New System for Spore & Sims 3

Guys,
Here is what I put together, please let me know what you think or any advice. Also running Vista Home Premium 64-bit. Thanks.

$1325.00
(before all applicable rebates)



CASE: NEW!!! CoolerMaster Cosmos Silent Gaming Tower Case w/ 420 Watts Power Supply (Original Color)
CPU: (Sckt775)Intel® Core™ 2 Duo E8500 CPU @ 3.16GHz 1333FSB 6MB L2 Cache 64-bit
MOTHERBOARD: (QX9650/9770 Support) Asus P5Q Pro Intel P45 CrossFire Chipset LGA775 FSB1600 DDR2/800 Mainboard w/GbLAN, USB2.0, IEEE1394, & 7.1Audio
MEMORY: (Req.DDR2 MainBoard)4GB (4x1GB) PC6400 DDR2/800 Dual Channel Memory (Corsair or Major Brand)
VIDEO CARD: ATI Radeon HD 4850 PCI-E 16X 512MB Video Card (Major Brand Powered by ATI)
VIDEO CARD 2: ATI Radeon HD 4850 PCI-E 16X 512MB Video Card (Major Brand Powered by ATI)
VIDEO CARD 3: NONE
LCD Monitor: NONE
HARD DRIVE: Single Hard Drive (500GB SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache 7200RPM HDD)
Data Hard Drive: NONE
Optical Drive: (Special Price) LG 20X DVD±R/±RW + CD-R/RW DRIVE DUAL LAYER (BLACK COLOR)
Optical Drive 2: (Special Price) LG 20X DVD±R/±RW + CD-R/RW DRIVE DUAL LAYER (BLACK COLOR)
SOUND: HIGH DEFINITION ON-BOARD 7.1 AUDIO

The power supply isnt up to the recommeded wattage for a CF 4850 system.
For example Sapphire recommends 550Watts for a 2x 4850 CF system. (look under system requirements)
http://www.sapphiretech.com/us/pro [...] p?gpid=244

Your case choice seems to be more expensive that it needs to be.
Look for a X38 or X48 motherboard instead of the P45 and choose a less expensive case.

oops, i missed the power supply. yeah, for that build, at least 550W is needed. but realistically, drop the second video card, get maybe a P43 board, E7200 processor, and 2GB PC6400 ram. also, stick to brand names for ram. spore is able to run on intel X3100 integrated graphics, so that shows how little power is needed to play this game. even a 4650 would probably be enough.

even for similar types of games you don't need much power. both of those games could be played on an old pentium 4 system with a geforce 6 or 7-series video card. unless you plan on getting into shooter games, you won't need that kind of power. i'm not even sure if spore is gonna support crossfire.

I have not bought the monitor yet for the system. I was first trying to find a decent machine then looking into the monitor. Most likely will be going with something along a 20" screen, but not sure what the resolution is yet, something in the $200-$250 range most likely.
I appreciate your guys help on this.

Looks like a smoking setup. Should play anything you want to play pretty darn well. Be it Spore, Crysis, Sims 2, Sims 3, Age of Conan, whatever.

If money isn't a big deal, I'd build it just like you've got it (with that 650W Power Supply of course). As someone else noted, stick with Corsair or a solid brand of memory. Cheap memory is just that, cheap. Higher failure rates, and lesser performance.

I'm not familiar with what EA is suggesting for specs on the Sims 3 game (ie system requirements) but I wouldn't sell yourself to short. I've played Sims 2 (on an older machine) and it is more of a resource hog than folks think. Course, I always played at the highest settings my PC could handle.

Like I said though, if the money isn't a big deal for you, your build is a pretty sweet system. But two of the 4850's is more than you "need" for Spore and Sims 3 more than likely.

the only thing i would add to that would be 4GB of ram instead of 2. it will make vista run so much smoother, and i'm especially gonna recommend this because you chose vista x64. other than that, it looks like a good build. definitely more power than you need, but hey, there's no such thing as a computer that's too fast