Alienware, Falcon Northwest and Voodoo PC are all computer manufacturers that offer top of the line gaming PCs.
First of all make sure you get an AMD based machine, not intel.
Why? AMD was going strong in the gaming department for a while, but Intel's new line of processors (Conroe) seem to destroy AMD's top of the line. I believe it was one of the middle-level Conroe processors at 200MHz less than the FX-62 and the Conroe was 25% faster in some cases.
You'll want to make sure to get 2gb's of RAM preferably in the 2x1gb configuration.
I would agree, however, since he/she said money was no problem 2GB should be the minimum. As for what size DIMMs, for example, a single 1GB stick can be faster (depending on timings, speed and such) than 2x512MB sticks.
If the option is available go with a 10,000 rpm hard drive.
Usually unnecessary, mostly for bragging rights. Is a handful of seconds off one's loading time worth spending an exorbitant amount of money while sacrificing space? Granted the new 150GB Raptors are more space than before, but it's been shown that some SATAII drives are as fast, or slightly faster, than the 10,000RPM Raptor line. Perpendicular recording technology also helps 7200RPM drives with access times, etc.
Also make sure the power supply is beefy, 400+ watts forsure.
If using SLI/Crossfire with two high-powered graphics cards, that may not be enough. Heck, my single 7900 GT
requires at least a 450W power supply on its own with 22A on the +12V rail (or so eVGA claims, I have mine running on a 420W PSU with 13A on the +12V rail). They require at least 500W for SLI'ing these cards, but it might help to get higher than that. Once you get a bunch of hard drives in RAID, some optical drives, processor and graphics card, you want to be sure that your power supply won't blow and potentially ruin rest of the system.
Get a nice digital wireless mouse and keyboard too, don't overlook that area because it really makes a difference.
While human interface devices shouldn't be skimped on, wireless everything isn't necessary. Besides the pointless nature of the devices (my keyboard and mouse don't leave my desk unless I'm attending the occasional LAN party, wireless will just cause lag/interference problems and ruin my computing experience) they're usually more expensive and could potentially run out of battery power at unexpected moments.
To tell you the truth, I would spend more money on a better monitor than a mouse/keyboard combo. While I must say that my current Logitech G5 mouse is far superior to the standard 2-button scroll mouse I previously used, the monitor is one of the most important HIDs. You look at your monitor the entire time you're using your computer, you rarely ever look at your mouse/keyboard.
And lastly, just make sure the computer you have built for you is future ready, no point blowing 1-3k on something that will be obsolete in a year.
That's not entirely possible. I could buy a computer right now, top of the line, spending more money than four years of college tuitions combined, and the potential for it to be obsolete tomorrow is quite high. Technology changes rapidly and requires much planning, but no matter how much one plans or spends, they must still upgrade to keep running all the latest games at maximum settings.
Well, a machine from 3-4 years ago is fine now running on XP but when Windows Vista comes that will be another story. If you plan on running Vista, comfortably, you need a VERY powerful machine.
Not necessarily. I had one of the Vista betas running quite nicely in a virtual PC. It would have been better if the emulated graphics card didn't rival the graphics power of the beloved NES, but most computers purchased in the past few years should run Vista just fine.
Also, he may want to plan ahead with the components he buys. For instance socket 939 mobo's are slowly being replaced by AM2, and DDR is being replaced by DDR2, and so forth. So there's no point buying stuff that can't carry over to your next system such as DDR ram. Soon enough we will have dx10 cards too so that's another thing to keep in mind.
Good advice. Planning ahead is a requirement for large purchases such as a gaming computer. I recommend waiting a bit, Conroe should be available soon, as well as the first wave of DX10 cards. With the release of Conroe, AMD plans to perform massive price reductions on most of their current line of processors. so that may be another option.
As for my own recommendations, I suggest a dual-core processor. While quad-cores are slated for 2007 sometime, more and more programs are taking advantage of multi-core setups every day. Certain games seem to get a boost from 2x1MB L2 cache over 2x512KB, but that's up to you.
Graphics wise, it's better to get the most powerful GPU you can afford rather than SLI/Crossfiring two lesser cards together. The performance benefits of SLI/Crossfire are increasing with time, but are usually not worth double the money for less than twice the performance gain. Currently, the fastest single graphics card is NVIDIA's 7950 GX2 and is closely rivaled by ATI's X1900 XTX.
As stated before, 1GB is the minimum RAM a gaming computer should have, but that's pushing it. 2GB is more common now and rapidly becoming the standard. As always, you can get more than 2GB RAM to help future-proof a bit and possibly increase performance when multitasking. Try to get the fastest RAM you can even if you have no plans to overclock.
The motherboard is one of the most important parts inside a computer because everything connects to/through it. It's the heart and soul of every gaming PC out there, and you shouldn't try to save money by purchasing a motherboard that lacks.
As for hard drives, I've already mentioned that the latest SATAII drives are comparable in performance to Raptors, except with a much higher data capacity. You may want to consider multiple drives in a RAID array, with RAID 0 striping the data between two or more drives (faster performance but higher chance of data loss - one drive fails and all your data goes with it), RAID 1 making an exact backup of one or more drives onto others (same performance as usual, but if one drive fails you don't lose anything), and RAID 0+1 with four or more drives combining the striping of RAID 0 with the backup properties of RAID 1 being the most common. RAID usually requires identical drives, just like SLI requires identical graphics cards.
Optical drives are personal preference, HD-DVD and Blu-ray should be released soon for high prices. I recommend a floppy drive, whether internal or USB, for easy BIOS flashing and for emergency purposes. Media card readers are nice, and a TV tuner can be fun to make your computer act like a TiVO device.
Besides what I've stated above about the power supply, most other things are personal preference. PhysX cards may be nice, but show almost no purpose thus far. They haven't been fully embraced by developers, and seem to harm framerates more than enhance the gaming experience. As always, a nice sound setup always helps immerse oneself in the games, and extra peripherals such as a headset for easy online communication may be desired as well.
