by the time my build will be finished my system will look like this
here are just the core componets, i know to compensate for the other drives, and such

e6600
evga 8800gt x3

4 7200 sata drives
2 raptor drives

evga 780i mobo


what wattage, and PSU do you recommend. iam leaning towards that i might need about a 900-1000w psu once everything is said and done.

Ouch, expensive, you just broke into the extremely expensive area.

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You might be able to get away with a 850 watt, but not sure on the amperage requirements for the 8800 GT...But when looking around I picked up that is requires 24 amps?..If that's so, 24x3 for the 12 rail...you'll need a heavy duty PSU.

Why a e6600 though?..a waste if you ask me, If you meant q6600, than that would be a good choice. don't get the e6600, it's old, get the e6750 instead, cheaper on newegg, and faster than the e6600.

Curious though, you really should nab a g0 quad with this rig, and oc it a bit. It's not hard to hit 3ghz at all.

well by the time i can get all of that prices will have dropped. like the raptors, and the 2 additional gpu's will come much later. id just prefer to get the psu ahead of time rather then wasting money on components iam gonna replace, thus the expensive mobo as well. that wont need to be replaced for a long time. my systems are built on gaming as you can tell, and only get up graded once there is a large library of games i cant play at max settings on the current rig iam useing. iam looking to spend about 1300-1500 once i start building this rig. this will also be the only rig i build so once its maxed out iam done, after that iam moveing to consoles to fullfill my gaming needs. *less frustration*

1300-1500 will be pushing it...If you go for just the 3 cards, the cpu, mobo, 2 raptors, and the power supply, you'd already be over 1500. Quite a pricey rig if you ask me. Honestly, I don't think tri-sli is necessary, Nvidia intel chipsets do have issues, it'd be best to nab a 9800GX2, along with a p35 or x38 based chipset. Nehalem will be out at the end of the year for the extreme edition, and more budget based line in q1 2009, considering you need to get a new board, don't go too crazy. The jump in performance will also be quite massive in terms of core 2 duo to nehalem, even larger than the prior netburst to core 2 jump. It would be best to not splurge too much on mobo/cpu if you want to go that route....

It's a tough time to buy hardware, especially intel rigs for future proofed upgrading...all intel platforms die at the end of this year.

when i first start buying, which will only include 1 8800gt iam be spending around 1300-1500 once its fully finished iam sure about 2000+ will be spent on it.

Well you might run into trouble trying to get three 8800GTs to run together. Tri-SLI is only for the GTX or the Ultra.

oh dam i didnt know that, well hell then i might need to redo my build then cuz iam not dropping 400+ on 1 gpu

lol...Nineball, when are you planning to build this rig?

ATI cards are still an option, Crossfire scales better than SLi to begin with. R770 is out in june, or you could go the route of 2x 3870x2's for crossfirex (drivers released next month). This way you can go x38 as well and avoid the cruddy nvidia intel chipsets.

Overall it's a tough issue for tri-sli...But if you want for the 9800GX2, you should be able to SLI two of them for quad gpu's if nvidia actually acts on the drivers. We'll have to wait and see how it turns out...

Save money on the Raptors and get a couple of Seagates 7200.11 series of 32MB cache drives.
PCPower's 750 watt Silencer series will work well for the configuration you wish to build

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I would also look at the Antec 900 for your case.

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Many places put it on sale almost weekly so look around.

ive never cared for ati, simply becuase they dont preform for the price you pay. besides most pc games have been proven to run better on a nvidia build than any other ati build.

Well it's not that it's "proven". Nvidia ATM just has better cards, mostly IMO due to the issue of the AMD/ATI merger, R600 was a blunder of a release, but since than, all their newer cards have been on time. R700 is going to be interesting, will just have to wait see. Regarding SLI/CF...Crossfire has also been proven to scale better, You get a much better increase in performance when coupling ATI cards, in the 3870's regards, you can see up to a 2x in performance over a single card, meanwhile for SLI, the performance gain is usually around 30-35 percent. Keep in mind this depends on the title though, some games are better with Nvidia, some with ATI, but ATI has proven to scale better. This makes up the ground somewhat when it comes to CF VS SLI, but it still doesn't speak for single card performance, where nvidia has had the crown for a while now. ATI is also infinitely better on drivers IMO, that topic can be debated back and forth, but I see it as a fact. Crossfirex drivers arrive in march, that will be interesting when unfolded and examined. If ATI had a card that matched the 8800 GT's performance precisely, you'd see many more going for the ATI based solutions, higher frame rates if that scenario was indeed true. Plus, ATI has always been better on image quality, during the radeon 8500 and ti 4600 days, it was MASSIVE...Nvidia has gotten much better in regards to it, but ATI still has the edge by a small margin when it comes to video/texture quality.

Yeah tri-sli is only for the GTX and Ultra. I say crossfire a couple of 3870's and leave it at that.



ASUS P5B Deluxe
Xeon X3210 @ 3.0 GHz cooled by Thermalright Ultra 120
2GB DDR2 800
150GB WD Raptor
300GB Maxtor 16MB Buffer
NEC 16x DVD-RW
Lite-on 16x DVD-RW
Cooler Master Stacker 830
PC Power & Cooling Quad 750 Watt
EVGA 8800 GT (650MHz Core 950MHz Memory)
Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music
Logitech G9 mouse
Dell Keyboard
24” Westinghouse Widescreen flat panel monitor (1920 x 1200)(GREAT MONITOR!)
Windows Vista Business
Logitech Z5500