Gaming build with price and future proofing in mind

[Wolfshart]

Hello, this is my first post so be nice anyway...I have been looking to upgrade for some time now and I have been looking around at different forums to get a general idea of what to get. I have listed below what I had in mind and would really appreciate any feed back about compatability of components and how "future proof" I am. I plan on running this comp for 3+ years without upgrades. My main concerns in that regard is the motherboard and power supply which I chose due to this type of future upgrading in mind. With that I'm still torn between Vista 32bit and 64bit and weather to run with the current setup (SLI) or get crossfire compatable components since it seems to be more forgiving on compatabilitiy issues (hardware and software wise) For the price is it worth it to go SLI or crossfire? Should I stick with just one real nice card and look at upgrading to either SLI or crossfire later? Or is this a pain to add a second card in later as I have heard? I know it is a somewhat involved shotgun type question but any help would help me out greatly considering I'm having to write this while in Safe Mode on my slowly dieing comp...

CAS: Apevia X-Jupiter Jr. 420 Watts Case

CS_FAN: Extra 3-Color Neon Light LED Case Fan (2 x Fans)

CPU: (Quad-Core)Intel® CoreTM 2 Quad Q6600 @ 2.4GHz 1066FSB 8MB L2 Cache 64-bit

CD: (Special Price) 20X DVD±R/±RW + CD-R/RW DRIVE DUAL LAYER

CD2: 16X DVD ROM

FLASHMEDIA: INTERNAL 12in1 Flash Media Reader/Writer

FAN: INTEL LGA775 CERTIFIED CPU FAN & HEATSINK

HDD: Single Hard Drive (320GB SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache 7200RPM HDD)

KEYBOARD: PS2 MULTIMEDIA INTERNET CONTROL KEYBOARD

MOUSE: Logitech Optical Wheel Mouse

MOTHERBOARD: (3-Way SLI & QX9650 Support) EVGA nForce 780i SLI Mainboard FSB1333 DDR2 3 x PCIe x16 SATA RAID w/ USB2.0,IEEE1394,&7.1Audio

MEMORY: 3GB (3x1GB) PC6400 DDR2/800 Memory

OS: Microsoft® Windows VistaTM Home Premium w/ Service Pack 1

POWERSUPPLY: 635 Watts Power Supplies Sigma Shark SP-635W PSU - SLI Ready

SPEAKERS: 600Watts PMPO Subwoofer Stereo Speakers

VIDEO: EVGA NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT 512MB 16X PCI Express

VIDEO2: EVGA NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT 512MB 16X PCI Express

_PRICE: ($1505)

[Daydreamer]

I think the mobo of preference with the guys around here is the ASUS P5K-E
You might want to have a look at them http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...cription=p5k-e

I have an old ASUS P2B-f mobo that is about 10years old and is still running. I am very pleased with their products.
I recentl;y installed an ASUS 8500GT graphics card and love it.

[Khalil]

Apevia power supplies stink. Look for FSP, Seasonic, Sparkle or Antec. You can get this case http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811129024 for good future proofing.
Avoid SLI with Intel builds, one 9600GT should do well for you, you can always upgrade later when the 9800 becomes available.
Go with an Asus motherboard instead of the Evga.

[Cricket]

"Future proofing" is a myth. You really can't "future proof" your computer, as soon as you build your computer it's already getting old and in a few months there'll be newer, faster parts that will make your computer start to look old and slow to you. All you can do is build the computer to fit your needs and hope that those newer, faster parts aren't released the day after your computer is built.

Just use your computer for as long as you can, upgrade when you need to and build a new one when the time comes. If you're a gamer then your timeline is much shorter than someone who just surfs the net and checks email with his computer.

Cricket

[David M]

Wolfshart,
I totally agree with Cricket. The day you receive your computer parts is the same day that something new just came out. You cant predict what will be out in two years, so forget trying to future proof a computer. Just keep what you got until there is something out there that you really want that your existing computer simply wont run (which is exactly your situation now)..and then upgrade to a new computer. (like you are)

I just bought that same motherboard http://www.evga.com/articles/385.asp thinking that I eventually want the option of three-way SLI when Nvidia comes out with cards that have the G92 GPU that are also three way SLI compatible. That motherboard can use up to three graphics cards. The power supply you have listed is not powerful enough to run three high end graphics cards. http://www.slizone.com/object/slizone_build_psu.html Which makes for a bit of a mismatch, so either upscale your PSU or downscale your motherboard. I would upscale the PSU since it is a damn nice board. The board does have the newest nvidia 780i chipset which the ASUS P5K-E does not. I did quite a bit of research on this EVGA board and people are liking it. A number of companies that build high end gaming computers are also using this board. It also supports ESA which I think is a cool new feature.

I purchased this power supply, which will support three graphics cards. It is quieter because it has a variable speed 120mm fan on top and it is less expensive than the equivalent PC Power & Cooling PSU...both of which are approved for SLI. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...RS-C50-EMBA-D2

If you are going to do SLI , its a smart thing to go with SLI approved hardware. You can find out what is approved for SLI by Nvidia by going to this website. http://www.slizone.com/object/slizone_ecosystem.html

If you want a faster drive I would consider the Seagate Barracuda with 32 megs of RAM cache.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822148288

I would wait a bit for the 45nm E8500 dual core to come out. Its going to be highly overclockable (over 4GHz on air cooling), much more so than the Q6600 for about the same price. Applications that can utilize a quad core are pretty much non-existent. So a quad core is sort of a waste of money at this point in my opinion.

I would go with a single overclocked 512mb 8800GT with the G92 GPU. It is at a sweet price/performance point. Add another one one in the future for SLI. Warning, these are not 3-way compatible. As it stands now, you have to buy an older 8800GTX with the older G90 GPU in order to get three way SLI....hopefully Nvidia will fix this "problem" pretty soon.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130318

David

[TwoRails]

Not to stir the proverbial pot, but isn't that AMD's Spider platform's biggest selling point? Upgradability down the road?

[Wolfshart]

What is the AMD Spider Platform? As far as the PSU...I will swich it out with a Thermaltake 700W.
Now what I'm looking at is weather to get one good video card for now and only worry about upgrading by adding more GPUs later since the Mobo and CPU should last me a couple years without the need for upgrade (the option is there to upgrade the CPU if need be with the mobo I selected) Now the real question then is how hard is it to get SLI or Crossfire going from a one GPU setup? I heard crossfire is easier on the upgrade due to the ability to match unlike GPUs so should I go that route? I'm alittle curious about the CPU as well...I know most games can't use the quad core so should I go with an E6850 dual core or the Q6600 quad? So basicly I'm torn weather to get one GPU and upgrade to multiple later or go with 2 lower grade GPUs in SLI or crossfire first since it will already be setup that way it will be more plug and play in the future without having to worry about seting up the multiGPU stuff later. Thanks for the help!

[TwoRails]

Here's one article:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=7083

and from AMD's site:

http://multicore.amd.com/us-en/AMD-M...ge/Spider.aspx