help! build SLI box <$1200: good upgrade path?

I need some help building my new system! I don't have much cash to spend right now, so I want to build a cheap(er) SLI system that will have good performance now, be vista friendly (future proofed) and has a good upgrade path so I can upgrade later.
- I will prob not overclock system
- I will play games i.e. battlefield2, COD, NFS Underground etc
- I will do video editing, photo manipulation, lots of music and photos + Photoshop, some 3D modeling.
- I do a lot of multitasking (hence picked board that will support amd64 x2...for upgrade later)
- Future proofing important i.e. vista + upgradeable (hence socket 939 and amd64 x2 support)
From my research so far this is what I am considering:
(note: in US$, but I live in New Zealand, so these are the prices that I can get components for ...is a little more expensive)
(items in italics are other options that I have)
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CASE: - [$95] Cooler Master (CAC-T05-UW) Centurion 5, Black color, No PSU

PSU: 500W+ SLI compatible
- [$105] Enermax 535W Whisper II, ATX 2.01, nVIDIA SLI Ready
- [$112] E-Power (EP-570MP) 570W Xscale, ATX 2.0 & EPS12V, Dual Xeon and Opteron, nVIDIA SLI Ready

Mobo: Needs to support: amd64 & amd64x2, socket939, SATA2, SLI
- [$198] ASUS A8N-SLI PREMIUM/ 939pin Socket AMD Athlon64FX NVIDIA CK804 ATX Dual Channel Dual LAN Dual PCI Express 16 1394 4*DDR400

CPU: - [$144] AMD Athlon64 3000+ Socket939 CPU Boxed

RAM: - [$96] 1gb: A-Data 2 x 512Mb DDR400 A-Data Dual Channel memory kit.
- [$102] 1gb: Corsair 2 x 512Mb (VS1GBKIT400) Value Select DDR, PC3200 2x64Mx64non-ECC 2x184 DIMM, Unbuffered, CL2.5, 32Mx8 DRAMs)
- [$196] 2gb: Corsair 2 x 1024Mb (VS2GBKIT400C3) Value Select DDR, PC3200 2x128Mx64non-ECC 2x184 DIMM, Unbuffered, CL3, 64Mx8 DRAMs)

Video: 6800Gs 256MB PCI-e SLI compatible (cannot really spend much more than $250)
one SLI board now, will buy the other in about 2-3years
- [$244] Leadtek Geforce6800GS 256MB 1xDVI PCI E VGA Card
- [$259] Sparkle (SP-PX42SDH) 6800GS-TD256 PCI-E GDDR3
- [$270] ALBATRON PC6800GS 256MB DDR TV OUT PCIE

HD: - [$132] Western Digital 250GB, 7200rpm, *16MB cache, SATA-300 (SATA-2)
- [$158] Western Digital 320GB, 7200rpm, *16MB cache, SATA-300 (SATA-2))

DVD: Help?! Dual layer...any brand suggestions? under $70?
- [$53] ASUS 1608P2S 16X DUAL DVD writer, 16XDVD-R,16XDVD+R,8XDVD-RW, 8XDVD+RW,8XDVD+RW(DL), 32XCD-R, 24XCD-RW,16XDVD-ROM, 40XCD-ROM, 5X DVD-RAM Write/Read

Wireless: - [$40] ASUS WL-138g PCI/802.11g / 802.11b for Desktop (Marvell)

Already have (from old system):
- Creative SoundBlaster with Live Drive....
- 160Gb Western Digital 8mb 7200 IDE Hard drive

(I am also going to buy an LCD 19" monitor later too....when I have some more money....any suggestions on what is good for under $400 and still be ok for games, video editing and photos)

Also look at Antec power supplies, good stuff.

Definitely buy a cheaper motherboard. Go for the Asus SLI-Deluxe motherboard. I have also heard good things from Epox as well.

From the money you can save from the motherboard you can splurge and should get a 7900GT. No offense, but buying a 6800GS now in the hopes of SLI in 2 to the 3 years is not the best route to go. The 7900GT by itself is just as good and in many ways better than an SLI 6800GS. Also in 2 to the 3 years the 6800GS will be way outdated and there won't be any point in setting up an SLI system around it.
Look: http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2717

I would suggest 2GB (2x1024mb sticks) but you could possibly upgrade at a later point....

Why dual-layer DVDs?

You can get LCD 19" monitors for under 300 dollars now, just do a little research.

any suggestions on what is a good case?
how big a power supply do i need for SLI?

7900GT is about twice the price of 6800GS....way too much! Idea behind SLI was to buy one card now, and when I do want to upgrade later I only have to find another 6800GS.....which by then will be alot cheaper.....don't really care if it is outdated in 2year.....I won't have lots of money to spend on a new $500 graphics card then. I plan to keep this computer going for about 5 years, with a few upgrades along the way (out of neccessity not because I want to).

I am not buying SLI primarily for the graphics improvements NOW, but so that it is easier and cheaper to boost my system later....

What about SLI from an upgrade perspective. I want to be able to upgrade my system in say 2 years in the cheapest possible way. I see SLI as a possible way to boost my graphics performance for say $120-150 to buy another 6800GS then? Rather than having to fork out $350 for a totally new card for similar or only slightly greater performance that I might get from the 2x6800GS????? :?

I hear from all over the place that ASUS are the best mobos to go for....is that true....also considering I am not concerned about overclocking ...which i believe the Lanparty one is most liked for?

What do you consider to be the essential features to have on a mobo?

i thought:
socket939, amd64x2 compatible, SATA2, dual channel RAM, 1gb lan......what else is a must have?

I'll offer my 2 cents worth and a lot agrees with what others here have said. If you are committed to an SLI then you can probably get something that will do the job for less than an SLI-Premium. Its a great board but you're paying for more than just its SLI capability and you can get SLI for less. Bear in mind that Socket 939 is just about at the end of its life so 2 years from now the latest and greatest graphics cards will be designed for future CPU platforms and hopefully AMD will develop CPU's that run with DDR2. The question to ask (and its what I asked myself) is do you really need to go SLI. Every few months a new video card is introduced that as a single entity exceeds the performance of the previous generation cards SLI capability. Bear in mind that 2 graphics cards in SLI don't give you a 100% increase in performance . . only about 25-50% on average. Unless you have both the cash and the desire to stay at the bleeding edge of technology you have to recognize that anything you get now has a useful life of 2-3 years at the most. For myself I figured I'd be too cheap to splash out $1000 or more for 2 ( or more) of the latest graphics cards so I went with a high end non-SLI board - MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum - put in an AMD64 4000+ which I figured gave about the best performance for the $, 2 GB OCZ EL Platinum PC3200 (or you can invest less in RAM and spend the money on a couple of WD Raptors in RAID 0) and an eVGA 7800GT as I figured that it gave the best performance for the buck (and pretty well matches stock 7900GTX's on 3DMark05 when overclocked. I built this system 3 months ago and already the 7900GT outperforms the 7800GTX for less money. I find that what I've built runs really well at 1280x1024 with quality settings maxed out. This includes FarCry, Halo and others. Chances are that within a couple of years a single card will outperform 2 of todays best. Already 2 x 6600GT will not match a single 7800GT. If you're looking for something that will be upgradeable for a good time to come then I'd suggest waiting until summer until we see what replaces Socket 939 and what kind of price it will be. Go for the best single graphics card you can afford and 2 GB of decent RAM. You should then be able to upgrade for at least 2-3 years and still have something that will work decently. Weight up whether SLI is worth it depending on how long you anticipate pgoing between single and dual cards.

The more I look into it....the more that I have to agree that SLI is maybe not the best way to go. It is attractive....but thats not enough....I think that i will look into more options with a non SLI system and perhaps a better graphics card.

What would you recommend I get for a graphics card? bearing in mind that I only want to spend $1000-1200 for the whole box, and I do not really want 1/2 of that to be just for the graphics card!

I want to buy the best motherboard that i can, that will also support dual core....any suggestions for a non SLI model that might suit?

yes...just read that....thanks shadowduck! very helpful!!

not really sure on the whole closed front thing....i like having easy access to DVD and headphone jack / USB etc....i also have a soundblaster live drive....so not sure it would work!

In my previous post I meant to say that an overclocked 7800GT can match a 7800GTX (not a 7900 GTX as I typed which is a much better card & much more moolah).

SLI Deluxes here are $30 or so less than SLI Premium's. If I had not bought my MSI board the ASUS SLI-Deluxe was my next choice (although as noted before I had no real intention of ever going SLI).

In terms of making recommendations I found the Tigerdirect.ca website a good source of reviews on individual products. I also read reviews on THG and my decision to go with the MSI K8N Neo4 Plat was based on reviews in THG and Tiger as was my decision to go with the eVGA 7800GT graphics card. I don't regret any of the decisions I made - the system I built runs great and way better than my previous system. the OS is XP64 and it runs FarCry and Halo smoothly when cranked to the max and hits just over 8000 on 3DMark05. I found NFS Hot Pursuit 2 a lot less graphics intensive than either Halo or FarCry and runs okay with the FX5200 I have in my 3.5 year old P4 S478 Northwood based system.

Futureproofing: Whatever you get it will get out of date. Technology is moving fast so its like buying a digital camera. I spend $1000 a few years ago on 5 MP and today you can get 7 MP for $600. But what I found is 5 MP is more than good enough for what I need.

When building my new computer system I resigned myself to the fact that whatever I would buy has "high end" technological life of probably 2 years and a total useful life for gaming of around 3 years if you're running the latest games. My previous computer is 3.5 years old and is outdated for gaming but still perfectly acceptable for running MS office and surfing the net.

To get the most for your $ you need to do a lot of on-line research.

NZ is a great place - have been there 4 times, Auckland, Tauranga, Rotarua, Dunedin and up north of Auckland (Northland?). Saw the America's cup yatch racing there in Dec 1999.

Thanks. Good advice. Do you plan to buy another card for your SLI now?

as for the case well...perhaps this will enlighten you...

Current System (piece of $hite):
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case: cream...going brown...no fans to speak of except my jet engine power supply fan.
Celeron 600 OC to 675
448mb SDRAM
RIVA-TNT32 graphics
17" CRT that is as big as a house
CD writer max 6x wooohoooo!
160gb WD harddrive
Sound Blaster Platinum w. live drive

I DESPERATLEY need a new system

Could you explain the advantage of boing for an Opteron and overclocking? What advantage do i have going for opteron over amd64/amd64x2 compaitble system?

re: case, what are the 'must have' features to go for? i have heard the 120mm fans are better than 80mm....one at front one at back....anything else that is important to look for?

Neax:

Recent blog focus seems to be on SLI or Not-SLI as regards MBs. Since I can't shift our earlier conversations from my mind, I went to Google and typed in "sli motherboard or not". I'm sure you Google from NZ. You might wish to give it a try.

But recent personal experience tells me that, at the end, the jury will be divided and you'll have to make the decision on your own. Such is life.

Re Video cards, as I have said, I have no info and others have given you sage advice in this forum. However, with the GPU card-scene changing so rapidly and (today's news) Nvidia having been paid US$ 30 MILLION to design and create the Sony PSP3 graphics hardware, the GPU scene is changing so repidly that ALL future bets are off. That technology HAS to leak into the mainstream and when it does, today's offerings will be obsolete as far as GPU quality and throughput is concerned.

As always, you have a choice. Be stoic, wait 6 months and survey the scene again. It will have changed as re what's hottest and best-bang. 6 months after that, it'll change again.

But we live only in today and there is NO future-proofing the world of 0s and 1s.

I'm out of message space, with more to say. Please tell me if you wish me to continue. Next will be AMD and power supplies. Regards