Hi

Ive been building a new "high" - end rig, to use for next-gen games. Its build for performance and reliability, and not with OC in mind. I'm posting it here to make sure i have not overlooked anything, or made any wrong choices.

First and foremost, if the PSU is big enuf and the memory is right, IE no bottlenecks.


1x Gigabyte - GA-X48-DQ6, Intel X48
Intel - Core 2 Duo (Wolfdale) Model E8500 (3.16GHz)

1x Corsair - Twin2X 2x1024MB DDR2, PC6400 DDR800 <-- Is this the right speed to run in this config without bottlenecking the rest of the system.

1x Asus - EAH3870X2/G/3DHTI/1G, Radeon HD 3870X2, 1024MB <-- chose this for the possibility to upgrade to Dual crossfire later

2x WD - Raptor X 150 GB - Seriel ATA - SATA150 NCQ <-- For RAID 0 configuration

1x CoolerMaster - Cosmo 1000, Maxitower
1x ThermalRight - IFX-14 140mm Heatsink

1x CoolerMaster - eXtreme Power Plus RS-650-PCAA-E2, 650watt <-- i know this might not be big enough to support two Graphic cards in Crossfire, but it will be replaced if we chose to upgrade, it just need to know if its good enough for the current system

1x Sennheiser PC161
1x Razer Tarantula
1x Razer DeathAdder

Thanks.

X48 is not available. DDR3 will be required with the X48 supporting 1600 mhz. FSB. Onboard RAID is not the most reliable setup. Coolermaster...there are a lot better units than CM puts out there..

GA-X48-DQ6 <-- is available in our country, and its supporting DDR2 however if you want DDR3 you'll need
GA-X48T-DQ6 <-- which is also available.

Also, ive been running RAID 0 on my onboard controller for about a year now no problems what so ever.

Maybe a suggestion on another PSU than the CM ?

Looks good. I had no idea x48 would use DDR2. I had read X48 would be DD3 with no mntion of DDR2. My bad. The chipset supports 1600 MHz. FSB. Good luck with that using DDR2?

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Product [...] GA-X48-DQ6

scrap the Raptors and get a good 500GB drive... one of the seagates comes within milliseconds of the raptor's seek time... so it's a waste...

think... 1TB, or 300GB?

I believe that PSU would work, you might want to read this;
http://www.anandtech.com/casecooli [...] spx?i=3231

Ive been wondering, also tryed a smaller post in the memory section, about my DDR2 memory choice, if its fast enough for my CPU/Mobo choice or should i choose something faster. ?

Well after reading THG's info on the new x48 mobos, ive ajusted my system to the Gigabyte - GA-X38-DQ6 insted, since it will save me around 100$

Why not OC? You should be able to bump the speed up 10 - 20% with the stock HSF. And if you are just a little lucky, you may be able to undervolt the CPU and still run stably.

My E6600 (2.4 GHz @ 1.32 volts) ran at 3.0 GHz @ 1.22 volts.

If your goal is to run next-gen games you might want to go with a q6600 or wait for one of the new quads instead of going with the Wolfdale, as there's the hope that future games will make more use of multiple cores.

Im building this system for another person, so the focus aint on the OC part, however its not impossible that in the future we might attempt to do it.

This is a valid point, and we have changed the CPU to a Q9450, although we have to wait a few months before its available. (if we can wait that longe)