A build and I did my homework! PLEASE GRADE ME!

[Cuthulas]

I did this four years ago and it really paid off to tap into your collective knowledge. So I am back again. I've spent the past week going back and forth over build ideas and here is what I have so far. I am trying to stay around the $2500 mark. If I can get it cheaper without sacrificing performance then great.

I'm coming in around $3000 at the moment though. I would like to take the price down a bit if possible to do so without sacrificing performance. My guess is changing the Ram, the HD's, the soundcard, and the CPU are the easiest and most obvious choices, but what do you think? Heck, even if you know places to get deals on any of these ... most of the prices listed are newegg.com ... links included.

Case - Antec P182 Gun Metal Black 0.8mm cold rolled steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Retail $154.99 I don't want a full tower unless it's silent, cause that means it won't fit under my desk anymore. So I went with this one ...

PS - PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750 Quad $199.99 Not much to say here other than I want enough power for an additional video card later so here we go.

OS - Microsoft Windows XP Professional with SP2B 1 Pack - OEM $129.99 AVOIDING Vista for the time being.

Sound Card - Creative SOUND BLASTER X-Fi Fatal1ty FPS 7.1 Channels 24-bit 96KHz PCI Interface Sound Card - Retail $182.99
Quite a bit of heartburn about this one ... I don't want crappy sound and I want the ability to have a 7.1 system in the future. Besides the control panel on this one is cool. Alternatives?

HSF - ZALMAN 9700 LED 110mm 2 Ball CPU Cooler $59.99 Been happy with Zalman in the past. Both PC's I have now use their HSF. Seemed like a good fan for air OC'ing. I would LOVE to watercool, but I want to do that after I get a system up and running on air. I've never done WC'ing before and am anxious about doing it right off the build. I have no idea what pump/rad/tubes/fluid/blocks to get and it seems to get pricey. I chickened out!

Case Fans - Yate Loon 120mm Case Fan - DS12L - 12 $3.00 each I plan on replacing the fans in the P182 with these for a quieter rig without paying a ton on fans.

Fan Controller - Zalman MFC2 Multi Fan and Temperature Monitor and Control Drive Bay Device $54.99 I love the look of this controller ... even though I will have to wait for it to come into stock again. Anyone recommend a similarly sweet fan control panel. I have Zalman MFC on my two PC's and I love to be able to turn things up and down depending on what my needs are.

OS/Game Hard Drives - WD Raptor WD1500ADFD 150GB 10,000RPM 16MB Cache Serial ATA 150 HD - OEM $199.99 HELP NEEDED ... I want fast load times. But would it be better to find a mobo that permits Intel Matrix Raid and get some simpler drives? Numbers I saw on those looked impressive; especially considering price/performance ratio. 200 dollars for a raptor really gives me heartburn as well.

Storage Hard Drives - Seagate Barracude 7200.10 ST33220620AS (Perpendicular Recording Technology) 320GB 7200RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0GB/S Hard Drive - OEM $79.99 Gonna run two of these in Raid1 for safety sake.

DVD Burner - Sony NEC Optiarc Black AD-7170S-0B 18X SATA $33.99 Open to better ideas ...

Motherboard - EVGA 122-CK-NF68-A1 LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail $249.99 $250.00 board ... but good OC'ing and all the bells and whistles. But no Intel chipset so no Intel Matrix Raid ... and not sure what I really need here. I could save $100 if I went with a different board but I'm scared of hosing myself in such a way that I can't RAID/SLI/OC, etc.

CPU - Intel Core 2 Extreme Processor X6800 BX80557X6800 $495.00 No link here but I can get an Intel processor for about half retail. So why NOT go with the best out there ... other than it would save me an additional $250-$300 dollars. I just can't decide. Also ... wondering if I should grab the similarly priced quad core instead and just take the performance hit for the sake of future proofing as more software is tweaked to use multiple procs.

RAM - Crucial Ballistix 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 PC2-8500 Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model BL2KIT12864AL1065 - Retail $224.99 I want good RAM for OC'ing and I want 4GB of it ... but not convinced that THIS is the RAM I need.

Floppy Drive - MITSUMI Black 1.44MB 3.5" Internal USB 2.0 digital card reader with Floppy Drive Model FA404M BLK - OEM $18.99[/URLrl] Thought if I'm getting a 3.5 why not get one that can read other things.

Video Card - [URL="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130072"]EVGA 769-P2-N831-AR GeForce 8800GTX 768MB 384-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Video Card - Retail $559.99 I didn't want to skimp much here. I decided against SLI on two GTS's as it seems the GTX just rocks their number by itself. I intend to SLI another in the future if any future games give my PC the hiccups. I decided against SLI for now since I am going to be running at 1600x1200 resolution and this should more than suffice.

Speakers - Logitech THX Z-5300e 280 Watts RMS 5.1 Speaker - Retail $134.99 I want GOOD surround sound. I couldn't bring myself to dumping another $150 for the top of the line Logitech, but these seem great.

Other thoughts ... I want a good microphone. I'm using a mic that came with a 90Mghz Gateway I got in the 1990's!!! It sucks.

I got my tool kit, my arctic silver 5, and I'm ready to order ... but I want to knock the price on my build down another $400 dollars or so if possible without really sacrificing performance. And I sure hope I didn't forget anything as I did my homework as best I could, but you guys have the uncanny ability to find things/deals/tweaks that can really make a difference in eliminating my buyer's remorse. Thanks again and thanks in advance!

Editted links ...

 

[Fr3@k3r]

Case - A
OS - A-
Sound - A
Heatsink - A-
Fans - A+
Fan Controller - B
HDD - A+
DVD - A
Motherboard - B
CPU - A+
Ram - A
Video - A+
Floppy - F (LOL)
Speakers - A+

overall i give you a (A)

you rarely need a floppy, the fan controller i would recommend switching out for something like the sunbeam rheobus. The heatsink i would definitely recommend the thermalright ultra 120 instead. The motherboard you could do better on but since i know nothing about intel let someone else give you the idea.

 

[knight_of_knee]

I'll give yeh an A

Everything looks awesome for your build. I agree Fr3@k3r as you probably will not need a floppy drive as you can boot from thumb drives anymore.

Also for a sound card you can get a cheaper fatality one for 140 shipped
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829102005
or you can get a 7.1 plain x-fi card for 90 shipped
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829102006
sound usually isn't a problem with me but it looks like if you can live without having a front panel you could save yourself some money.

As for your ram that's really good ram, but you're not going to be able to use 4 gigs in windows xp unless you get the 64 bit version. Since you didn't post 64 bit and the link for the OS doesn't seem to work for me I'm guessing you're only going to use the 32 bit version and for that 2 gigs of ram is perfect, even for vista 2 gigs of ram is perfect. So you could save yourself another 110 bucks about if you only get 2 gigs of ram for now.

As for your motherboard I really don't know which one to recommend but I think that you can probably cut down on it a little bit but with motherboards with the same specifications as that evga motherboard they're going to cost around 200. Atleast from the little bit of research that I have done that's what I've found.

Everything else looks really good and agree with Fr3@k3r about the CPU HSF too. I really like the fan control unit though. I want to get it now but I have to save my monies. heh. But good luck with your build and hope everything works out.

 

[Cuthulas]

Thanks for the first bit of feedback.

Fan Controller ... the one I listed isn't currently available anywhere so I may just be going the route you suggested.

HSF ... gonna do some quick research on the thermalright ultra 120 now ... will get back to this post.

Mobo ... I thought I had picked a good one if a bit expensive. Anyone else have thoughts.

Floppy - Heh ... guess I just can't let go!


Any suggestions on saving $$$ ... I don't want be be spending money for name brands if it means mothing.

 

[CrazyIrish]

Heres what I would do:

Ditch the soundcard for a cheaper x-fi (savings $100)

Pick a different heatsink. The thermalright that was mentioned is a good choice

Ditch the fan controller althogether. (Run the fans at 12v. If its too fast/loud run em at 7v) Theres a sticky somewhere detailing how. (savings $55.00)

The processor - If you can get an x6800 for this price, do so. Then sell it for $700+ dollars. Then buy a quadcore when the prices drop later this month. They should have a model going for $266 bucks) (savings $433)

Thats almost $600 savings and I think you would still be quite pleased.

 

[BioTuned]

I agree with CrazyIrish and Fr3@k3r.

Thermalright Ultra 120 is a great hsf. If you are looking to get the sound card with the front bay, you can get the cheaper one than that. Also, the board is okay. It's a great board, but there are better boards. Asus P5N32-E SLI is a great board. If you are going to be running a sli system then i wouldn't recommend the power supply. You would need something with more juice than that to run 2 8800gtx. Also selling the CPU at a high price then you get is also a great idea. You can then invest money on cooling your video card because, that sob will get really hot. Perhaps, you might want to do water cooling. You get a great looking system plus it can cool effectively and be silent at the same time. Yea you need to ditch the floppy. The fan controller should be something that is going to fit in ur system. You have a door in the front panel of the case, so you will need to get something that is going to have flatness so it can close. That fan controll is indeed does look good. Thermaltake A2349 should be able to fit in there comfortablly, or something a like. I don't know how well the A2349 is, or you can run the fans at 7V instead of 12v.

Question: How long (time frame) will you wait before you will SLI?

If it's going to be some long time then, perhaps go with something with a single PCI Express slot. I think P5B are some great boards by asus.

I give it 9 out 10.