I've been planning my new system for a while new and I've gotten a few parts already (case, mouse, keyboard, PSU, external harddrive). This is what I have planned:

Antec P182

Thermaltake Toughpower 850W

MSI P6N Diamond

Intel E6850

Zalman 9700 NT

Crucial PC2-6400 4x 1GB

MSI 8800GTX OC edition (adding a second in about 6 months)

WD Raptor 150GB (2x in RAID-0)

WD MyBook Premium ES 500GB

Logitech MX Revolution mouse

Logitech Ultra Flat keyboard

LG L245WP-BN 24" LCD

My questions are: Is this a good build? Will it last for some time before I have to upgrade? Am I getting a good deal if I get this stuff in September/October or should I wait a few months and get the next generation Nvidia chipset for Penryn and the 9800GTX?

P.S. Does anyone have P6N Diamond and have 2x 2GB? Could you tell me what memory you're using? I'd prefer to use 2GB sticks so I can upgrade to 8GB in a few months. I've always thought RAM is like money: you can't ever have too much of it.

Well if you wait till the end of year two things will certainly change

1. Your motherboard will become an X38 (or equivalent PCIe 2.0 board)
2. Your 8800GTX will morph into a 9800GTX
(3. Your processor might decrease in price)

So it begs the question, do you want to play Bioshock (Out now) or do you want to wait to play Crysis (November) and will you have more money at Xmas. These same obtions ran through my mind, was going to build a few weeks ago, but I have decided to wait to get an X38 hybrid board (they will exist apparantly) for PCIe 2.0 but not wait till Q1/2 2008 for desktop Penryn

Answers to questions

Good build = yes
Future proofing= debatable, 680i is an "old motherboard", P35s (native 1333mhz) are all the rage at the moment Asus P5 series and Gigabyte P35s
Waiting = Penryn at equivalent prices comes in Q1/2 2008 and 9800GTX iis Xmas

My suggestion is to buy one raptor and another bigger drive for storage.
3 GB is the limit for a 32 bit system. 4 GB is fine for a 64 bit operating system. If you want 8 GB, make sure the motherboard can support it.
I would go with the MSI P35 Platinum motherboard.

2.5Gb is going to be the closer to his limit once he goes SLI unless he goes Vista-64.

Lots of wasted funds in that build that do nothing for performance but could have been used to make a killer machine, IMHO.

zenmaster, what would you do different then? Since I haven't bought most of the parts yet, I'm still open for suggestions....

Save $80 on the Mobo -
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813128047

Save $80 GB on the Raptors - The 74Gb versions are faster.
You likely are not getting them for normal storage.

Save $100 on the CPU - The E6750 will OC as high.

Thought you wasted money on the GPUs since OCs were normally about $100 each more - This seems to have changed so that means you could only save $260 and not $460.

With $460 I was going to suggest a getting some very fast disks on which to install your primary game and the swamp/temp files.

8GB is about all that you would need for that.

And for the fastest IDE drives you get something like one of these.
Please Note how it makes a 15K SCSI RAID-0 System and Raptors look about as fast as 5.25" floppies.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/1 [...] page6.html

Thanks everybody!

I've decided to wait. It's a pain (I've got Supreme Commander in a box here, but can't play it!) but I'd feel pretty pissed if I just finished putting my new rig together to find that there is a whole new generation out there.

So I'm going to wait for the next generation Nvidia board, coming out in November together with the 9800GTX. I'll probably stick in a E6750 and then swap that out for a 4GHz Penryn somewhere in 2008....

It is a great idea right now to wait more then ever. Since also dx10 cards are all trial and only work well in dx9 mode. Waiting might be hard, I know for me I could not wait. But when you do and it is time to build you will be satified with that decision.

Just changed my mind!

I read this article on Tomshardware about upgrading. Wasn't really relevent to me because it was about upgrading a two-year old AMD based system. However, it did have an interesting remark in there. Apparently, both Intel and AMD are switching to new sockets next year, so whatever motherboard I get will be outdated H2 2008. The only thing maybe worth waiting for is the 9800GTX, but I'm thinking that'll cost at least $600+ when it comes out and I don't think I need the performance, so I'm ordering my stuff next week....

Zenmaster, I thought long and hard about your suggestions and I'm taking one of them, I'm switching to an E6750 because I'll probably swap that out for a 4GHz quad next year... However, I'm keeping the motherboard, 'cause it's SLI and has the integrated X-Fi. If I went with the Gigabyte motherboard and bought the X-Fi seperately, I'd pay pretty much the same.....

My thoughts are, I'll go with this cycle, stick in 1 (maybe 2) 9800GTX next year and a 4GHz Penryn. That should last me quite a long time. Also, I checked the prices for DDR3 and it's ridiculously expensive. I'd rather have 8GB of DDR2 than 2GB of DDR3....