Wanting to verify a few things before I start ordering

[mapex]

Just wanted to say thanks in advance for any suggestions advice. Below is the list of the parts I plan on ordering. As far as all the research I've done, I believe everything should mate up beautifully but it never hurts to have a couple extra opinions. This system will be used for gaming with the most current FPS games (no oblivion for me), email, documents, as well as some audio and video editing/production. I plan to do some moderate OCing but nothing too crazy.

COOLER MASTER Praetorian 730 RC-730-KSN1
ASUS P5W DH DELUXE
ATI Radeon X1900XTX or possibly x1950xtx if available
POWERCOLOR T55E-P03 PCI-Express x1 Interface TV tuner card
OCZ GameXStream OCZ700GXSSLI ATX12V 700W Power Supply
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600
CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) TWIN2X2048-6400PRO
MITSUMI Black 1.44MB 3.5" Internal USB 2.0 digital card reader with Floppy Drive
2 Western Digital Raptor WD1500ADFD 150GB 10,000 RPM Serial ATA150 Hard Drive in Raid 1
2 Western Digital Caviar RE WD2500YS 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive in Raid 1
SAMSUNG 16X DVD±R DVD Burner Model SHS162LBEBN
NEC 16X DVD±R DVD Burner Model ND-3550A
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic 7.1 Channels PCI Interface Sound Card
Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound
Scythe SCNJ-1000P 120mm Sleeve CPU Cooling Fan/Heatsink

 

[sunangel]

I'm curious why not two NEC's or two Samsung's? Why one of each?

Also, why DDR2-800? 800MHz is only necessary if your using a low end graphics card (which your obviously not).

Also, why choose an Crossfire board? You only have one graphics card listed. (Here, I have to be honest. I do not game so I'm not sure if what I am saying makes sense)

When you say video editing/production, you mean encoding right? If your going to do what I think your going to do, I have just three words for you, "DON'T DO IT!"

Lastly, surely a 700 watt PSU is enough (I am being sarcastic here).

A few personal comments from me. Personally, I could never spend the kind of money your attempting to spend on a computer. Particularly to play video games. Why not just buy a console instead? But if your heart desires a PC for gaming why aren't you going AMD instead of Intel? I hope its not because your taking the comments on this site and other sites to heart. Supposedly, you'll be getting much better gaming experience on an AMD machine.

Just my $.02.

 

[4745454b]

I can agree on the DVD question, that had me wondering to. I'd love to hear a reason as for one of each. (it doesn't really matter, and probably doesn't hurt to do it that way)
The only thing that could bother me with the ram you choose is hearing about people who buy DDR2 800 ram, only to find they have to return it for 667. I know one person who complained about OCZ on another forum. I think he switched to Corsair. Either way, read your motherboards manual online and find out what ram it likes.
Don't worry about getting an Intel, your buying a Conroe, so its faster then anything AMD has. All in all, it looks like a nice high end build.

 

[nikolokolus]

For video encoding/editing + gaming the core 2 duo makes the AMD A64 look like the poor red-headed step child of PC land.

DDR2 800 is exactly what he should get; conroe loves the extra bandwidth more than tighter timings (though those don't hurt either)

A 700 watt PSU isn't overkill at all; this gives him "room to grow" for the next couple of upgrade cycles.

 

[mapex]

I'm curious why not two NEC's or two Samsung's? Why one of each?

I've had 2 sony burners in the past, one was good, and when i upgraded to the next model it didn't last too long, the sony was really a rebadged liteon, i've seen good and bad reviews for both drives so since I usually have a dvd drive and a dvd burner I figure why not go two burners and if one goes out, I will always have another if I'm in a pinch to get a project out the door.

Also, why DDR2-800? 800MHz is only necessary if your using a low end graphics card (which your obviously not).

it's the max my board can take according to Asus, but I'm not sure why my graphics card would matter in what speed memory I'm using, could you elaborate on this?

Also, why choose an Crossfire board? You only have one graphics card listed. (Here, I have to be honest. I do not game so I'm not sure if what I am saying makes sense)

I didn't just choose the board because it was a crossfire board, I've used an asus board in the past and liked it, the 975 chipset seems pretty stable and decent for a little overclocking, and the built in wifi to free up a card slot was an added bonus.

When you say video editing/production, you mean encoding right? If your going to do what I think your going to do, I have just three words for you, "DON'T DO IT!"

I mean actual audio/video mixing, editing, and production of a film (film student), not dvd ripping like I believe you may be thinking.

Lastly, surely a 700 watt PSU is enough (I am being sarcastic here).

Are you trying to say that's not enough? I would think 700 watts would be enough for 4 hard drives, 2 dvd drives, conroe and a decent video card

 

[mapex]

I've been reading around for quite a while and found another thread about ocz and asus boards and the most common answer was to check with asus for approved ram, corsair was on the list, so I think brand-wise i'm ok

 

[ChrisBond]

Your build looks good it's almost the same as the one I'm going to build. But I would change the X1900XTX to X1900XT, the $100 for the extra 25MHz isn't worth it.

 

[nubetube]

Your build looks good it's almost the same as the one I'm going to build. But I would change the X1900XTX to X1900XT, the $100 for the extra 25MHz isn't worth it.

A-Men, was about to note that. If your going to do moderate overclocking, then moderately overclock an 1900XT, it will save you like 60-100 bucks and you won't see any differnece if you overclock it like 25 mhz... Man, If I was getting 2 150GB Raptors I would run them in Raid 0 and Run the 2 250 gig hardrives in RAID 1. If you run the raptors in RAID 0 you will have unbelievable performance...

 

[mapex]

I've done a raid 0 in the past and have had it fail. Yes the performance was great, but when one of the hard drives goes out, you're sol. I figure with Raid 1 i'll at least get increased read performance and with it being a raptor i should get pretty good writing as well

 

[nikolokolus]

might not be in the budget but you could always add one more drive and do a RAID 5 then you get redundacy, the ability to hot swap drives and pretty decent write performance (not RAID 0 decent, but just a notch below).

Of course RAID 5 done from the Mobo's built in ports is going to put more load on your CPU, but if that doesn't bother you then it could be a good option?

 

[Cookiecookie]

ZALMAN CNPS9500 should be a slightly better CPU fan.

 

[koolaidkitten]

I think your build is fine the way it is.

 

[sunangel]

Quote:
Also, why DDR2-800? 800MHz is only necessary if your using a low end graphics card (which your obviously not).

it's the max my board can take according to Asus, but I'm not sure why my graphics card would matter in what speed memory I'm using, could you elaborate on this?

What I meant was... the bandwidth for the FSB of the Core 2 Duo is 8.5GBs and the DMI bandwidth is 2GBs. Add these two together and you have a total of 10.5. DDR2-667 has total bandwidth of 10.7. DDR2-667 is matched memory for the 975X chipset. The additional bandwidth of DDR2-800 will only be utilized is you have a graphics card that support hyper-memory, which is only on low-end graphics cards. Oh, there is one other situation and that overclocking. (*whispers to GOD -- Lord please stop this overclocking marketing nonsense -- *GOD hears his prayer). Unless you can hit an FSB of 400, the memory divider is going to knock you back to the next compliant JEDEC standard which should keep you right at DDR2-667. So, as you can see unless you are an extreme overclocker DDR2-800 is totally unnecessary (unless using a hyper-memory graphics card).

Quote:
When you say video editing/production, you mean encoding right? If your going to do what I think your going to do, I have just three words for you, "DON'T DO IT!"

I mean actual audio/video mixing, editing, and production of a film (film student), not dvd ripping like I believe you may be thinking.

BINGO! I didn't want to say if that isn't what your intent was.

Quote:
Lastly, surely a 700 watt PSU is enough (I am being sarcastic here).

Are you trying to say that's not enough? I would think 700 watts would be enough for 4 hard drives, 2 dvd drives, conroe and a decent video card

You think?

Quote:
I'm curious why not two NEC's or two Samsung's? Why one of each?

I've had 2 sony burners in the past, one was good, and when i upgraded to the next model it didn't last too long, the sony was really a rebadged liteon, i've seen good and bad reviews for both drives so since I usually have a dvd drive and a dvd burner I figure why not go two burners and if one goes out, I will always have another if I'm in a pinch to get a project out the door.

Understandable logic for having two DVD burners. But, the original question was why one of each? Bad experiences with Sony should not stop you from buying from one manufacturer only. But hey, with the kind of money your about to lay out for your pc I won't knock anything in your build.

Good Luck!