I am terrible when it comes to computer hardware knowledge and am looking for some major help. I am looking to build a pc(well, have a friend put together) that can play Oblivion with everything maxed out and a great framerate. I plan on adding a lot of mods(the one thing im good at) to further pretty up the game. I am not looking for a future proof computer, as sick as it sounds I just want to play TES at full specs. I'm not rich but I am not poor either. I am just hoping to keep the price realistic. Any help on reccomending all the parts I need would be appreciated.

I can't help, but this is better in the Hardware section......afraid a moderator is probably about to Lock this thread on you.

In any case, I'm on a laptop. A little compromise, and it all works OK.

Answer some questions first:

1.) your budget in your country's currency
2.) what country you reside if not listed in your avatar area
3.) pre-assembled PC? ...or can you build your own?...Friend building for you
4.) what is needed other than the PC tower? Monitor, speakers, mouse, keyboard, Windows OS disc? All these can jack up the price.

1.) Us dollars. I'd liketo be around $2,500 but can go as high as $3,500

2. )United States

3.) Just the tower.

If we're talking $2,500 then you'll be able to leave this game in the dust. If you can build it yourself, or get someone to build it for you cheap, then get all the individual parts from newegg.com - much better deal than buying pre made.
I can't go into detail on all the parts, but you can research pretty easy. I'd suggest going to gamefaqs.com and going to the PC boards and asking, they'll help you out.

What I would recommend is getting a high end graphics card, the GTX 460 is the best price to performance, but you could probably go up to GTX 470 or higher if you really wanted. Bear in mind these will max out pretty much any new game as well, so it's a good deal. As for processors I tend to recommend the Intel line (i5 760 is your best bet) with the max 4 GB of memory. If you really wanted to push the bar you could get an i7 with 6 GB ram, but if we're just talking about gaming there's really no reason to, it won't have much difference on games.

Thanks for the ideas. Do things like the mother board or OS change how the game performs? I was warned by a friend that with Oblivion being an older game its possible to get something too powerful.

$2500 is actually excessive for just the tower to max this game...by pretty much double the cost of a system that would max this game out. But we'll get you some bells and whistles

CASE+PSU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.480379
MOBO+RAM: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.468098
GPU+CPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.444092
HDD: http://secure.newegg.com/Shopping/ShoppingCart.aspx?Submit=view
SOUNDCARD: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829102024
BLU-RAY Drive: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827136181

That'll run you about $1580 before ship/tax.

Some additions:
SSD: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820167024&cm_re=intel_ssd-_-20-167-024-_-Product...or get another Caviar Black HDD
DVD: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827135204&cm_re=asus_sata_dvd-_-27-135-204-_-Product

Alternatives:
GPU+CPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.444093

Holy smokes! Thank you so much. I think we have a winner.

Whatever you build it will disappoint to some degree.

Slow down when looking at a crowd of NPCs is pretty much unavoidable

^^ Yeah, I figured that. Seems one of the few shortcomings of the engine. Easily worsened when I add the extra NPC mods but, that is one of the trade-offs I have to make. A small performance hit for atmosphere is ok with me.

If we are talking max with modified Oblivion, go with the SSD drives if you really want to play max without stutter between cell transitions. I knew that price could not include a screen and shipping. For max with modified Oblivion, get a 2GB HD5870 as well.

Even all that probably would not be able to run my setup at 60FPS, definitely the case if you throw RAEVWD on top of it. It's Oblivion's (design) fault, not the system's. Those are crazy specs.


Edit: wording.