Having always been a fan of the underdog, I am genuinely sad to say that these days, I'd go with Intel for CPU almost regardless of price, unless I was skipping on discrete graphics. The "Devil's Canyon" Pentium dual core (G3258 Anniversary Edition) will overclock well without too fancy cooling, and will (from a gaming perspective) outperform anything AMD has to offer up until a price range where you'd want to go with an i5 anyway, and at that point, AMD is left in the dust. In gaming, my six (6) year old first generation i7 (920) (overclocked, but only using a performance heatsink/fan) will outperform an AMD FX9590, which is the pinnacle of AMD performance.
Yes, there are a few exceptions, where AMD actually performs on par with roughly equally priced Intel CPU's, but unfortunately those cases are too rare to really matter. There are also some types of non-gaming workloads AMD excel at, but those are unlikely to come into play in day-to-day usage.
I am not trying to disrespect AMD or AMD owners... I've owned many AMD CPU's over the years myself, but AMD simply hasn't improved their architecture for many years now, and they are being outdistanced.

What I find is that you can't save much money these days. Hardware is so cheap as it is. One thing I like with Intel is that you can get the cheapest uATX motherboard with a Core i7 and integrated graphics and you have a very powerful workstation. Add a decent GeForce and you can game as well. With AMD I found that the top processors need "decent" motherboard to handle the processor. Cheap ones do not have support for the 120W CPUs. And then you also need to get a new cooler because the stock cooler struggles and is very loud. At least the on my FX6300 comes with.

The Intel stock cooler is tiny but doesn't need to be bigger because the processors are cooler. So looking at this the "value" argument goes out the window. So I stick with Intel and Nvidia because the price difference isn't worth mucking around over. You got a PC for a few years so no point being tight over a few hundred dollars.

While the suggestions keep coming, I built a neat little machine for almost free.

Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 @3.0Ghz (1333MHz FSB, Conroe core)
ASUS P5B (965 chip set, official support for 1333MHz FSB after BIOS update)
4GB DDR2-667
MSI Geforce 9800GT 512Mb
Kingston SSDNow mS200 120Gb
500Gb internal + 3Tb external HDDs
Zalman GS-450 I used in my Athlon built (now replaced by a PSU with a propper 5V rail)

I reused the case (she seems to like it though it seems to be made of paper), replaced a 80mm exhaust fan with a 90mm (max) and 2 80mm basic Arctic Cooling fans. Target achieved: turns out, she was desperately trying to run Heroes 6 on her older system with Intel HD graphics and it did not even start. Now it's silk smooth at all max detail and she's finally happy. She mentionned Skyrim before, we'll probably play it next.

Everyone, thanks for advice, I wish I could use it 😀

RacoonRider wrote:

While the suggestions keep coming, I built a neat little machine for almost free. […]
Show full quote

While the suggestions keep coming, I built a neat little machine for almost free.

Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 @3.0Ghz (1333MHz FSB, Conroe core)
ASUS P5B (965 chip set, official support for 1333MHz FSB after BIOS update)
4GB DDR2-667
MSI Geforce 9800GT 512Mb
Kingston SSDNow mS200 120Gb
500Gb internal + 3Tb external HDDs
Zalman GS-450 I used in my Athlon built (now replaced by a PSU with a propper 5V rail)

I reused the case (she seems to like it though it seems to be made of paper), replaced a 80mm exhaust fan with a 90mm (max) and 2 80mm basic Arctic Cooling fans. Target achieved: turns out, she was desperately trying to run Heroes 6 on her older system with Intel HD graphics and it did not even start. Now it's silk smooth at all max detail and she's finally happy. She mentionned Skyrim before, we'll probably play it next.

Everyone, thanks for advice, I wish I could use it 😀

That should be a pretty nice system for older/simpler games. I find I still enjoy playing Mass Effect 1 and 2 on my Dell XPS M1730 laptop with Core 2 Duo T7700 and GeForce 8800M GTX SLi, and even on oldish hardware like that I can achieve decent performance at native resolution (1920x1200), so it's surprising how well some of the older hardware is holding up.
I have a feeling that 512MB graphics will be a bit on the low side for Skyrim though. At least for high resolution textures. And then there are of course all those mods you can get.
There's very little doubt you made a good choice in going for an SSD. They just improve overall responsiveness so much.

LunarG wrote:

laptop

LunarG wrote:

GeForce 8800M GTX SLi

Wow! SLI in a laptop? That must be freaking awesome!

RacoonRider wrote:

LunarG wrote:

laptop

LunarG wrote:

GeForce 8800M GTX SLi

Wow! SLI in a laptop? That must be freaking awesome!

It was the top dog of laptops when it came out, but it is massive, heavy and chews through batteries like a rabid dog. It originally came with GeForce 8700M GT SLi, with only 128bit memory bus, which was a bit of a bottleneck, but after a few years, I got hold of the 8800M GTX module (yep, most of the laptop is modular, you can remove and replace all kinds of bits of it). The 256bit memory interface and double amount of video memory (512MB on each card vs. 256MB on the 8700M GT's) has helped keep it a viable spare gaming rig to this day. This laptop is now 7 years old. It does need a new battery though, as the one I have doesn't really hold charge very well anymore... Although it never lasted much more than 30 minutes when it was brand new, with both gfx cards + physx chip running.

LunarG wrote:

RacoonRider wrote:

LunarG wrote:

laptop

LunarG wrote:

GeForce 8800M GTX SLi

Wow! SLI in a laptop? That must be freaking awesome!

It was the top dog of laptops when it came out, but it is massive, heavy and chews through batteries like a rabid dog. It originally came with GeForce 8700M GT SLi, with only 128bit memory bus, which was a bit of a bottleneck, but after a few years, I got hold of the 8800M GTX module (yep, most of the laptop is modular, you can remove and replace all kinds of bits of it). The 256bit memory interface and double amount of video memory (512MB on each card vs. 256MB on the 8700M GT's) has helped keep it a viable spare gaming rig to this day. This laptop is now 7 years old. It does need a new battery though, as the one I have doesn't really hold charge very well anymore... Although it never lasted much more than 30 minutes when it was brand new, with both gfx cards + physx chip running.

It also has PhysX? The thingy that was sold under AGEIA brand, but in laptop form-factor? Wow, just wow. Must have cost you a fortune.

RacoonRider wrote:

It also has PhysX? The thingy that was sold under AGEIA brand, but in laptop form-factor? Wow, just wow. Must have cost you a fortune.

Yep, it was the "AGEIA PhysX". This chip is unfortunately no longer useful with current nVidia drivers, as the PhysX' calculations can be done by the GeForce adapters instead, and the modern drivers don't support the dedicated chip.
If you're interested, http://www.anandtech.com/show/2461, here is a link to Anandtech's review of it back in 2007. A base model with slower CPU, single HDD and single graphics card was more affordable, but of course less awesome as well 😉
I bought this one not long after I'd sold my car (I didn't use it enough) and also after having a serious work accident that left me unable to walk for several months. So I thought I'd treat myself to a new gaming rig, and a laptop at that.
These can be had for "not too much" on ebay these days, and there are so many spare parts and such to be had, that you can easily keep it running for years to come. It's the most cleverly designed laptop I've seen. You can replace graphics card(s), CPU, network adapter, keyboard, bluetooth adapter, screen, aside from the obvious optical drive, hdd's and RAM. Despite the chipset being specified as only supporting 4GB of ram, there are many confirmed cases of people running 8GB in it, and Crucial has a 8GB memory kit certified to work.
I'd like to swap out my 2 x 160GB 7200rpm HDD's for a single SSD for boot and larger HDD for storage, and get that 8GB ram kit. Well... When I can afford to 😜

I was uploading some pics from the camera and just thought I would leave this here 😀

RacoonRider wrote:

I was uploading some pics from the camera and just thought I would leave this here 😀

<snip>

That's an awefully big heatsink for a 9800GT. The two I have are just slim one-slot cards with slim heatsink and fan built in. I didn't even know they made 9800GT's with big sinks like that.

RacoonRider wrote:

I was uploading some pics from the camera and just thought I would leave this here :) […]
Show full quote

I was uploading some pics from the camera and just thought I would leave this here 😀

How is the SSD mounted? It looks like it's mounted with sticky foam/rubber and a single screw to the mechanical drive? Actually kinda clever. 🤣

LunarG wrote:

I have a feeling that 512MB graphics will be a bit on the low side for Skyrim though. At least for high resolution textures. And then there are of course all those mods you can get.
There's very little doubt you made a good choice in going for an SSD. They just improve overall responsiveness so much.

I played Skyrim just fine on a Radeon HD 4830 512MB, which is only a little stronger than his 9800GT (they're pretty close FPS wise in most things). Medium Textures and some other settings turned down a bit and it still looked and performed fantastic. Let the 9800GT jog a bit, it'll be fine and is 500x better than the integrated graphics he said she was using before.

fyy wrote:

RacoonRider wrote:

I was uploading some pics from the camera and just thought I would leave this here 😀

How is the SSD mounted? It looks like it's mounted with sticky foam/rubber and a single screw to the mechanical drive? Actually kinda clever. 🤣

Thanks 😁 The black thing is a plumbing rubber used to fix bibcocks. That way it is isolated, grounded, fixed and protected - you can't damage the PCB thanks to the rubber. 😀

I actually bought a laptop mSata SSD only to find out it was not supported by the first-gen core i5 series. So I got an adapter online and it did not feature a case... I had to buy a desktop SSD for the laptop and get rid of the DVD drive and use this one in a desktop PC.

You might want to put a fan on the northbridge heatsink. I'm running an overclocked Asus P5B rig, and that thing gets HOT without additional cooling. 😳

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

You might want to put a fan on the northbridge heatsink. I'm running an overclocked Asus P5B rig, and that thing gets HOT without additional cooling. 😳

Not a bad idea... 😀