First Build, had some questions concerns....

Would appreciate any and all opinions and feedback. This is my first build, and I have yet to buy anything because I would like the blessing from you fine folks out there.

CPU- AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition Thuban 3.2 GHz 6x512 KB L2 Cache

Cooler- Undecided, really want to do water cooling but what is the best water cooling system???

RAM- 8 GB DDR3 Corsair Dominator (is this the correct /best RAM?)

MOBO- ASUS Crosshair IV

GPU- ATI 1 GB 5870 x2 in crossfire or Single 2GB ATI 6950. Does Crossfire make that much of a significant difference??

Case- Corsair Obsidian 800 D

PSU- Corsair 850 W Professional series

HD- 300GB Gaming Western Digital VelociRaptor 10,000RPM SATA-II, should I do RAID 0, does it make that much of a difference??

Well that about sums up the nuts and bolts of what I want to do, is this a a viable build for a first timer? I'll be overclocking it and playing mostly MMO's and RTS'. Any feed back you have would be fantastic and much appreciated !!!! Happy 2011!~!

to the forums!

The best water cooling option is a self-made loop. None of the pre-configured ones will hold a candle to one you put together your self. The corsair h50/h70 and those types, though they are technically water cooling, they function more like high-end air cooling.

If you're mostly playing games you can drop 4GB of the ram and go for something with better cas latency. Look at G.Skill DDR3 1600 cas7 or even cas6 if its affordable. Lower cas ratings make the read/write times to the ram go faster. Corsair is fine ram too, but usually costs more.

For the GPU.. 2x 5870s or 1x 6950 (2gb).. what resolution do you play at.. and 1 or more monitors? the 6950 is a great card.. and some (more than 60% of them) can be BIOS flashed to work as a 6970.. well worth it IMO. I'd go with a single card over dual just to save the headaches of driver issues and scaling.

if you have the budget, get a 60+GB SSD (OCZ Vertex 2) for your primary OS and app drive.. as for the raid0.. if you wanted to go with mechanical drives, raid0 is faster, but lacks redundancy.. so if one drive fails you lose all your data.. and you could actually get away with getting 640+WD cav blacks.. their read/write speeds are nearly as fast at a fraction of the price

Thanks for the input Psionic!! I will just using one 23" in monitor at 1920x 1080. Is making my own water cooling a viable idea for a first time builder? I cant imagine it would be that difficult, I just have ZERO experience with it. Any good websites where I can locate the parts for the DIY water cooling? And should it actually be water cooled or coolant cooled? I have herd good things about the 6950, so I think I'll go with that. Again thanks for the help!!!!!

Well coolant cooled costs a lot more and as long as you have distilled water then its fine. Just make sure you leak test it. Frozencpu.com is very good. but What exactly is your budget? Because half of watercooling is aesthetics. =P

If you can do basic home plumbing or have significant aquarium experience, water cooling is comically easy. If not, and given the amount of stuff you have to wrap your head around already, I'd say air cool your first build.

I have about $1500-1800 to spend. I really wasn't sure if water cooling made a significant difference or not. So it sounds like either build your own water cooler or air cool it?? I really appreciate the feedback guys, may even save me a couple hundo lol.

Ya dont do it on that budget. Get something LIKE (but not necessarily exactly) this:
(you can always water cool later)

Gigabyte UD7 1155 (UD5 to save like $100 if desired)
4GB Gskill Ripjaws (You don't NEED 8 right now)
2600K Sandybridge (4 cores. But much faster than the 6 core AMD)
AMD 6950
Corsair HX850
WD Caviar Black 1TB
(Case- big savings can be made here but if you want to support a radiator later keep this in mind)
Cooler - Noctua NH-D14 or Thermalright Silver Arrow.

~Remember that if you choose very 'tall' RAM you will need to reorient larger heatsinks like the D14. "Standard height" RAM like pretty much anything from Mushkin for example will fit.
However going with the AMD build will save you money and you won't notice a massive hit in performance for most gaming. The crosshair IV formula seems to be universally loved by everyone who uses it so it's definitely a good choice.

Back on the Intel side, sandybridge is easier to overclock than thuban, if that matters to you. Neither is too difficult.

If you go AMD you'll have some money left over for an SSD. If you make this buy soon get a sandforce based drive like OCZ Vertex 2. Running say a 120GB SSD for your windows install and your games and the 1TB for your photos, documents, etc etc is much faster.