New System Gaming Oriented

[shade2399]

Hello all, this is a new system I managed to build for under $1000 US. Please scan and see if you see anything that looks terrible or out of place. Mostly for gaming, I have a small living space and as such use a monitor that confines me to 1650 x 1080 res so don't worry bout higher resolutions for now.

Asus Sabertooth P67 MB (I know about the recall, I only need 3-4 Sata ports max and it has 8 only 4 of which have an issue.)
Intel i5 2500k (sandybridge)
8 Gigs Ripjaw 1600 cas 9
Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB SATA III
2x EVGA GTX 460 FTW EE in SLI config (I got an amazing deal from a retailer in town sold me both for $299.99 US)
Windows 7 64 Bit
Corsair 750HX PSU (Again Great deal, got it for $99.99)
I already had a Coolermaster CM 690 mid tower sitting around, and a suitable DVD +rw drive.

Total delivered price including taxes was US $1035.72 I know the Caviar Black isn't the greatest.. but I need a drive that is SATA III compliant due to the sandybridge issue, and I couldn't beat the price of $79.99. Anyway, please critique.

 

[WR2]

Hello shade2399;
You did good. You'll get a recall notice on your MB eventually. Enjoy your system till then.

750HX looks like the best bargain you dug up.
Did the dealer also pass along the rebate offer on the EVGA GTX 460?
Or did he keep the rebates to give you the twofer @ 299?

You can get 1920x1080 resolution in smaller 21" monitors these days.

 

[shade2399]

he gave me both of the GPU's for 300 total... 150 a pop.. cheapest i found them elsewhere was 224.99 (circuit city/tiger direct after rebate) they are both unopened in box and he did give me the $20 rebates though i will admit I am terrible at doing rebates lol. I think he was just clearing space for newer 500 series cards and 6000 series. I found the 750 HX at a small computer store in San Francisco, unopened in the box, guy really wanted to make the sale and I was willing to walk so he dropped the price really low, not sure if business is really bad or what?

On the other note regarding my monitor, its a semi old but in great condition samsung 2232 BW. Not huge, but really nice.

As far as the recall, I'm not sure if I even care to send it back.. I have never run more than 2 hard drives and I don't like having more than 1 optical drive so I don't really know if I need the other 4 Sata II ports... on top of that it has 2 external SATA ports I can use, and I could always get a PCI SATA card if need be... although the P67 seems a bit short on the PCI lanes (I have heard that the PCI lanes are more efficient though and can handle nearly as much per 8 lanes as 16 lanes on the older X58 chipset?)

 

[WR2]

Others have said the same thing about not being worth sending back if there's no need for the possibly affected SATA 3GB/s ports.
You'll have time (while enjoying your new system) to read what the real experts say about the pros & cons of skipping the recall.

 

[WR2]

Showing the upgraded PCI-e bandwidth over the 5x series boards. 5GT/s vs 2.5GT/s

 

[shade2399]

Ah thank you for the chart. SHows that even with SLI running at 8x/8x it will perform as well as an older system doing 16x/16x. I knew I read that somewhere but couldn't find it and I keep wanting to yell at people who are bashing the p67's not having 2 16x lanes for SLI but without the proof I felt stupid haha. thank you!