Making my gaming computer, advice please!

[Ryder]

Okay guys I have the money to build myself a bare bones gaming computer, I wont be buying any hard drives, disk drives, or sound cards as I already have that in my old rig. I just need some advice on the parts I am buying:

Motherboard
The Motherboard


Processor
Quad Core Processor (OH YEAH!)


RAM
RAM


Graphics Card
Graphics Card


Power supply
Power Supply


Computer Case
Computer Case


Fan
I decided not to get an after market fan as both my GPU and CPU have their own fans. Plus the computer casing comes with two 120mm fans that are controllable from the front of the computer. Anybody advise against this?


Now a question that I really need answered is, will that power supply be enough for everything? I plan to overclock my processor if I must and I plan to buy another pair of 2GB RAM sticks to have a total of 8GBs of RAM. Will the power supply be enough for all of that? If not what will I have to get?

Huge thanks to samestory98 for helping me with everything, especially changing my dual core processor to the quad!

Current cost (with shipping): $1144.99 USD

[Kernel Kev]

Mobo - good choice, ram capabilities is enough with the DDR2 800 and 8gig capacity.

CPU - nothing to say about that beast.

RAM - before i even clicked the link i was saying "4gig minimum", personnally i prefer corsair sticks.

Graphics card - i dont know much about these but i know that you will defo be safe with the high end games.

PSU - There are websites out there that calculate what you might need, i would look for a 750w if you are gonna overclock it.

Case - ATX, yep, very nice indeed.

Fan - well enough

As i said above, you might want to look at a 750w PSU just in case now i just read that you putting in another card.

Nice bit of kit. BTW, the HDD's would benefit the system if they were SATA and running raid.



Kev

[samestory98]

fan: Newegg.com - ZALMAN CNPS9700 LED 110mm 2 Ball CPU Cooler - Retail


8800GT is a great card, motherboard seems fine, it all seems good.

but, may i suggest this

[Ryder]

Originally Posted by samestory98

fan: Newegg.com - ZALMAN CNPS9700 LED 110mm 2 Ball CPU Cooler - Retail


8800GT is a great card, motherboard seems fine, it all seems good.

but, may i suggest this

Haha thanks, but any thoughts on the power supply?

[samestory98]

well an850 watt... thats really overkill for what you're getting, but if you plan on running SLI, overclocking, and maybe adding some stuff to it, it's fine :P


but still, im sticking with an 850 for my future build at the moment, and it'll be overkill for me too.

[Ryder]

Originally Posted by samestory98

well an850 watt... thats really overkill for what you're getting, but if you plan on running SLI, overclocking, and maybe adding some stuff to it, it's fine :P


but still, im sticking with an 850 for my future build at the moment, and it'll be overkill for me too.

Yes I plan on using the SLI to add another 8800 down the road and plan to get another 4GB of RAM. Also I plan to buy at least two 250GB HDDs down the road. Would that still be over kill?

[Berserk_Fury]

I just found something interesting that may make me go for an ATI card instead of Nvidia.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814121228

Although it costs about $450, it has a power of two HD 3870 GPUs in a single card that only takes up a single PCIe port. It can also be expanded to crossfire which will turn it into basically Quad GPU system. I know this was done before by Nvidia with 7950gx2, but I believe that this is the first DX10 card to do this.

Another thing I found out is that the sandard HD 3870 is supposed to receive a drive update which will allow it to work in Quad Crossfire as well. The down side is that it will take up 4 PCIe slots. What I am wondering is which of the two possibilities will yield better performance.

Finally, this appears to me as a good reason to not get an Nvidia card, especially for the people that want to get the 8800gtx which is around the same price. I am not sure about benchmark comparisons between the HD3870x2 and 8800gtx, but I do know that the ATI card supports DirectX 10.1, which the Nvidia card does not.

So, what do you all think about this?

[Ryder]

I've always had a bias towards nVidia just as I've always had a bias towards Sony, but if this ATI card is 2x stronger than the 8800 then...wow...but too expensive either way so...

[samestory98]

Originally Posted by Ryder

Yes I plan on using the SLI to add another 8800 down the road and plan to get another 4GB of RAM. Also I plan to buy at least two 250GB HDDs down the road. Would that still be over kill?

lol no, but i think 850 would be enough... idk. maybe wanna get more? i dont know lol.


well, if you get a hd, look at the raptors.

and when you get another 4gb of ram, you might only wanna use that 4gb, as that ram will probably have better timings and such, but will be lowered.. well actually raised for timings... to match the ram you're buying now. get what i mean?

also, if you want to pay a little more, go for this: Newegg.com - EVGA 512-P3-N841-AR GeForce 8800GTS (G92) 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Retail

it's a step up from the 8800gt, and it competes with the GTX, even beating it sometimes.. and if you OC, it beats it for sure. and it's a cool card, as in not hot. and OC's well. though the 8800gt is all you really need for everything atm, except really crysis, but nothing is really crysis suited.

sorry for my horrible use of punctuation and stuff, im just trying to get this post done as fast as i can lol.

[samestory98]

to beserk, the 9800gtx2 or w/e is going to come out before the 9 series cards, and it'll be 2 8800gtxs, just like what you're saying.