Hi Guys,

My Bro wants me to build him a gaming PC he has a budget of $2500AUD to spend on the Box his existing screen Ect. are good. Any recommendations on what mainboard, CPU, RAM, Graphics card or maybe 2 are good for a gaming rig?

Thanks

So that is basically $2000 dollars American. Man, I would act like a kid in a candy store with that much cheese.

Where to even start?

You can EASILY build a quad core cpu system with plenty of DDR3 memory and 1 or probably even 2 high end graphics cards. That really is a good amount of $ to work with. To give you an idea, I made a wish list build at Newegg.com for $1300 USD about a month ago. It was a quad core Intel 2.4 ghz, 2 gigs of 1333 mhz DDR3 memory, and a Radeon HD 2600 (I think). The motherboard supported up to 8 gigs of memory, crossfire ready for 2 video cards, had SATA raid, on-board 7.1 channel sound.

If he is patient, I would wait a few months for AMD's quad core CPUs to come out. Not necessarily to use an AMD cpu (but I would use AMD cause I prefer them), but it also will drop all cpu prices down.

But if he wants it this minute, I would recommend a machine that supports an Intel quad core CPU and DDR3 memory. For motherboards, I would say ASUS, Gigabyte, or Biostar (Biostar are good bang per buck motherboards). I would definitely look into the ATI Radeon HD 2000+ series video cards. Very good prices and really nice specs. Make sure it is Direct X 10 compatible. Get a board that supports a good high speed DDR3 and look for memory that has lots of good reviews. A lot of the higher speed DDR3 right now are probably unstable since it is still new.

That should get your search started

Thanks for the tips Wadd and welcome to the team . I was going to go for an Intel quad core CPU and DDR3 ram. But with the mainboard and graphics cards I'm unsure which one to get I don't play games much but my Bro plays heaps of them for hours and hours I'm going to run XP Pro so there will be no probs with O/S compatability. But I need help choosing a mainboard and graphics card or cards that known to be stable and fast so any suggestions would be great.

Agree with Wadd...that's a fair amount of money to build a nice rig with.

matt, i'd recommend using Aus PC-Market Online eStore for the majority of your purchases...slightly more expensive, bigger range, and uc much much better service.
After sales service is the best i've ever experienced at any shop in any industry...period.

Also next day delivery if you're in a metro area

Hi Garhar do you have any recommendations on mainboard and graphics cards?

Motherboards...stay with the named ones obviously

Depending on what your brother wants to do with it...
Asus, ABIT, MSI, DFI, Gigabyte
I've had motherboards of each of these brands..and all have been brilliant.

Graphics cards, I'd say don't get under a 512mb video card...and probably aim for an 8800GTS.