$4000 usd budget

[Ebolavirus]

lokking to build for the future, not futureproofing no such thing.
this is what i had in mind, appreciate questions comments or better build ideas.

Apevia X-Telstar Aluminum Full Tower
Thermaltake W0131RU ToughPower 850 Watts
(Quad-Core)Intel® Core™ 2 Extreme QX9650 @ 3.8GHz 1333FSB 12MB L2 Cache 64-bit
Asetek Liquid CPU Cooling System
EVGA nForce 780i SLI Mainboard FSB1333 DDR2 3 x PCIe x16
4GB (2x2GB) PC6400 DDR2/800 Mushkin Xtreme w/ Heat Spreader
2 x NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT 512MB EVGA
300GB (150GBx2) Gaming Western Digital Rapter 10,000RPM SATA150 16MB Cache, raid0
160GB SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 8M Cache 7200RPM Hard Drive, data
20X DVD±R/±RW + CD-R/RW
Creative Labs SB X-Fi Xtreme Audio 24-BIT
Logitech Z-5500 Digital 5.1 Configuration Speakers System with Control
Killer K1 10/100/1000 Gigabit High Speed Online Gaming PCI Network Interface Card
Microsoft® Wireless Laser Desktop 6000 w/ Wireless Internet Keyboard & Laser Mouse
INTERNAL 12in1 Flash Media Reader/Writer
Windows Vista™ Home Premium 64-bit

have 3 24inch dell widescreen moniters and matrox
this will cost me 3558.00 before taxes/shipping

any comments, additions, and or advice appreciated

[Katreat]

Liquid cooling is more problems than it is worth for most people, are you doing it to OC the system or just for silance? I have not done it but be sure to read every review you can on pre-made kits because their history is not very good..... they often leak.

Not really a fan of SLI, you are paying a big premium for a small gain in speed with your build, but obviously you have the budget so everything looks compatable. I would personally go with two 8800 GTs instead of 9600s. From what I have read the performance increase in certain games with high resolution is noticable and with 3 24 in monitors it looks like you are going that direction. About $100 more but at this point that seem reasonable. Check out this review.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2008/03/...e_card_for_460

Kat

[Ebolavirus]

yes it is overclocked, the qx9650 comes as 3.0 ghz but in the barebones case/mb/cpu combo
with the 3.8 oc the manufacturer requires that you get the liquid cooling, as far as the 8800/9600 diffrence, my 2 friends have the diffrent cards in sli on dual core systems and the 9600 is better on vista, my main concern is that dx10 works well for mmo's (age of conan)
and dosent lag because of vista memory/cpu hogging. and about sli i didnt like it at first till i got my first one very big noticable diffrence in supported games espesially mmo's

[Katreat]

Well, liquid cooling can work wonders for keeping things cool and quiet. But I have read so many horror stories with cooling kits I always throw the warning out. I have always heard that it is better not to buy the kits and build the system up yourself with quality parts. It sounds like you are buying something pre-assembled so you probably don’t have a choice in that.

Not being a fan does not mean I don’t understand that SLI in many situations can be faster, it just means that in general I don’t think the cost justifies the performance gain. Some of it is just that I am more budget conscious than many and have never even considered a $4000 build.

I have a friend who just built up a SLI 8800 GT system. He spent about $600 more than he would have for a comparable single card set up (more expensive Mobo/psu and a second video card). I got him to run his system with just one card for a while to see how much improvement he would get. This was on a 22 in widescreen so the SLI advantage on high resolution monitors was not really a factor. Basically, there was not much noticeable difference on most games. Crysis was a notable exception, I really don’t know if there is any video card out that matches that games potential. But from my budget conscious perspective I can play Crysis on my 8800 GTS 320 system at very high settings and it looks and works great. He paid half again what I paid when I built my system (~$1200) for what amounts to a slight performance gain in only some games. But he thinks it is worth it so everyone has a different perspective.

Kat

[flanzig1]

1: Check to see if that Thermaltake PSU is on Nvidia's list of SLI certified PSUs for the 9600
2: RAID 0 can be troublesome, if a drive dies, ALL data is lost. Suggest just using 1 Raptor.
3: Don't see any ram. Corsair XMS DDR2 800 or 1066 will work since your going to OC/4gig kit.