New build, looking for around a $1400 budget...

[Gradius69]

Sorry, forgot to put in prices.. Would be used for high end gaming. (EQ2, Oblivion, Ghost Recon AW2, BioShock)

I wanna cut some corners. I know I could get a cheaper mobo, SLI/XF isn't really something I'm lookin into yet since it's still uncharted for the most part, but it would be a good future investment in case I do.

I'm REALLY more of an ATI man, but the Nvidia's have just been pulling away with the single GPU's. Should I snag a XF board instead?

I plan on doin some OC'in.. RAM/CPU. So I went with the e6400 and DDR2 800. I know/trush mushkin, but know for a fact I can cut some cost there...

HD wise, I really want a 3gb SATA w/16meg buffer. I could go with a smaller capacity, but don't wanna go less than 120gig spread amongst them. (2-3 HD's total.) I really like WD products, and haven't really read much on how Seagate/Maxtor have been doing lately.

And I was concerned about the mobo. Was thinking about swapping it for an Abit AW9D-MAX board.

NZXT Nemesis Elite Black Aluminum ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Retail - $94.99

CD / DVD Burners (RW Drives)
-LITE-ON 18X DVD±R Burner Black IDE
- $29.99
-SONY Black IDE DVD-ROM Drive Model - $18.99

Desktop Memory
mushkin 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit
- $259.99

Intel-compatible Motherboards
EVGA 122-CK-NF68-AR Socket T (LGA 775) - $249.99

Internal Hard Drives
Western Digital Caviar RE WD3200YS 320GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM - $99.99

Power Supplies
KINGWIN ABT-600MA1W ATX 12V Ver.2.2 600W Power Supply - Retail - $119.99

Processors
Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 Conroe 2.13GHz LGA 775 Processor Model BX80557E6400 - Retail - $220.00

Sound Cards
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer 70SB073A00000 7.1 Channels PCI Interface - $69.99

Video Cards
1 eVGA 640-P2-N821-AR GeForce 8800GTS 640MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Video - $399.99

$1564... :?

 

[Guest]

I didn't take the time to see how much that stuff would cost, would you tell me and I can make a few suggestions.

All looks ok, except maybe for mobo, but I dont know what you are in to.

 

[Gradius69]

Any recommendations?

 

[Whizzard9992]

I just built a buddy a system for $1400.

E6400 OC'd to 3.2GHz (Stock voltages, runs @ 32C)
2GB XMS2 PC6200 (800 MHz)
Gigabyte DQ6
Zalman cooling fan ($35. I forget the model).
ATi X1950Pro (You should get the XT tho. prices are same now )
2x 7200.10 Seagate 320GB drives in RAID 0
Thermaltake 600W PSU
Thermaltake Case
19 Widescreen 4ms display


The thing is rediculously fast for the price. It looks sweet on the 19" widescreen.

The widescreen is highly recommended, but if you don't need it, consider upgrading your drives to the Raptor X series.

 

[Whizzard9992]

Sorry, forgot to put in prices.. Would be used for high end gaming. (EQ2, Oblivion, Ghost Recon AW2, BioShock)

I wanna cut some corners. I know I could get a cheaper mobo, SLI/XF isn't really something I'm lookin into yet since it's still uncharted for the most part, but it would be a good future investment in case I do.

I'm REALLY more of an ATI man, but the Nvidia's have just been pulling away with the single GPU's. Should I snag a XF board instead?

I plan on doin some OC'in.. RAM/CPU. So I went with the e6400 and DDR2 800. I know/trush mushkin, but know for a fact I can cut some cost there...

HD wise, I really want a 3gb SATA w/16meg buffer. I could go with a smaller capacity, but don't wanna go less than 120gig spread amongst them. (2-3 HD's total.) I really like WD products, and haven't really read much on how Seagate/Maxtor have been doing lately.

And I was concerned about the mobo. Was thinking about swapping it for an Abit AW9D-MAX board.

NZXT Nemesis Elite Black Aluminum ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Retail - $94.99

CD / DVD Burners (RW Drives)
-LITE-ON 18X DVD±R Burner Black IDE
- $29.99
-SONY Black IDE DVD-ROM Drive Model - $18.99

Desktop Memory
mushkin 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit
- $259.99

Intel-compatible Motherboards
EVGA 122-CK-NF68-AR Socket T (LGA 775) - $249.99

Internal Hard Drives
Western Digital Caviar RE WD3200YS 320GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM - $99.99

Power Supplies
KINGWIN ABT-600MA1W ATX 12V Ver.2.2 600W Power Supply - Retail - $119.99

Processors
Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 Conroe 2.13GHz LGA 775 Processor Model BX80557E6400 - Retail - $220.00

Sound Cards
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer 70SB073A00000 7.1 Channels PCI Interface - $69.99

Video Cards
1 eVGA 640-P2-N821-AR GeForce 8800GTS 640MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Video - $399.99

$1564... :?

1) I'd recommend an Asus or Gigabyte motherboard.
2) Your hard drive will slow down your system. You may want to upgrade to a RAID 0, Raptor X, or both.
3) Your vid card decision shouldn't be nVidia or ATi, but you should choose based on a model. In some cases ATi is the better deal, and in others nVidia. There's no clear, dominant leader at the moment. You'll probably get better performance from 2 X1950 XT's in crossfire for ~$450 over the 8800, though.

 

[Gradius69]

My only concern there is I was looking for a Dx10 card.. Should I just hold off till the market gets more flooded with more cards?

 

[Whizzard9992]

My only concern there is I was looking for a Dx10 card.. Should I just hold off till the market gets more flooded with more cards?

Word on the street is that only Vista will support DX10, anyway. This means that you won't see games that use this until (probably) march, because that's when Vista is supposed to launch.

Critics don't expect Vista to be adopted into the mainstream until mid-2008, so I wouldn't expect any game developers to lock out the mass market by only supporting DX10.

Anyway, I would hold off on the DX10 card, personally, and base your decision more on DX9 performance. This is the first version of a DX10 card, and I would expect that there will be much better cards for the price by the time any decent games come out that demand DX10.

 

[Gradius69]

Alright.. In that case I was looking at swapping the mobo/hd:

Mobo : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813128323 - GIGABYTE GA-965P-DQ6 Socket T (LGA 775) Intel P965 Express - $199

HD : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148140 - Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3320620AS (Perpendicular Recording Technology) 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM - x2 - $190

I can't find anywhere to snag a pair of x1950xt's that wouldn't cost me about the same as a 8800GTX card let alone a GTS.

 

[bilbo3660]

E6400 is a great overclocker.

You won't save much, $10-$25, but OCZ/Corsair/SuperTalent are good overclockers too.

You can get a less expensive card now and wait till Q3 for a DX10 card. That's when there will be more choices and games that can take advantage of it will start to appear.

Seagate 7200.10 is top notch. 250GB 16MB cache is $80. Seagate is making Maxtor their lowend line of HDD's.

It looks like nvidia has addressed the SATA problems with the latest bios so 680i is good to go again.

Seasonic, Corsair and Antec are excellent PSU's, stable and quiet.

 

[Whizzard9992]

That DQ6 motherboard is a beast. It's really a great board, and a superb performer. Top Notch. The cooling on it is phenominal for overclocking.

Also, consider that SLI is not 'officially' supported on the P965 chipset, but there is a lot of community support (i.e. 3rd party drivers) from the very large fan-base the P965 has accrued.

I personally avoid nVidia chipsets. They tend to have crappy IO support (namingly poor hard disk controller performance). Maybe they'll fix that with the 680i, but I'd wait on that board until there's more info from the community.

Speaking of hard disk performance, when you set up your RAID, make sure you use the Intel slots. You'll get the best performance. This is because 3rd party RAID chips (such as the GigaRAID chip on the DQ6) usually sit on the PCI bus. This means that they're hooked to the PCI bus, then the PCI-Express bus via bridge, and then the southbridge. The PCI-bus is bandwidth constricted. Intel's matrix-raid uses CSA to stream directly into the southbridge.

Seagate's always had great quality. The 7200.10's are great performers. The 7200.10's I have in RAID 0 on the DQ6 board were averaged well above 100MB/s reads (HD Tach).

The X1950 XT's perform close to the 1900 XTX. It's up to you what you want to use for GFX; maybe someone else can chime in as to why you'd want to go one way or another. Again, I wouldn't bank on DX10 this early, though.

Make sure you get Arctic Silver thermal compound, even if you go with a stock cooler. If you go with a stock cooler, clean off the gunk (the stock compound) with a razor blade, and polish the copper with a cotton swab and alchohol. Use alchohol because it won't corrode the copper, and it evaporates 100% clean. Don't wipe it dry, and make sure you wait for it to dry/evaporate (it only takes a few seconds). Then apply the arctic silver. That will get the most performance from your fan.