Building a new pc, needing help.

[grunt]

So I am finally coming back from yet another deployment... After 4 deployments they have decided I can take a break and go to the school house and instruct so I get to be in the states for at least 3-4 years!!

I used to be into computers and even helped a bit while I still could in folding and I want to rejoin and help the team out again, I am tempted to just buy a prebuilt system but I am hoping someone can spoon feed me some specs to build the best rig I can. Other than the usual of emails, web browsing, etc.. Probably little to no gaming will be done on it but I will be tinkering with photos/videos since I have a swoopy new Canon T2i and a lot of catching up to do with photos of my son. So that with folding is all I will do.

I want to keep the tower itself under the 1,000.00 mark!! The purchase will be made mid-November so if there is something about to pop out but isn't just yet released than that can be useful. The tower will be running 24/7 too, just FYI.

[Apoptosis]

How much storage space are you wanting?

You wanting a SSD for the boot drive and then a HDD for storage by chance?

[grunt]

You know, hadn't even thought about the SSD drives... I wouldn't mind having one of those though, supposed to make the pc pretty fast huh?? Being as I will back up most stuff to a DVD I wouldn't need much more than a 500gb storage drive.

[skier]

I personally don't think a SSD would be a wise choice for a $1000 system, because a SSD can run you anywhere from $80 to $300 for 40GB+ and most smaller SSDs are also not very fast at all. In that budget range you can get better performance by getting a better CPU or video card and get a Samsung Spinpoint drive because they have great transfer speed and access times at a great price. if you are just burning all your data to DVDs you can get the 500GB for $55 or even the 320GB for $43

graphics- depending on exact timeline, the Radeon 6xxx series is coming right up, or get a GTX 460 768MB or 1GB at $170 and $225 respectively
CPU- Intel Core i7 870 w/DiRT 2 for $280
Motherboard-BIOSTAR Tseries P55 for $130
RAM-Mushkin Redline 2x2GB DDR3 1600 CL7 for $90
Case-CM Elite 430 Mid Tower for $40
cooling-Corsair A70 for $48
PSU-Corsair TX 750w for $110

$966 for a pretty beefy system with the 320GB HDD, GTX 460 1GB and free DiRT 2

don't know what else you need, may need to go down to an i5 and change to a HD 6770 once it releases if you need anything else still around the $1000 total

[grunt]

Wow, thanks for the info Skier that can definitely help!!

Hey Apoptosis, is there any "links" I could use on your site to help the forums out when I order stuff?