$1600 for tower. What do yall suggest?

[los318]

first, yeah. Yall i'm from TX. Its been a long time since i've built a computer and need some suggestions on the tower only. the keyboard, mouse and monitor i will buy after the tower. Here is what i have so far. What do you guys think? It'll be used for gaming and general work. But mostly gaming. I"ll most likely upgrde later this year to SLI and Quad Core but we'll see on that.

COOLER MASTER CM Stacker STC-T01-UW

Thermaltake 750W W0116

EVGA 122-CK-NF68-AR LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI

EVGA 640-P2-N821-AR GeForce 8800GTS

Intel Core 2 Duo E6400

CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800

Western Digital Caviar 250GB

ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 7

thanks for your time! I would like to overclock to at least 2.8 or better.

Los318

ps. sorry, i know you guys get a lot of this but yall seem to know your stuff..

[batboy]

Welcome to the forum. You should have no trouble hitting 3.2 gig with that system.

[AC3421]

Get a WD raptor or 2 for RAID 0. One is just as fast as 2 WD SATA 2 HDD in Raid 0. Or if you cant afford the Raptor get at the least another WD caviar for RAID 0.

[deathman20]

Looking good.

I don't know how that heatsink rates but alot go with the Sycthe's or Thermalright's coolers if your looking for suggestions in that area.

As for clock 2.8Ghz is basically sleep walking for it, 3.2Ghz will be an easy OC for the system any higher is just golden. Depending on what you play even a 2.8Ghz OC (as you said for a min basically) will be more then plenty for current and probably most future games coming out.

[datura3]

Get a WD raptor or 2 for RAID 0. One is just as fast as 2 WD SATA 2 HDD in Raid 0. Or if you cant afford the Raptor get at the least another WD caviar for RAID 0.

If you want fast, just get a WD raptor 150 at new egg for 200 AR. They are 260-300 everywhere else.

[SeasonalEclipse]

Yeah, go raid 0 if at all possible, load times will be cut down rather nicely with that stuff.

[downer]

Just a warning with raid 0, it does increase your risk of losing data. Raid 0 does feel snappier, but you have to weigh in the extra cost and risk. I personally wouldn't put anything that important on a raid 0 array, so then you are looking at the possibility of needing a third drive for storage of important data.

[squashfx]

you can get some g.skill ram with d9 instead of corsair and it will be cheaper

[xnewnx]

A couple suggestions on my part, but in general it looks good.
Motherboard: I'd suggest the Asus P5b-Deluxe, i'm running one now until my new DFI comes in the mail and i enjoy it a lot. it's slightly less than 200, im not sure how much that EVGA is but if i remember right, its around 220-240. I just like to stick with slightly more proven motherboard companies like Abit/DFI/Asus and such. I'll let EVGA stick to being my favorite G-card company.
Hard drive: I used to run a dual raptor/raid 0 set up along with dual WD 320's for storage and i guess it was nice, but i personally didn't notice that much of a difference in speed over a single raptor, or even a system 320 drive. From what i've seen recently on newegg, the WD 320 can be had for 89 dollars which is a very good deal IMO. i'd step up that 250 and get a 320. if not two.

i agree with deathman20 on the heatsink suggestion. i've had thermalrights/Scythes before, and they're pretty much all good. right now i have a Scythe Ninja on my E6400.

Good luck with the system

[hUMANbEATbOX]

A couple suggestions on my part, but in general it looks good.
Motherboard: I'd suggest the Asus P5b-Deluxe, i'm running one now until my new DFI comes in the mail and i enjoy it a lot.

he said he'd like to run SLI down the line, so the p5b is OUT. :)

to the OP, you are on the right track, but with $1600, i would for sure be looking at a e6600, and some d9 ram, for some nice tight timings. d9's aren't needed for a e6600, thanks to the higher multi, but running 400fsb, with ram at 3-3-3 would be sweet.

then, i'd be looking at a matrix raptor array. and for the psu, zippy g1 600w.

you could do better on the cooling as well like others have said....

[xnewnx]

he said he'd like to run SLI down the line, so the p5b is OUT. :)
....Touche...Curious, how does the EVGA board overclock? i had the chance to get it myself but i decided to buy this Asus instead.

[deathman20]

and for the psu, zippy g1 600w.


Is that recommened PSU big enough for dual 8800GTS's? Thats 115W per card. Might be enough but just curious. Comparision the 8800GTX is 155W per card or roughly 378W in SLI (how that works out you got me).

http://www.atomicmpc.com.au/forums.asp?s=2&c=7&t=9354&p=0 Great site for ~ GPU power specs.

[los318]

i'm fiarly positive i'll upgrade to a 1000w PSU when i'm ready to go quad/SLI. Just to be sure i'll have enough power to run it.

[los318]

he said he'd like to run SLI down the line, so the p5b is OUT. :)

to the OP, you are on the right track, but with $1600, i would for sure be looking at a e6600, and some d9 ram, for some nice tight timings. d9's aren't needed for a e6600, thanks to the higher multi, but running 400fsb, with ram at 3-3-3 would be sweet.

then, i'd be looking at a matrix raptor array. and for the psu, zippy g1 600w.

you could do better on the cooling as well like others have said....


i thought about the E6600 pretty hard but i'm holding back since I know i'm going to upgrade. I'll spend the extra cheese on a nice monitor.

[hUMANbEATbOX]

Is that recommened PSU big enough for dual 8800GTS's? Thats 115W per card. Might be enough but just curious. Comparision the 8800GTX is 155W per card or roughly 378W in SLI (how that works out you got me).

http://www.atomicmpc.com.au/forums.asp?s=2&c=7&t=9354&p=0 Great site for ~ GPU power specs.
i'm pretty certain that even my 500w g1 could do SLI's 8800gts', probably even 8800gtx's.

[SteveLord]

the risk with RAID 0 is very exaggerated....

anyone with half a brain can easily and afforably do backups on DVDs or an external hard drive.

[Frosty18]

Get a WD raptor or 2 for RAID 0. One is just as fast as 2 WD SATA 2 HDD in Raid 0. Or if you cant afford the Raptor get at the least another WD caviar for RAID 0.


I agree. I recently bought two raptors and set them up in raid 0 16k striping. Best computer investment ever.