Building a i7 Gaming/Computation Computer ($2500-3000 budget)

Looks good, but I wouldn't bother with the i7 940, and instead find an i7 920 with D0 stepping.

You may want to look at Sapphire's VaporX HD4890. It uses a good aftermarket cooler, which will allow for higher overclocks. I believe they also have an Atomic Edition 4890, which comes factory overclocked to 1GHz on the core.

-I'm not confident in your choice of heatsink, you should check out this list: http://www.frostytech.com/top5heatsinks.cfm

-Yes, that PSU is more than enough.

-There will always be a bottleneck of some sort, it depends on what game or application you're running, but that system will be able to max out anything out there, except maybe Crysis with 16xAA.

-There would be a benefit, but certainly not worth the extra money.

-Which cards would perform better depends on the games you play. Some games work better on Nvidia's architecture, some on ATI's, you'd have to look up some benchmarks to find out.

-Yes, all of those components are compatible.

I'll be using Matlab/Comsol the most. However, I do write other programs that are purely for crunching numbers. Due to the fact that the Xeon's are a older architecture and that I'm also looking for a beastly gaming computer, the i7's may be better in that regard.

I'll switch to the 920 and overclock it. I've been doing research since I posted this, and it appears that is the best method.

As far as the bottlenecking comment, I was asking if either the CPU or GPU was blatantly bottlenecking to the point that I should either upgrade one or downgrade the other. For example, there is no point in getting three 4870x2's because no processor would be able to feed all three enough information to keep all three busy.

I'll look into the link about the heat sinks. It seems like there are some newer ones designed specifically for the i7 processors that are pretty good.

I'm considering switching the 4890's for two GTX 285. Any thoughts on this?

I'm also considering two 300gb 10000rpm velociraptors in Raid 0 as the primary storage space. Would the performance be worth the $400 it costs from these HDD? Or should I spend in the money elsewhere?

Thanks for the comments!

Mindless, I appreciate your thoughts. That is definitely something that I hadn't considered before. It seems like I'll either have to take a large hit in processor speed or cost if I go with a server CPU.

I know that CPU processors then to be of higher quality (and more overclockable), but the performance/cost ratio concerns me.

I have to admit though, I'm only moderately knowledgeable of processors and I'm never really dealt with server CPU's. Are there more benefits to server CPU's that caused your initial recommendation?

Based on the recommendations from this forum and another, I've made the following changes to the specs:
-switched CPU to the 2.66GHz version (will overclock)
-switched from ATI 4890's to Nvidia 285's (more expensive, but better drivers, features, and higher clock speeds)
-switched to OCZ Gold RAM (cheaper and equivalent to the previously selected ram)
-changed HDD's to two 500GB (RAID 0) and one 1TB (backup)
-changed case to Antec's 902 (better for OCing)
-removed mouse (the differences between Logitech's G5 and the MX518 that I currently own weren't worth the $50)
-changed the wireless adapter to a usb dongle (it received far better reviews, I've also heard that SLI on that MOBO may block the PCI slots)
-switched from Arctic Silver 5 to Arctic Cooling MX-2 (non-conductive, better cooling performance)
-changed keyboard to Logitech's G15 (expensive, but I like many of the features)

I've looked into the MOBO/case/heatsink combo to make sure that they the one I select will fit. I know that others have had problems with the Noctua heatsink on other cases/MOBO's.

The Noctua heatsink has received really good reviews. Thanks for the link Fortunex, but I think that I'm going to stink with this one.

Also, people have had problems with the OCZ Platinum ram overvoltaging itself. Due to the fact that I'm going to overclock and that everything is expensive, I'm a little worried about that. However, the OCZ gold ram appeared to be okay and was a little cheaper. As a result, I'm currently planning on going with the OCZ gold.

I have one more question before I order everything tomorrow evening. Does anyone know of a place to buy the D0 stepping version of the processor? I've found the following two websites that offer it for $320 + $10 S&H. That is about $50 than on Newegg for a guaranteed D0 stepping CPU. I'm not afraid to spend more to get the D0 CPU's, but $50 seems like a lot for the guarantee. I'm tempted to just order from Newegg and see which one I get. The C0 cores should be getting phased out, but there are still reports of people getting them from Newegg within the last few days.

http://www.tankguys.com/intel-core-i7-920-d0.html
http://www.ncixus.com/products/388 [...] 0D0/Intel/

I would get the Antec 1200 over the 900 if you are getting 2 GTX 285's in SLI because they are preeety big (I have 2 GTX 275's SLI'd in a 900 case and both cards get pretty hot due to the lack of space).

*facepalm*

Don't even consider anything but an i7 if your budget is over $1500US