Ording this tomorrow.. last chance to change my mind.

mgrosh

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Here is what i am ordering tomorrow..


NZXT LEXA-NP ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
$121.99

eVGA nForce 680i
$249.99

eVGA GeForce 8800GTS
$429.99

Thermaltake 700W Power Supply
$169.99

Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 Conroe 2.13GHz
$224.00

G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)
$224.99

2 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s $189.98

LITE-ON 20X DVD±R DVD Burner with 12X DVD-RAM write and LightScribe Technology
$36.99

Pioneer 16X DVD±R DVD Burner With 5X DVD-RAM Read
$32.49


TOTAL $1680
already have a 22" flat screen to put on it.

anything i should change (downgrade/upgrade) anything i forgot?
 
Looks like it will be a monster system!

Everything looks good, but you should think about a better cpu cooler.
Myself use a zalmain 9700 which works great.
Scythe also makes good coolers for a few $ less.
 

Bullion

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On a different Note.. I am looking at a package very similar tot he OP's but i am not going to need the Dual GPU (SLi?) option.

Is the EVGA 680i the best mobo for my situation?

Just trying to get the best bang for my buck.

Thanks

PS. Could u recommend some specific CPU cooling fans :) I have no idea what to look for or what is good.
 

mgrosh

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On a different Note.. I am looking at a package very similar tot he OP's but i am not going to need the Dual GPU (SLi?) option.

Is the EVGA 680i the best mobo for my situation?

Just trying to get the best bang for my buck.

Thanks

PS. Could u recommend some specific CPU cooling fans :) I have no idea what to look for or what is good.

If you are not going to ever go to SLI then the MSI 975x Platinum is by far the best bang for your buck at $169


The benifits of the 860i is the dual 16channel pipes when running SLI (which you seem to never need) and a few other bells and whistles.

I am only getting the 860i board for a few upgrade options down the road.

I plan to run SLI when i need to upgrade again and go to a quad processor.

if you do not plan on doing that then the 860i is most likely a waste of money.
 
This is the baddest Sli MB I can think of.
It f'in rocks.

This is a good crossfire MB.

The EVGA 680i looks like a good MB, but I have not seen any specific reviews for it yet.

If you are planing on going Sli/crossfire, make shure you get a high end psu.

As for coolers, I use the Zalmain 9700 and love it.
The Scythe ninja is another cooler that I hear great things about.
 

chuckshissle

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If you don't have a good aftermarket cpu cooler, then get the cpu as OEM and get yourself a better cpu cooler. Look towards the Tuniq Tower 120 for it has the best performance in air cooling.
 

mgrosh

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That system looks solid.... However, personally, I would rather have a new SATA cd/dvd burner. Here is a new cheap one that just came out:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16827106047


8O

I don't understand why people want SATA cd/dvd burners... do people think there is some sort of speed gaid from going to sata on these devices?


ease of plugging in the connectors is the only benifit i can think off. Not worth it.
 

darksidedragon

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The benifits of the 860i is the dual 16channel pipes when running SLI (which you seem to never need) and a few other bells and whistles.

I presume that was just a typo and you're actually referring to the 680i boards. The dual 16 channel pipes are needed if you want to run a set of 8800's is SLi. I assume that all Nvidia's future DX10 cards will need dual 16x to be run in SLi.
 

flasher702

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That system looks solid.... However, personally, I would rather have a new SATA cd/dvd burner. Here is a new cheap one that just came out:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16827106047


8O

I don't understand why people want SATA cd/dvd burners... do people think there is some sort of speed gaid from going to sata on these devices?


ease of plugging in the connectors is the only benifit i can think off. Not worth it.

not worth "it"? not worth what? Did you look at it? It's cheap.

If by "ease of plugging in" you mean "there's a place on the mobo to plug them into" then yes, that would be a definate plus. If you hadn't noticed IDE is being phased out. As soon as SATA optical drives become affordable there will be no reason to buy IDE ones. The sata interface should also be more reliable, have better power saving options, smaller more easily managed cables, connectors shouldn't break as easily, and has dedicated bandwidth and interlocking protocol which should make it operate "faster". For many mobos that have only a single IDE channel this would make it far more feasible to put HDs on that channel as they won't have to share bandwidth with the optical drive. Future generation mobos won't have IDE on them at all. An optical drive won't be able to sustain data trasfer rates at the full 150 or 300mbps of the SATA interface but so what? SATA interface is better in many ways not just bandwidth.

At $35 for this liteon drive I'd say there is no reason anyone should buy another IDE inteface DVD burner ever again. It's about time affordable ones got here, lets not turn back xD
 

MrMr

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I bought an adapter a few months ago to convert my IDE DVD drive to SATA. Main reason was so that I could install, and run, MacOSX. It wouldn't install on my Giga 965P S3 unless I hooked my drive to a SATA port. Worked like a charm. I ordered the SATA burner a week ago, locally, so I can can free up my IDE for my 2 drives that are sitting on my desk. Is that a good enough reason?

A link to the adapter. Pretty cool.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16812206002
My only mistake was not ordering 2 SATA burners. The adapter takes an extra power connector, 4 pin floppy molex. Bugs the hell out of me. Don't know why.
 

flasher702

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LITE-ON 20X DVD±R DVD Burner with 12X DVD-RAM write and LightScribe Technology
$36.99

Pioneer 16X DVD±R DVD Burner With 5X DVD-RAM Read
$32.49

Which brings me to my concern: why the hell are you buying two different DVD burners and where do you plan to plug them into? If you really think you're going to be burning two DVDs at once or doing on-the-fly copying you do NOT want them to both be on the same IDE channel. If you want to burn 2x at once it would probably also be less of a headache to get two identical drives (and have them both be SATA).

If you're not burning two at once and just want to be able to do on-the-fly copying and want to save money you could get a cheap IDE DVD-ROM (which could likely end up being a DVD-RW) and a SATA DVD-RW which should allow for the data to be passed from one interface to the other much more quickly. This doesn't exactly look like a budget system though so I'm wondering why you're trying to save $4.50 on a second DVD-RW. If you wanna save some money just get one drive. You can get another one later. Consider it an invenstment in a future upgrade.

If you're really sure you need two DVD-RWs... make at least one of them SATA. Otherwise you're looking at two drives sharing a single interface plus the overhead of the master-slave protocol and you won't ever see 20x DVD burn speeds for on-the-fly copying. If at least one of them is SATA it'll still be useful to you when you figure out that you don't need two DVD drives in your system xD

It looks like you might be planning on having a huge raid-0 array there and want to be able to back it up quickly, two IDE DVD-RW drives isn't a good solution if that's the case.
 

Crapola

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That system looks solid.... However, personally, I would rather have a new SATA cd/dvd burner. Here is a new cheap one that just came out:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16827106047


8O

I don't understand why people want SATA cd/dvd burners... do people think there is some sort of speed gaid from going to sata on these devices?


ease of plugging in the connectors is the only benifit i can think off. Not worth it.

not worth "it"? not worth what? Did you look at it? It's cheap.

If by "ease of plugging in" you mean "there's a place on the mobo to plug them into" then yes, that would be a definate plus. If you hadn't noticed IDE is being phased out. As soon as SATA optical drives become affordable there will be no reason to buy IDE ones. The sata interface should also be more reliable, have better power saving options, smaller more easily managed cables, connectors shouldn't break as easily, and has dedicated bandwidth and interlocking protocol which should make it operate "faster". For many mobos that have only a single IDE channel this would make it far more feasible to put HDs on that channel as they won't have to share bandwidth with the optical drive. Future generation mobos won't have IDE on them at all. An optical drive won't be able to sustain data trasfer rates at the full 150 or 300mbps of the SATA interface but so what? SATA interface is better in many ways not just bandwidth.

At $35 for this liteon drive I'd say there is no reason anyone should buy another IDE inteface DVD burner ever again. It's about time affordable ones got here, lets not turn back xD

I concur.... not to mention, it's less clutter.....

8O
 

darksidedragon

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So many of my friends say "Get two drives, then you can copy from one to the other". Yet I don't think I've ever seen any of them copying a disc and writing it to a blank DVD. So useless, especially considering most things can be downloaded straight from the net, and that HDD's are big enough to store most things.
 

mgrosh

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LITE-ON 20X DVD±R DVD Burner with 12X DVD-RAM write and LightScribe Technology
$36.99

Pioneer 16X DVD±R DVD Burner With 5X DVD-RAM Read
$32.49

Which brings me to my concern: why the hell are you buying two different DVD burners and where do you plan to plug them into? If you really think you're going to be burning two DVDs at once or doing on-the-fly copying you do NOT want them to both be on the same IDE channel. If you want to burn 2x at once it would probably also be less of a headache to get two identical drives (and have them both be SATA).

This was true before dual FIFO buffers on IDE ports. It should not be necessary on this system.


as far as buying 2 different types of drives.. i like the pioneer and wanted a second that could do lightScribe (i dbout ill ever use it buy hey.)
 

mgrosh

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One last thought..

I was looking around and the ASUS 650i board is now avaliable.

I don't see any reason to stay witht he 680i board.. even if i bought a second 8800gts and ran sli its a very small performance increase with the dual 16channels vs the 8 x 8 on the 650i.


thoughts?
 

darksidedragon

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If you want to run SLi 8800's, you HAVE to have dual 16x channels. The 8800 cards simply won't run on anything less than a 16x channel. SLi 8x channels can be used with 7950 or lower cards.
 

mgrosh

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If you want to run SLi 8800's, you HAVE to have dual 16x channels. The 8800 cards simply won't run on anything less than a 16x channel. SLi 8x channels can be used with 7950 or lower cards.

where did you see this.
It was my understanding that they will still run fine on 8x8 vs teh 16x16 of the 860i with only a 10-20% loss in speed by not having the 16 channels.
 

darksidedragon

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I thought I had read it from the nvidia website, but now that I think about it, it might have been from Scan.co.uk somewhere (so probably wrong). Sorry, my mistake
 

Crapola

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If you want to run SLi 8800's, you HAVE to have dual 16x channels. The 8800 cards simply won't run on anything less than a 16x channel. SLi 8x channels can be used with 7950 or lower cards.

where did you see this.
It was my understanding that they will still run fine on 8x8 vs teh 16x16 of the 860i with only a 10-20% loss in speed by not having the 16 channels.

The current video cards can't use all of the bandwidth on the 8X...., much less the 16X...., the 650i which runs 8x8 performed just as well as the 680i, which runs 16x16... Check out this review...

http://anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2894

8O