This is for a friend of mine, she was going to buy this Gateway @ best buy I steered her away from both Gateway and best buy. She asked me what I could build for around $900ish that she wouldn't have to upgrade for a few years.

This is what I've come up with:
RAIDMAX SMILODON ATX Case $59.99
500 gig WD HD 7200rpm 32meg cache $59.99
PNY GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 896MB $179.99 - $30 Rebate
600W Rosewill Power Supply $59.99
OCZ Fatal1ty Edition 8GB (4 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 $99.98 -  $10 MIR
Intel Q9550 quad core retail & ASUS PQ5 Pro Turbo mobo combo $339.98 - $15 MIR
thermal paste $4.99
$811.95 shipped $55 coming back in rebates.
Have to hunt down the cpu cooler somewhere else the artic cooler I would of got is OOS @ newegg. I'll give her my vista 64 I don't use anymore or put the 7 64 RC on it. Will reuse her old cd/dvd burner her old system is a 4 year old AMD, not much else in it to reuse. She only plays RPG's like WOW, and wants the new star wars game when it comes out I think this should run WOW on the Max settings and probably the star wars game too.

it looks good except for the power supply.  I've heard Rosewill is a brand to avoid.  I picked up a PC Power and Cooling PSU myself, and have had great luck with Antec.

ETA: though its been years since I built my last computer, it might be different.  I remember when OCZ memory was horrible

Get an 800+ watt supply.

Hard drive access is still an issue, Raid0 with a data drive. You have to back up your data anyway. Maybe try one of the Intel SSDs.

doesn't look bad... yup that'll run WOW at max settings



and just saying- but gateway isn't all bad anymore. I remember when they were shit hot (like when I got a P100 from them...whew was that a step up from a IBM PS-1) and sure, they kinda cater to the "I know jack about computer" crowd.... but I was looking for a new gaming laptop and only had about 1k to spend. Picked up their new FX series laptop and it's been awesome. 4GB of RAM, 1GB video card, duel core 2.26Ghz processor and, what I liked best.... came with vista 64 sure but no extra stupid programs to clean off before using like on other computers.

-Roth

ok also just looked at the gateway she picked- yea good idea to tell her to steer clear. That's still a "I don't know jack about computers" computer

The reviews looked pretty good on the Rosewill other then a few DOA units. might switch to this 700w raidmax Not a fan of LED's myself but she said she doesnt mind them. I'm not to upto date on who's the best for PSU's lately, this will be my second recent build, I'm running a OCZ 650w on this pc which is similar spec'd Q9300, 8 gig, OC'd 260GTX.

I'm running OCZ memory in mine 6 months so far so good, I'm partial to Crucial but no good deals on them right now.

Going upto 800w+ will double the PSU cost, I don't think it really needs that much, I'm running a 650w in my system similar specs but overclocked video, + 3 HDD's with out any PSU issues. SSD would drive the price up way to high, bastards already jacked the WD hd I picked out up $10 since last night

I've never done a RAID setup before, I'm kind of interested in it for myself though after one of my HD's recently took a dump on me, what are the downsides? Do the drives have to be exactly the same or can you get away with same size but different cache, access times?

Good to hear it'll run it max, I was pretty certain the 260 was overkill for it, none of my WOW playing friends know much about computers and when I ask what WOW needs for max settings they gave me the recomended hardware the box lists.

The reviews on that particular gateway didn't sound very good, multiple people having problems, returning it and getting another system with the same problems. The specs of it will certainly appeal to people who dont know jack, quad core, 8 gig, 1 gig dedicated video, looking deeper the Nvidia 120 video card in it is a 9400(now that I'm really not sure if it would max WoW), underpowered PSU, slow RAM, and if its like my friends AMD gateway the bios is locked so no overclocking. Your laptop sounds pretty good for the price, I believe Gateway is now owned by Acer, Acer laptops always seemed decent, never cared for there desktops though, put two crappy desktop makers together you still get lousy desktops.

The data and chart on power supplies that i have read is they are most efficient at half load.