Could someone briefly review this please?

Well im not as knowledge as some of the people on this site, but I can give ya some basic information.

First off do you plan on getting a second gtx 280 ? If not intel is known to make better motherboards, and the whole ddr3 thing is well really expensive for minimal upgrades.

great cpu.

For the ram, if it were me id go with ddr2 (which would mean a ddr2 motherboard) , but if you really want ddr3 maybe get 4 gigs of something a little cheaper would probably be better performance since having really really high frequency ram isnt gonna do much for ya.

And for powersupplies thermaltake isnt known for being one of the best.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

or http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

are imo significantly better psus.

Now im sure other people who know alot more than me could give ya better advice, but if you plan on just using one gtx 280 (aka not going sli) then youre spending alot more money than you have to for almost the same performance.

Hell I bet for the same price if you switched to a ddr2 motherboard ddr2 ram, and the corsair powersupply you could have 4 gigs of ram and 2 gtx 280s in sli.

Id go with the corsair psu, both are great but the corsair is great and cheaper.

Stick with the 780i mobo and go with ddr2. This will save you some good money and you wont get penalized on performance.

Unless you dont want to overclock, I would go with the Q6600 and OC the hades out of it. You will be able to get to 3.0 ~ 3.6 gigs if you do. If you dont intend to OC and have the extra money to put into the Q9550 then have at it.

The amount of money you will spend on the hardware you have listed wont give you enough of a performance boost over what I recommended to justify it...

I am planning on eventually going SLI, and I'd like to stick with this mobo since it's got 3 PCIe 2.0 slots for this.

As for the RAM, is there really not all that much diff created by the MHz? Can DDR2 go to 8 gigs?

That first PSU looks like it only has capability for 2 GPU's (I'd like 3 eventually, possibly) and the cables are not modular (attach only what you need)

Same issue with the second PSU. Also I'd found a site that does crazy tough testing on the PSUs and the toughpower was one of their highest rated for reasons like the solidity of components used inside and true efficient power.

If you do go with the 790i then you probably don't need a sound card as the onboard is very good I couldn't tell any difference when I removed mine.

Well fergie I plan on doing mixing of sound on the rig so I figured I'd offload as much stress from the CPU as possible. Also I'm in love with the seperate controls on a front 5.25" bay!

You want to eventually do tri sli with gtx 280s ?

Im guessing you have an amazing monitor ?

And yes you can do 8 gigs of ddr2 if the motherboard supports it.

well, not really an amazing monitor. I just figured that in a few years when crysis 3 or something comes out I'll possibly need 3 cards to get some goog gameplay.

I have a Dell 2408WFP 24" lcd monitor that supports 1080p, so it's definitely decent, but from what I understand the newest graphics cards can already put out higher resolution than that!

That depends on the speakers/headphones/headsets you're using. If you're using really nice speakers/headphones/headsets, then usually the difference is quite noticeable. People often forget that the speakers are just as important as (or even more important than) the sound card.

My old 8600gt that I paid 25$ for could put out a higher resolution then that, its just playing games on it thats a different story.

And yeah the hard core monitors are all like 2560x1600 but they start over a grand and then you need some serious hardware to play them. Even then im sure youd have to put some settings down, and very likely could never do much with aa/antiscopic filtering

I'm using creative T40s and they sound great also my 5.1 headphones but for mixing and the like then yeah obviously you will need decent sound card I should have asked first.

before that, i mix full lengths albums on my computer at times because i'm a dj...and i can tell you, do not use speakers when you're mixing with an audio program, headset is the only way to go.

and about the part of you tri-sli because you want to play crysis 3 at good FPS a FEW YEARS from here, the problem with that is, you are spending tons of money now for a game that will come out in a few years?

i'm pretty sure, a few years from here, a mid-range card would probably give you far better FPS than your tri-sli and probably saved you a few hundred bucks now.

just look at 2 years ago around this time, what did ATI have? the R500 series aka the X1300, X1550...etc etc , and now it has the R700 series, HD 4850/70 etc...the difference is light years in between.

and 2 years ago around this time from Nvidia, you have the G71 GPU series, which is the 7900 GT/GTO...and just one generation after that with the G80 and G92, most prominent is the 8800GTS (G92), you see a new standard bar raised so high that all the old series is obsolete.

save your money and upgrade again when the time is right instead of going tri-sli. just my opinion to try to save you money.

I have the 780i and its a tri-SLI mobo just the same as the 790i, it just uses the cheaper ddr2 memory. That is why I recommend it.

Aznguy0028 is right, you get excited about being able to go tri-sli and by the time you get enough coin together to buy 3 of the same card theres a release on a new video card that will outperform the 3 cards together, that is unless you are fairly rich and can buy them all 3 now.

I had those same intentions and you know what? I have 2 8800GTX ANS3 cards in SLI with a pci slot cooling fan in between them and theres the 280 series cards out now that makes my plans sensless and Im back where I started if I want a higher performance setup. Getting a 3rd card makes no sense and tbh replacing my 2 current cards to get a new 280 doesnt make sense either so Im trapped either way.

The only thing that makes sense for me now is to wait for the next generation card and replace when I can get 30% or more performance boost with 1 card.

And guess what? I still wont have tri-sli. I bought a new house and my priorities have changed and it may never happen.

You could save yourself some good money and get a regular SLI motherboard and get two video cards and get the same performance.

If you must get a tri-sli mobo then get the 780i. But I do recommend that you get a standard sli mobo and save some money.

Thanks guys, but the 780i won't run sli in PCIe 2.0, effectively halving the bandwidth for the graphics throughput!

First check out http://erictopiavill.myminicity.com and compare your rig with other configurations (everyone should check it out). After you visit my minicity rest assured you have a good rig and I fully endorse it. Lastly, please dont ban me!

You wont notice the difference between pcie 1.0 and 2.0. You are spending a ton of extra money for pcie 2.0 and ddr3 that will give you the least benefit of performance for the money.

I dont recommend it unless you simply have tons of money to burn for not good reasons...