R8 muh Build !!!

[halfassed]

LIAN LI PC-A70B Black Aluminum ATX Full Tower

EVGA 122-CK-NF68-A1 NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI

2 x EVGA 512-P3-N841-AR GeForce 8800GTS (G92) 512MB

PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750 Quad 750W Power Supply

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale 3.0GHz

2 x Crucial Ballistix 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR2 1066

4 x SAMSUNG SpinPoint T 500GB

2 x Pioneer 20X DVD Burner

ZALMAN CNPS9700 LED

$2100 after MIRs...

Rate this build, I just put it together, dual-booting Vista, XPSP2

 

[mlaporta]

I would would look at Asus or Gigabyte mobo's.

 

[akhilles]

He already got the board & build the rig. I hope he got P32 BIOS cuz it's the only one that supports Wolfdale.

 

[MU_Engineer]

LIAN LI PC-A70B Black Aluminum ATX Full Tower

EVGA 122-CK-NF68-A1 NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI

2 x EVGA 512-P3-N841-AR GeForce 8800GTS (G92) 512MB

PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750 Quad 750W Power Supply

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale 3.0GHz

2 x Crucial Ballistix 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR2 1066

4 x SAMSUNG SpinPoint T 500GB

2 x Pioneer 20X DVD Burner

ZALMAN CNPS9700 LED

$2100 after MIRs...

Rate this build, I just put it together, dual-booting Vista, XPSP2

I'd HIGHLY suggest that you get an external add-in SATA RAID card that runs on PCIe x4 or better. You have four 500 GB HDDs and you'd be much happier if you did a RAID 5 on them as it adds speed and redundancy. 1.5 TB is a ton of data to lose when one HDD goes dead- and it's when, not if. NVIDIA's southbridges suck royally at RAID performance in RAID 5 due to bottlenecks in the southbridge's I/O capability. I put a HighPoint RocketRAID 2310 4-port SATA-300 PCIe x4 card into my unit and my RAID throughput literally tripled. It's $140 well spent in my opinion.

Also be careful with the 680i motherboards. 45 nm BIOS support is spotty and your board might not be able to boot to update the BIOS with the E8400 in it. Have a buddy lend you an older socket 775 chip to update the BIOS with if you don't have one lying around.

 

[nukchebi0]

You should get the 8800 Ultras instead.

 

[halfassed]

I would would look at Asus or Gigabyte mobo's.

Asus are rock solid... I have 2, a 925XE with a P4 Prescott running 3.96Ghz and a P5N32-SLI SE Deluxe with an E6600 running in the living room.

 

[halfassed]

He already got the board & build the rig. I hope he got P32 BIOS cuz it's the only one that supports Wolfdale.

I booted with the E6600 to flash first thing. I knew about the BIOS issue.

As for RAID, no need. I use them JBOD so I can just remove them as they fill up with HD movies to the aforementioned living room PC that's hooked up to a 1080p TV.

This comp is my gamer but does double duty running torrent downloads while I'm gone. It runs the Wolfdale just fine at 3.8GHz on the CNPS 9700, I'm stoked because it beats the **** out of 2 8800 Ultras (these G92s run at 730MHz) for everything I play so I pretty much think that I built a kick ass rig for not an extreme amount of money. I would have gone quad but I mainly game. Can't get a Q6600 to beat a Wolfdale at 3.8GHz at games