Your gaming system

[sheople]

Originally Posted by Spatial.Archite

How much you intend to spend? The nForce board you're using has dual PCI-E slots, so you could run two GPUs. If you go that route, especially with the Core Duo and possible over-clocking, you'll want to give quite a bit of thought to heat dissipation. Good call on going with the 6300 as opposed to the 6400, not much difference to justify the price gap (especially if you're going to over-clock). Definitely go with after-market heat-sinks, or possibly consider a water-cooling solution. You can over-clock the 6300, I've heard of some people getting it up to 3.5 Ghz, but I wouldn't push it that hard. It wouldn't be very stable and you'd need a major cooling solution... I think I'd take it to 2.8 Ghz or so. Should be more than enough.

Something that often gets overlooked in assembling a gaming rig is one of the most important things... keyboard and mouse. They're the tactical input for the games, the mouse is especially important in a FPS. I've always been a huge fan of the mouses offered by Razor. My personal favorite is the Razor Copperhead. They also make a mean gaming keyboard in the Tarantula, but it comes with a fairly steep price at $100 or so.

Something else to consider is the Belkin Nostromo Speedpad N52 for FPS instead of the keyboard. Some people swear by it and it's added functionality, others stick with the keyboard. I've never tried it, but from all appearances it would be more ergonomic and could give you a slight edge.

All this reminds me, I need to build a new computer...

I am looking to spend... $1500 and that is for everything. Cooling is something I am currently looking into at the moment. I heard of the Nostromo Speedpad, but I heard there are no Vista drivers for it yet.

[Spatial.Archite]

Seems like nothing runs in Vista at the moment , and who knows when Belkin will get around to releasing drivers for it. I don't know how well it'd work in compatibility mode, but that's a possibility.

If you opt to go with traditional cooling through air-movement, SilverStone has an unorthodox case that flips the motherboard. The processor sets in a tunnel that has an intake fan and an exhaust fan. Combined with a quality cpu cooler, it's possibly the best air cooling case out there. Best of all, it doesn't come with a high price tag. The model is SilverStone TJ-06 Wind Tunnel; can usually find it for around $130.

For the graphics card, you can invest a little chunk and get the EVGA GeForce 8800GTS 320MB; it'll set you back around $300 or so, but it should do a great job for you. I also believe that it's Vista compatible, but don't hold me to it.