New gaming pc, now or wait?

Well Nehalem has about 8 threads cause of their new hyperthreading but currently games only use 2.
So at the start for games Nehalem will be more of a luxury.
But prices of current C2Q will drop as well as motherboards.

If u want to buy just need to no size of monitor and if u are overclocking

yea Nehalem will be a premium for awhile especially for SLI
if u can wait for it then do that....some say late September to October and others say December

@ PsyKhiq: isnt that the new Sonic game???

Well assuming that you building a whole new setup w/o a budget i'd wait for nehelam. If for nothing else it will let you choose between ati crossfire and nvidia sli on the high end boards. Also the extra threads will come in handy if you choose to do a multimonitor setup. I like to have a game running on one monitor and have IM, firefox and napster on the other.

Also Nehalem boards will more ram, they will up to 6 slots for ram. so putting 12 gigs will be easy. That will be great if you wanna setup some virtual machines to help with your business. Virtual macines are great cuz they can be backup entirely and taken from different pc to pc w/o any issues. Plus for owners of vista ultimate, business, and windows xp pro microsoft virtual PC is free.

yep my avatar if from the new sonic game.

This waiting for Nehelam makes a lot of sense if you enjoy riding the cutting edge. But keep in mind that there may be driver problems, reliability problems, possibly hardware bugs, etc. If you find dealing with those kind of fun (and many of us do, within reason) then grab Nehelem when you can. If you just wanna have fun playing on (not with) your computer, you might instead buy a quad core now and upgrade to Nahelem in 18 months or so.

So after thinking about it. I think I'd rather get a system now that I can depend a bit more on it's stability and drivers. Nehelam sounds good, but I definitely don't want to be buying this stuff right out of the gate. I'd rather upgrade later once all the kinks and drivers get worked out a bit.

So any suggestions on a build?

Like I said above, no plans for crazy overclocking. I use a 24" monitor that runs at 1900x1200

motherboard

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813131326

gpu
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814130367

cpu
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6819115131

they would be my 3 main components and i would build around them

well then here it goes...

MOBO - x48 chipset which will allow for full x16 in xfire. the P45 does not do that.
ASUS RAMPAGE FORMULA LGA 775 Intel X48 ATX Intel Motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813131284

CPU - my guess is you won't need a quad core but it makes the system more future proof.
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 Yorkfield 2.83GHz 12MB L2 Cache LGA 775 95W Quad
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6819115041

Heatsink -
XIGMATEK HDT-S1283 120mm Rifle CPU Cooler
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6835233003
and
XIGMATEK ACK-I7751 Retention Bracket
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6835233019

GPU - there are arguments for basically every card available but I chose this one because it can run anything on high to max settings and you get the best price/performance ratio. You could select the 4870x2 but you would not utitlize the card to its fullest. The 2nd part is that crysis is easily the most demanding game on the market. The 4850 can run it easily and crytek has apaprently started optimizing the the game so it is not as much of a resource hog. My guess is that as games progress and become more detailed the developers will find a way to make the games more PC friendly. Let's face it, the demands of crysis on your PC has been its reason for low sales. No one wants to spend $400-$700 upgrading a comp for one game.
SAPPHIRE 100242-1GL Radeon HD 4850 1GB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814102759

RAM - DDR2 800 @ 1.8v. anything else is overkill with little to no advantage.
mushkin 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6820146731

HDD #1 - pure speed. use for OS and games or frequently used apps that are resource hogs.
Western Digital VelociRaptor WD3000GLFS 300GB 10000 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6822136260

HDD #2 - storage and backup
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST31500341AS 1.5TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6822148337

PSU- room if you ever decide to xfire or jump up in the next generation of cards.
CORSAIR CMPSU-1000HX 1000W ATX12V 2.2 / EPS12V 2.91 SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6817139007

CD/DVD Burner - ummm, I just picked 1 with a high rating get 2
LG Black 20X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 16X DVD+R DL 20X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 12X DVD-RAM 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM 2MB Cache SATA 20X DVD±R DVD Burner w/ SecurDisc Tech - OEM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6827136149

Case - its big and has good airflow
Thermaltake Armor Series VA8000BWS Black Aluminum / Steel ATX Full Tower Computer Case
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6811133154

OS -
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 64-bit English for System Builders 1pk DSP OEI DVD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6832116488



I didn't include a keyboard or mouse. Total price before mail-in-rebates and shipping = $2165. The only thing I would consider upgrading in this is the GPU but either way the 4870x2 is overkill. Another thing to consider is an SSD for your OS/main apps drive. TBH, I don't know enough about them to make a recommendation.

Wow, thanks for the amazing post. I'll be taking a look at all of this over the weekend. The only question I had was the one you also had at the end, and that was about SSD HD's and if they are worth it.

Here is a good SSD to standard HDD comparison.

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=561