Please Rate - Ultimate Gaming System -

I have been doing a lot of work on designing my system i will be building in august of this year. If you could please rate my setup 1 - 10 . reasons/suggestions appreciated.

I would also like to add i will most likely be sticking to this exact layout with very few changes if any at all, i have designed this system for the ability to upgrade in the future and be the best bang for my buck gaming system i can make.

Case - Cooler Master ATC 201-B $169.00
+ 4 Fans ( Blue LED )

Power Supply - Enermax 550w $149.00

Motherboard - ABIT Ic7-G $228.00 note: i know it didn't perform well in original testing, however after reviews on many pages, i feel it can be OC to par with other boards and offers many upgrades for future expansions , more so then my other option of the Asus Deluxe.

CPU- p4 3.0mhz 800 $350

RAM - Corsair 1 gig (512 x 2) XMS 3500 $270

Monitor - Hitachi 19" cm 772 $300

Video Card - ATI Radeon 9800 pro 256 mb $400 .. this may change to nvidia, however atm i feel ATI would be the better solution, of course the price is also going to be quite lower by the time i get the system.

Sound Card - SB Audigy 2 $112.00

Hard Drives- Main OS/Games - Western Digital Raptor $146
Storage - WD spec Edition WD800JB 80GB $89.00

.. in future i may go with a RAID, however i don't have knowledge and time for it atm, so i will go with a main drive with a slave storage. hopefully these drives will give me the speed i desire in this setup.

DVD/CD - Pioneer slot load $50

CPU Cooler - Vantec Aeroflow VP4-C7040 $33

Speakers - Logitech THX Z560 4.1 dolby $140

Keyboard - Logitech Black Elite $36

Mouse - Logitech Mx500 $46 (not cordless of course)

EST Total $2500.00 US

....
The way i figure it by august most of this stuff will have dropped and shave off about $500 dollars, that will go towards software and other add-on's, but as this system stands, what do you guys think.

Thanks,
Muntaro

Looking Good...

RIG
Asus A7N8X Deluxe
80gb Maxtor
Lian-Li PC-60
Lite-On 52X
AMD XP2800+
LeadTek GeForce 4 Ti4200 w/vivo 128mb 8x
Hitachi CML174
1 GB Corsair XMS PC3200 Cas2

* Stay with the Corsair.

* I'm not familiar with the Zalman.

System looks awesume. You will be ab;e to upgrade for the next couple of years. Ram stay with Corsair XMS PC 3500.

I agree with the others that it will be a kick-ass system. Since you're planning on buying two hard-drives anyway, why not build a RAID 0? That would virtually eliminate the one potential bottleneck in your system.

I agree the choice of speakers could be better. On the other hand, maybe you don't want to spend $300-plus for speakers. I like the Megaworks 6.1 THX system myself.

Other than that, looking good...


<font color=green>The Netherlands is where you go when you're too good for heaven.</font color=green>

I actually reccomend the Abit board. It uses high quality capacitors, and with new BIOS, it is on par with the Asus. It has one of the best layouts I have ever seen on a P4 board. I would get 2x80GB WD800JBs, the raptor is small, expensive, and not much faster than the WDs. I would reccomend this case <A HREF="http://www.frozencpu.com/cgi-bin/frozencpu/cas-01.html" target="_new">http://www.frozencpu.com/cgi-bin/frozencpu/cas-01.html</A>, I use one myself and it is a pretty quiet, high quality tooless case with A+ cooling and a mobo tray. I would also buy a Prescott since they will be out by then. If not, I would stay with the 3.0 GHz processor since it will have come down in price and is overclockable.

eBay, kick ass!

My 3DMark2001 Score: <A HREF="http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=6442995" target="_new">http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=6442995</A>
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I bought from Best Buy once. Once.