Building SLI Gaming Computer

Hello. 5-7 Years is certainly pushing it though I'm not sure what you do...

First of all the 650 is not an i3 it is an i5. If you are talking about an i5 650 then I would advise you to reconsider your CPU choice. i5 6XX are not gaming CPUs, they are a waste of money for it. Instead your choices are i3 530 or i5 750, since you seem to be going for the 650 then I will assume this is your budget ($180). The 750 costs $190 and is a much better buy and will allow you to last longer without an upgrade.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

The board you have chosen supports x8/x8 Crossfire but not SLI. The following board features x8/x8 SLI though lacks USB/SATA 3 (I'm not sure if you require them):
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

Yes AMD is great but if your SLI then its better to go with Intel.

You do not really require an 850W PSU if you are not looking to upgrade. A quality 650W should do you fine and save a chunk of money.

Hope that helps.  

If you are comitted to using AMD and SLI you can always buy this motherboard:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130235&cm_re=MSI_NF750-G55-_-13-130-235-_-Product

I was looking at a similar thing to keep my GTX 275 and add one in SLI while going to a quad core AMD chip.

For AMD... I would go with this motherboard instead... MSI NF980-G65 AM3 NVIDIA nForce 980a SLI HDMI ATX AMD Motherboard

For Intel... I would go with one of these motherboard... MSI P55-GD65 USB3 LGA 1156 Intel P55 USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard or ASUS P7P55D-E Pro LGA 1156 Intel P55 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

Thanks Guys..
So Motherboard MSI P55-GD65 would support SLI.. I thought P55-GD65 wont support SLI. Instead MSI P55A-GD65 would support it. Please confirm. there is one more MSI P55-GD55. How about this one as well?
MSI motherboards are cheaper and still in budget for me rather than the Asus one.
So I would like to go with MSI motherboard but not sure which one.

Also would I3 530 be a good processor to handle SLI and would it be compatible with LGA 1156 motherboard.
I would do the SLI in some one year or so.

Here is MSI's website that says SLI support, which confirms what Newegg says.
http://www.msi.com/index.php?func=prodmbspec&maincat_no...

As for the CPU, the i3-530 is a capable gaming CPU [works on the LGA 1156]. I would rather see a i5-750/760 used but it maybe outside of your budget.

With a bit of OCing there will be guaranteed NO bottleneck from the i3. It is a nice CPU for the money.

Great guys... That relieves me of some pressure/tension...
With CPU/Mobo decided.. I would be doing an SLI of 2 GTX 460. What do you think should be the power requirement. I dont think Nvidia says about the power requirement for a GTX 460 SLI.
What should be the PSU wattage and +12v requirement for both the cards?

Here are the power requirements for the GTX 460...

GeForce GTX 460 (Fermi) 768MB-1GB 192-256bit GDDR5

Core Clock: 675mhz
Shader Clock: 1350mhz
Cuda Cores: 336
Effective Memory Clock:
Power Consumption at Idle: 29 watts
Power Consumption at Full Load: 180 watts

The recommended power supply is 450 watt with two 6 pin PCI Express connectors. For SLI 650 watt power supply is recommended.

Recommended 36 Amps on the 12 volt rail 50 Amps for SLI.

In otherwards, you need at least a 650 watt Quality power supply (SeaSonic, Corsair or Antec for example). If you want to be on the safe side, you can go with a 750 watt PSU.

So Corsair TX750W should be good enough?

Yes... The Corsair CMPSU-750TX is plenty strong enough.  

Thanks buddy....

I see that MSI P55-GD65 has i5/i7 support. I am not sure if it would support i3 as well. On some sites it say to upgrade bios. How would I update bios if it is a newly bought system with i3 already on it?

Would it make much of a difference running the pci express slots @ 8x/8x vs 16x/16x , which seems to be a main difference between the NF750-G55 verses the MSI NF980-G65

No there is basically no performance increase with dual x16. With 2 5970s you will start to see it though.

Though if you want to CF more then 2 cards it is required so that you don't have to run at x8/x4/x4.

I believe if you are going for resolution of 2560s or playing the games in 3 or more monitors then you would see the difference between 16x/16x and 8x/8x. Rest it remains same.

No x8/x8 is just as good with 1080p as it is with massive resolutions. See this review shall you:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/p55-pci-express-sca...

then what better does X16/X16 has?

A 5970 can have a bit of a bottleneck with x8/x8 but the main reason is if you are running more than 2 cards. If you run more then two cards with a x8/x8 board it would be more like x8/x4/x4 where as running it on a x16/x16 board it would be x16/x8/x8.

Best answer selected by vermakhil.