Building a New system, need suggestions, comments etc.

[dblok]

Hey guys

As the tittle said i'm building a new rig. It's ganna be used for gaming, sound editing, encoding/decoding, and maybe lightwave/3dmax etc.
I'd like to say it's going to be used for applications butttt then i'd be lieng.
It's probably going to be 75% Gaming, 25% Apps/school etc.
I will be overcloking the system and I will be matching the Vid card (SLi) once the price drop and more games support it.

I need a little help deciding on some of the specific parts. Red means its the one i'm thinking of going with, the rest are the options available to me.

PLease correct me if i made a mistake or if a better option exists.
(dont wurry about prices, they are for reference and in Can$)



CPU
AMD ATHLON 64 X2 4200+ $ 507.00
AMD ATHLON 64 X2 4400+ $ 622.00

Motherboard (suggestions on which ?)
ASUS A8N32-SLI-DX $ 254.00
ASUS A8N-SLI Premium $ 221.00

Memory (1 Gig x2)
Corsair 1024MB PC-3200PRO TWINX-Dual Channel DDR $ 177.00
Kingston Hyper X DDR 1G Dual Channel Kits (PC3200) $ 157.00

Video Card
GGB GeForce 7800GTX - 256MB(Gigabyte NX78X256V-B) $ 662.00

Sound Card
Sound Blasters X-Fi Platinum $220.00

Speakers
Logitech Z-5300e

Capture Card (suggestions on anything better?)
Asus Tv-FM card $77.00 (?)

PSU
Antec True Power II 550W

Hard Drive (SATA II, 16mb Cache) (really need suggestion on this)
Seagate 300GB Barracuda 7200.8 SATA NCQ $ 167.00
Seagate 160GB Barracuda 7200.9 SATA NCQ 3Gb/s $ 117.00
Seagate 250 GB Barracuda SATA 1.5Gb/s $ 127.00
Western Digital 250GB Hard Drive KS $ 147.00
Maxtor 300G DiamondMax 10 SATA/150 16M 7200RPM $ 161.00

Mouse (not sure which, pls comments?)
Logitech G5
Logitech MX518

Keyboard
Logitech G15

Cooling/Fan (Copper CPU Fan or Water)(suggestions on this too please)
Thermaltake SonicTower w/ Heatpipe Cooling Tech $ 57.00
Thermaltake Silent Boost K8 $ 40.00
[Should I also get a case fan also?]

Case
Any

Extra(keep an eye on the temp)
Thermaltake Drive Bay Kits - Multi-HARDCANO13 $ 90.00

Dvd/Cd-rom (DVDRw 16x Dual-layer [LightScribe]) ( any advantages over the other?)
LaCie DVDRW w/ LightScribe 16x DB Layer $ 97.00
Pioneer DVD - 110 $ 59.00


Monitor
Viewsonic....?

Thx for the help
D.

 

[dblok]

One more question about hard drives. I have a 200 gig WD (JD i think), should i just get a 10k HD instead of a 250gig+ 7200 one.
Bassically is there a real advantage with the 10k HD over the 7200 ones?

 

[INeedCache]

Take the 250gb Seagate drive at 1.5GB/s, unless you really want to pay the premium price for the WD Raptor. Not really sure if the performance gains outweigh the additional cost. Skip the lightscribe, and take a look at the Sony DRU-810A. Between the two CPUs, I'd go with the 4200 and spend the savings elsewhere, perhaps the monitor. Seems like most tend to favor Viewsonic for gaming, but there are others like the LG 1981Q.

 

[dblok]

Hey guys

Money is not an issue right now (it's suppose to be for school so it's bieng taken care of ) so i'm trying to get a really good system together cause i wont be able to spend any or very little money on it for a long time ( 3+ years maybe)

The reason for getting the soundcard is primarily for the audio panel that comes with it.

I was planning on getting 2 one gig sticks for ram but which brand would work better with my system ( Kingston or Corsair).
I read an article yesterday sayign the Corsair wasnt as good as the Kinstoin and Crucial ones can anyone confirm this?

Just in general what would be a good ram to get with this system or will any dual channel pc3200 ram do?

Is there a performance drop if I use the SLi board as apose to a Non-SLi board using only 1 vid card. I'd like to get the SLi board just to keep my options open for future but if it effcts performance i rather not get it.


Any thoughts on good cooling for cpu? ( A simple copper fan will do for now)

And also on capture cards?