Building kids' computer

I'm building a gaming computer for my kids for Christmas. First time builder, only experience is adding RAM and don't know a thing about BIOS, overclocking, etc, but want to build a decent system that we can upgrade.



https://secure.newegg.com/NewVersion...=drs+christmas



Really confused by all the mobo's on the market. Please take a look at my wishlist and send your recommendations. Especially if something is not compatible.



Will be adding the 8800GT to the shopping list but newegg is sold out. Other than a mouse/keyboard/monitor is there anything else that I have left out?



Thanks for any and all comments.

drs

what about viedo/ethernet cards, etc...?

It looks good. You won't need an ethernet card. The 8800GT will be a nice card to compliment that system. You could save money with a different HDD, non SLI mobo, DVD-rom, and ram.

May I recommend the GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3L, A-DATA Extreme Edition 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800, LG Electronics Black LG Super Multi 18x SATA DVD Burner, Western Digital Caviar SE 500GB SATA Hard Drive. All together the total excluding the vid card would be 862.92 instead of 999.92.

Nvidia 8800GT video card will be added.



Do I need ethernet? Mobo comes with:

Onboard LAN

LAN Chipset NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI built-in dual Gigabit MAC with external Marvell PHY

Support NVIDIA DualNet technology

Max LAN Speed Dual 10/100/1000Mbps

no, i was throughing out ideas

theresthatguy -

I'm aiming for $1500 budget, max, not including the monitor so I'm still several hundred under

Would you recommend upgrading anything?



Reading the comments on newegg for mobo's has me a bit concerned. I'm hoping the problems with stability and BIOS are not very common (and only the disgruntled are bothering to comment in large numbers).

Any advice for starting the system up?

All those things I recommended are really just as good and will keep you even lower under budget. I advise a non SLI mobo like the one I suggested above. You could always up the ram to 4 GB and switch to a 64 bit OS. Lemme play around with newegg and see what I can't do.

Theres not much there I would want.

Id get the Antec 900 case, the Q6000 G0 cpu, a Western Digital 500 gig Hard drive, a Liteon dvd drive and a non SLI motherboard.

Pretty much what I suggested also except the case; I would stick with the Cosmos. I was about to say for 1000 bucks you can have all those parts I previously mentioned PLUS 2GB more of ram and a Q6600 for 1000 bucks on newegg. If your kids are into computers and know about overclocking I would suggest and aftermarket heatsink&fan otherwise I think that's about it.

Why the preference for a non-SLI mobo? Also, why do you prefer quad core over dual core? (the only thing I am pretty sure about so far is the Cosmos case -- $90 rebate!)