Another Gaming rig

[thesulei]

Im looking to build the best gaming rig I can with a budget of £1200 so far ive come up with the following:

Asus P5N32-E SLI NF680i SLI, S 775, PCI-E (x16), DDR2 533/667/800, SATA II, SATA RAID, ATX £132.76

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600, Socket 775, 2.4 GHz, 1066MHz FSB, Conroe Core, 4MB Cache, Retail £140.60

768MB BFG Technology 8800GTX Overclocked PCI-E(x16) Mem 1800MHz GPU 600MHz 128 Stream HDTV/2 x DVI-I £368.94

2x 320 Gb Seagate ST3320620AS Barracuda 7200.10, SATA300, 7200 rpm, 16MB Cache, 8.5 ms, NCQ £104.55

Samsung SH-S182DB/BEBN 18x DVD±R, 8x DVD±DL, DVD+RW x8/-RW x6, DVD-RAM x12, IDE, Black, OEM £16.91

Zalman CNPS9700-LED Aero Flower (Socket AM2/939/754/775) CPU Cooler £34.99

Antec TruePower Trio 550W PSU Antec TruePower Trio 550W PSU £54.99

2x GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC6400C4 800MHz Ultra Low Latency DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GX22GB6400UDC) £124

Antec Nine Hundred Ultimate Gaming Case £54.99

My main concerns are future proofing, overclocking (as far as air cooling will allow) and of course building the most powerful machine I can for the budget.

I do plan to upgrade to vista eventually but initially ill be running windows xp.

SLI is a bit of a sticking point for me, I don’t know much about it – I wonder how much of a performance gain there is to match the extra power requirements and heat generated. I’m going to run a single 8800 GTX, if in the future a new generation of cards is released can I expect two 8800 GTX to outperform a single “new” high end card?

I’m fairly happy with my selection atm, ive read a few negative remarks about the motherboard in question however which have had me looking at other options.

Any comments or suggestions would be great

 

[Daredevil_8]

Everything looks good, except if you want future upgradeability, you should get a P35 chipet motherboard instead. Will support all the upcoming core2 processors.

I'm pretty sure that the PSU will be enough to handle all of that. (someone else want to confirm?) Otherwise, step it up to the 650 version, especially for overclocking, -maybe- even bigger if you plan to go to quad-core and OC it hard after the price drops. (again, someone else should confirm this for me )

SLI isn't really worth the cost IMO. If a newer set of video card comes out, you should still be at a reasonable performance range with the GTX that you won't -need- to upgrade for a while.

There are definitely better CPU coolers than that out there, such as:
-Scythe Infinity
-Scythe Ninja Plus
-Scythe Mine
-Tuniq Tower 120
-Thermalright Ultra-120 or SI-128 or SI-120
-Noctua NH-U12
-Thermaltake Big Typhoon

(all from the Core2Duo Overclocking guide)

Hope that helps

 

[thesulei]

Thanks for the reply, ill have a look at some other coolers, any motherboard suggestions?

Im looking at asus P5K Deluxe

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=591501