After a Puff of smoke, Need New System

So here is the scoop.

After 3 or so years of service my gaming rig literally blew up. Yep I had the whole smell of burning silicone and everything. I am trying to salvage most of what I got but it was time for an upgrade anyway.

I salvaged the Thermaltake case, hard drives, dvd burners and sound card.

So basically I have a case that needs to be filled with some power able to run some games at a good fps at a pretty high resolution. I recently bought a Samsung 216BW for my viewing pleasures.

My budget is around $1000.

The only thing I really have picked out is the Intel Q6600 Quad, everything else is fair game. So with the help of some forum members I was hoping to piece together a decent rig. I will be able to OC so a mobo with some good OC capabilities would be nice. Read good things about the Asus P5K.

So that's my story, thanks for the help and hope to get this together quickly for some fun after the holidays. Thanks again.

Dave

Choose a better power supply this time.

Top Tier PSU:

http://www.tomswiki.com/page/Tiere [...] ngs?t=anon

Alright so far I have:

Intel Q6600 Quad - haven't picked heatsink yet.
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS4
Patriot 2GB DDR2 PC2-8500 - no idea what speed I should use.
Asus EN8800GT 512MB
Silverstone Zeus ST75ZF 750W - is this overkill?
Using my old HDD's about 500GB SATA drives and my Sound Blaster Audigy 2 sound card.

Any more suggestions would be nice. Any reason for Gigabyte over the Asus P5K.

And another question, XP or Vista...ya...

Well Vista has DX10, so if that means anything to you, go for Vista Home Premium. However the support for DX10 games is lacking at the moment, it's more of a future proof thing. Also with your quad core, you're going to want a 64 bit OS.

Thanks 16wide, so if I went with the 64bit Vista, would it still be reliable enough to play most of the newer games. I usually just play, unfortunately, World of Warcraft and Counter Strike Source. I also picked up COD4 for Xmas.

There is another post asking exactly the same thing about the Audigy 2 and the X-Fi Gamer in another section. I do know that I love my X-Fi, it has extremely good quality sound (both input & output), but I do have a pretty expensive headset. I'd say that if you just plan on using cheap OEM speakers that it's not really worth the upgrade.

I use a Tier 1 PSU also, it just means you will be really pleased by it's performance. I know I love mine (it's way overkill, but it's all they had in stock when I bought) the fan is extremely quiet and I've never had any power related issues with anything.

haha ya I have Sennheiser HD555 headset and a decent set of speakers so I am still on the fence.

Ok so at least I have the Q6600 picked out and the 8800GT

only thing I am stuck on is the mobo, OS and sound card. The Maximus Formula is only $50 more but what does it offer more then the Gigabyte mobo.

As for the sound card that will be a last minute decision most likely.

For the OS I am still not sold on the whole vista and gaming but I haven't done much reading on that subject

The maximus formula offers noobish overclocking where as the Gigabyte one will oc good too, but you got to know what you are doing on the Gigabyte board. The maximus will run either card single but can only run ATI in dual.

Ah ok that makes lots of sense. Thanks very much for the responses. I think I know what I am shooting for. I ordered all the parts for next week. Thanks again!

Also, in regards to PSUs if I get a teir 2 PSU, I was thinking the OCZ GameXstream or Evostream what kind of power should I be looking for, for now and in the future if I decided to go dual ATI cards.

Looks super. Go ahead and buye

Best mob in da world imo.
You can go in bios and pick crazy and have instant 3.5 quad core. Watch the temps though.

haha will do. Once I get it all setup I will post some temps!