To do or not
 

Got a lot of cash now and i'm about to build a custom wb and stuff. Just been thinking on what I should be spending my cash on. Also if I really need watercooling, since it will cost me 180$ at the end and some work every now and then filling and stuff. Only real need of low temp is if I overclock my cpu, which I don't need to at the moment. My good old 1,4GHz T-Bird will work fine during 2003. What I need is a gfx card, where the choice is between GeForce4 Ti4200 or Ti4600 and however I should spend 150$ on 19" monitor or 270$ on a flat 19" crt. Right now I got 256ddr ram and need another 256, but the prices are going down and will be very cheap during late spring and july. It is the continous buy or wait....

Overclock a 4200, it's much cheaper.

19" flat is too expensive: it's a luxury. I'd spend the $270 on the largest CRT monitor you can get. Personally, I'd stick with Viewsonic.

I would tend to disagree somewhat with the monitor issue. While buying bigger is always nice (I'm eyeing a 21" right now), quality and personal comfort is also an issue.

Example: I like massive monitors with high resolution. Non-flat screens are fine for me. My wife, on the other hand, gets headaches looking at those types of screens for a long time. While she likes the huge screens for gaming and such, for comfort, she prefers a smaller flat-screen with adjustable brightness (Viewsonic has these in 19" for around $270 and they are gorgeous!) than a larger (21") that is a touch fuzzier for her. As I said before, I don't mind and don't notice, so size matters for me.

Really, what I'm getting at is to go with what treats your eyes better. You'll appreciate it more over time.

I assume that you tweaked the refresh rate at the highest: I see many people who complain of eyestrain, when their refresh rate is still at a default 60 Hz, when their rig can handle 90 Hz.

I like flat screens, and would much rather have one of those, but in the 19" size, it's way too expensive, so I file it under "luxury".

Does anyone even look at the dot pitch of regular CRTs anymore? 0.26 is good, anything higher will be fuzzy. Beware of Compaq refurb/overstock monitors.

I found out that the flat crt 19" i've been looking at isn't a real flat. So I will buy a 215$ cheap 19" that has max res. 1600 @ 75Hz and the gfx card i've been looking at is a MSI GeForce 4 Ti4200 128Mb that diffrent reviews has found been able to overclock to around 300-330 (GPU) and 570-580 (DDR RAM). Since there aren't any heatsinks on the ram I guess that I might add some sinks and overclock the mem even more? A ti4600 cost 273$ and the ti4200 cost 173$.

I would stay away from a flat screen if you intend to do a lot of gaming. They are just not up to par.

I personally LOVE my ViewSonic 19" monitor (black case even :D )

I run all my games in 1600x1200@75 and desktop in 1280x1024@85.

If you can afford it, get a 21" Viewsonic and have fun :)

I have had both a 4600 Ti and a 4200, I personaly don't see much diffrence between the two, except a little higher preformance from my 4600.

I'm not allowed to overclock the 4200, though, it is borrowed until my 4600 gets back from RMA (I got a bad card, it had problems from when I first installed it, which get progressivly worse...).

I personaly love my CRT monitors, and I intend to go CRT again, next time. I'm eyeing a pair of viewsonic or sony 19" CRT flat screens, for when my funds get replenished again.