg, too, great customer service (better than Best Buy by a long shot), and great prices. Ships FAST, too.

And they carry XPCs. :know: That will get you the case, cooling, power supply, and mobo. All you need is a CPU, ram, video card, and disk drives.

As to "buy ATI for HDR+AA"...first off, I'm an ATI guy. I like ATI cards. That said, the brand-spankin-new GeForce 8600GTS (released literally YESTERDAY) has better price-to-performance than ATI's offerings at the moment. And the 8-series GeForce cards can also do HDR+AA.

If I were building a system today (wish I was, but I'm not), it would like something like this:

$270 Shuttle SD32G2
$139 Intel Core 2 E4300
$154 2gb OCZ PC2 5400 ram
$200 eVGA GeForce 8600GTS
$75 Seagate Barracuda 250gb SATA hdd
$26 Silver CDRW/DVD drive
$90 Windows XP SP2 OEM (still too many problems with Vista for my taste)
----
$954

And that's everything - whole new system. EASY to assemble, and the Shuttle kit comes with a fold-out full color flyer with all the steps needed. Only caveat is that I can't speak to the color of the CD drive matching the case. Shuttle USED to make a silver CDRW/DVD driver that perfectly matched their cases colors, but...can't seem to find one, now.

Sounds like you may want to go the route of a new PC.

I ended up researching my various hardware options at places like Newegg while viewing their customer reviews and pricing. That gave me lots of ideas. Then I talked to someone at a local computer repair shop. After a few discussions and return trips to Newegg, I finally decided on what I wanted and had the local shop build me a custom computer.

So my advice... Whether you do it yourself or have someone do it for you, make it custom to your preference, and use a big case with plenty of room to breath and grow. :up:

ZipZoomFly is also a good place to buy components, and free shipping to boot. I bought all my last build from there without any problems.

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/Home.jsp

NewEgg, ZipZoomFly, and MWave are all good resellers. As a starting point, I recommend taking a look here before you buy anything online:

http://resellerratings.com

I

Mate, I am running SH4 on a AMD 1800 (thats 1.5Ghz) and a ati 9800 Pro - and it runs fine. And I have less than a gig of memory! However, like you I will be upgrading soon. The question is - how much horsepower do you need?

For instance - my next rig is going to be a mid level machine - Intel dual core 2.13 running 2gigs of ram with a X1650 vid card. Dual HD's, a DL dvd burner, required floppy, motherboard, case, additional fans and power supply - everything I need to build the box. I already have a licensed copy of XP so I dont need another.
Cost of parts - all from Newegg - last I checked was 797 plus 36 for shipping and such. Its not a monster rig - but more than capable of running SH4 maxed out.

Dont spend $2k - if you dont want to do it yourself then get a local PC outfit to do it - or heck - I'll put the thing together for you if your willing to pay the shipping.

Going with an off the shelf product does have its advantages - its warrantied and you can take it to the store if it breaks - but if your going to go that route - I suggest Dell. They will send a tech to you if your system breaks under warranty. But if your going to drop that kind of cash into a system - either build your own screamer - or get it from a company that is going to provide uber-support - and dont allow them to put all the gunk on it - tell em you want it WITHOUT an OS instaled. Otherwise shelf companies add in all kinds of crud that sucks up performance.

Its a tough choice - you will get alot more bang for the buck if you do it yourself. Either way - enjoy!

Good Hunting!
Captain Haplo

I, personally, can't recommend Dell too much.

I've been repairing PCs for years and their Hitachi hard drives crash or most often develop severe sector problems. They die regularly enough within a year or two, comparitively. Laptops and Desktops both.

Last week I had a customer with that exact problem. Dell told her that it was a software issue. After checking it out.. it was a faulty hard drive. I charged her a pretty moderate price for this info and after that, admittedly, they didn't give her any problems sending her a new hard drive. However, she had to pay yet more for me to clone her old hard drive to the new working one. They did not send a tech out to fix the issue. They just expected her to start fresh. She ended up spending about $145 getting it back to where it used to be. I won't mention how many tries it took me to clone the stinkin' thing without failure before I finally got it. She's lucky everything made it.. very close call.

Dude, don't buy a Dell.;)

A new case , motherboard , power , 2 gigs of 800mhz ram , 8800 series graphics card , and core 2 duo e6600 cpu should be about $1500 .