Upgrading my PC this week (Advice needed)

Hello,

I have a pretty average PC sitting next to me. It's becoming pretty out-of-date and I'm willing to upgrade it this week, but I could use some advice.

Right now I have:

mobo: ASUS StrikerExtreme
cpu: e6700 @ 2.67 GHz
gpu: XFX 9800GTX+ XXX
ram: OCZ 2 x 1GB PC2-6400
psu: Thermaltake Toughpower 750 Watt
hdd: Seagate ST350063 0AS (500GB)
Western Digital WD15 00ADFD (150GB)

Unfortunatly, I noticed that my PSU doesn't provide enough Amp to keep my 9800GTX+ running propperly on games which need the extra power Which is one of the reasons I want to upgrade a few parts: the motherboard, the processor, ram and the PSU.

BTW: I'm a video-editor and I'm starting to feel the strain of editing video's on this computer. I need about 12GB of RAM to edit (HD) video files.

After I convinced myself to upgrade. I decided to search for some hardware and came up with this setup.

I'm from the Netherlands so I searched my parts on a site called www.alternate.nl but I'll try to find the part on newegg aswell so you don't have to translate anything


APPROXIMATE PURCHASE DATE: Preferably this week. BUDGET RANGE: Not more than €900,-

SYSTEM USAGE FROM MOST TO LEAST IMPORTANT: Video Editing, gaming.

PARTS NOT REQUIRED: Keyboard, mouse, sound system, monitor, HDD(?), WinVista 64-bit

PREFERRED WEBSITE(S) FOR PARTS: www.alternate.nl COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: the Netherlands

PARTS PREFERENCES: Intel

OVERCLOCKING: Maybe SLI OR CROSSFIRE: Maybe

MONITOR RESOLUTION: 1680x1050

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS: Since I'm a video editor I guess I need around 12GB of RAM to edit my HD video files.


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Motherboard: ASRock X58 Extreme Retail, FW, RAID, Gb-LAN, Sound, ATX
http://www.alternate.nl/html/produ [...] ocket+1366
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] -_-Product

€139,-

Processor: Intel® Core™ i7 920 (Boxed, FC-LGA4, "Bloomfield" )
http://www.alternate.nl/html/produ [...] seId=30612
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] -_-Product

€249,-

PSU: Cooler Master Silent Pro M 1000W (Retail)
http://www.alternate.nl/html/produ [...] n+600+Watt
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] -_-Product

€159,-

RAM: Corsair 12 GB DDR3-1600 Hex-Kit (Retail, HX3X12G1600C9)
http://www.alternate.nl/html/produ [...] =DDR3-1600
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] -_-Product

€242,-

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Here are some questions:


1: I'm also thinking of upgrading my XFX 9800GTX+ by putting in a second one (SLI) for €120,-. But is this upgrade worth it? Because I'm hearing across the internet that two 9800GTX+ isn't worth the cash.

BUT. I did a little 'research' myself (basically I looked at the graphic charts on this website) and I noticed that 9800GTX+ in SLI gives the same performance, or even better performance, as one 285GTX but buying a second 9800GTX+ is way cheaper.

So, which is it? Or shouldn't I be looking at nVidia and buy an ATI Radeon HD4890 single card?


2: Is this motherboard good for overclocking my CPU? Because I think I'm willing to OC the i7 920 above 3GHz.



I'm open for suggestions




Edit: On a bit of an important sidenote: How do ATI cards perform nowadays in terms of stability, heat, etc. Because when I used ATI cards a few years back I had some rather annoying problems with the stability and heat produced by the cards.
Has this changed over the years? Or is nVidia still better for stability?

I'm using Avid XpressPro, Adobe After Effects and sometimes Adobe Premiere Pro.

Well, I don't know where you're from, obsidian86. But I can hardly understand what you just said.

Maybe it's best to keep it english?

Anyway, I did figure out some of it:

I already have a nice Scythe processor cooler. I don't have to worry about temps.

And I like to get a 1000 watt PSU just to be safe and a bit more future proof.

The rest is all vague jibberish to me Sorry.

Thanks. It's much better now

About the RAM. Do you really think the lower latency is noticable? Because it seems an almost negligible difference to me.
But then again. Getting 2 sets of those is faster and cheaper. So why the hell not.

And about the PSU. I think 1000 watts would be better because I looked on the 9800GTX+ box and it said that, when put in SLI, I would need a minimum of 680 watts. Add to that an OC'ed i7 920, 12GB of RAM and extra's such as fans and DVD-burner. I highly doubt a 750 watt PSU would keep up?

But correct me if I'm wrong. I'm here to learn aswell

The 680w on the 9800 GTX box is total for the system, not just for the graphics cards. Its a conservative number. A good 750W PSU designed to run two graphics cards (has 4 PCIE power cables) should have no problem with two of them and some overclocking. If you have lots of extra internals, going up to an 850 might make sense.

Corsair tends to underrate their PSUs. Their modular 650W has 4 pcie power cables and as much 12v amperages as most companies 750W PSUs. The corsair 850 has 6 pcie cables and enough amperage to handle 3 GPUs.


Use a wattage calculator to get a better estimate of your true needs. Dont forget the aging setting at the bottom right.
http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp