$1900 Gaming/Production PC

[Murrawhip]

Approximate Purchase Date: Within the next 2 weeks
Budget Range: ~$1900 CAD, inc shipping
System Usage from Most to Least Important: Photoshop, 3D prod, gaming, folding@home
Parts Not Required: I need everything new.
Preferred Website(s) for Parts: Newegg.ca or anywhere else if it saves me some cash
Country of Origin: Canada
Parts Preferences: Intel
Overclocking: Maybe
SLI or Crossfire: Maybe
Monitor Resolution: 1920x1080, maybe an aditional monitor down the track.
Additional Comments: I require everything including peripherals.


Muh list:

Link Depot 6 ft. HDMI TO HDMI A/V Cable Model HDMI-2-HDMI - OEM $2.99

ASUS DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS Black SATA 24X DVD Burner - Bulk - OEM $20.99

COOLER MASTER HAF 932 RC-932-KKN1-GP Black Steel ATX Full Tower Computer Case $139.99

CORSAIR CMPSU-850TX 850W ATX12V 2.2 / EPS12V 2.91 SLI Ready CrossFire Ready Active PFC Power Supply $149.99

SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD502HJ 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive $54.99

ASUS VH242H Black 23.6" 5ms HDMI Full 1080P Widescreen LCD Monitor $189.99

SAPPHIRE 100311SR Radeon HD 6970 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card with Eyefinity $369.99

Logitech 920-000914 Black USB Wired Ultra-thin Illuminated Keyboard $83.99

Logitech G9x Black Two modes scroll USB Wired Laser Gaming Mouse $109.99

G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Desktop Memory Model F3-10666CL9D-8GBRL $89.99

MSI P67A-GD65 LGA 1155 Intel P67 USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard $179.99

Intel Core i5-2500K Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz (3.7GHz Turbo Boost) LGA 1155 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor BX80623I52500K $229.99

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Total price for the build, including shipping, is $1874.66 CAD (With $45 in mail-in rebates)

So I have a couple of questions regarding my build.

1.
I'd like to leave the possibility open of getting a second 6970 later on. Would the PSU and motherboard both support this? I was concerned with most of the motherboards not supporting 2 x16 PCIe?

2.
I've never overclocked before, and I don't intend to overclock the CPU for a couple of months at least. (Allowing for some mature sandybridge guides to be produced) Would the case and stock cooling support a moderate overclock? (for a newbie)

3.
Is there anything I can do significantly better?



Thanks so much for whatever advice you could provide me with.

 

[mdd1963]

I suspect the X-Fire/SLI benchmarks for socket 1155 mbs will still show substantial improvement, but, would take a performance hit for PCI-e bandwidth limitations; will have to wait and see the SLI/Xfire benches, but, I suspect SandyBridge mainboards will not scale as well as X58 in SLI/Xfire

 

[Murrawhip]

I suspect the X-Fire/SLI benchmarks for socket 1155 mbs will still show substantial improvement, but, would take a performance hit for PCI-e bandwidth limitations; will have to wait and see the SLI/Xfire benches, but, I suspect SandyBridge mainboards will not scale as well as X58 in SLI/Xfire

My experience in multi-GPU setups is relatively non-existent, so I've been googling quite a bit about it recently.
According to this: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/08/23/gtx_480_sli_pcie_bandwidth_perf_x16x16_vs_x8x8/ there may not be significant loss of performance when comparing x16/x16 to x8/x8 with high-end GPUs?
Is this the general consensus?