Parts Im looking at so far

[Apostle]

Well here is the list of parts I currently have picked out for the new rig. Its not complete, but I'll add my thoughts on some of the parts and feel free to comment.

(these are just the newegg links as I have not priced them at other places yet)

Mobo http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131039
*The most expensive part for which item it is of everything I have listed probably. I just keep seeing so many "this board runs hot" reviews that I thought shelling out a little bit more for this one might be worth it. Still.. thats kinda pricy for a mobo.

RAM http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820150054
I didnt have a lot of time left when looking up ram, but this one seemed to be a fairly good deal. I would really like feedback on this item especially to see how it stacks up with other bands etc..*

Video http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814195024
*Just a preliminary decision and I have not really made up my mind on which card to get. I read Rabb1t's link on the G80 and my pants got kinda tight, so Im waiting for a little bit on making a solid decision on video cards right now*

Power http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817703006
*Foz said it was good, and that was good enough for me*

CPU http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819115002

Speakers http://www.newegg.com/Product/CustratingReview.asp?Item=N82E16836121120
*My TV is about to blow up, so I figuered I would go ahead and get a good monitor instead of shelling out a bunch for a TV at the same time Im building a PC and just use the PC for the time being. So.. good speakers were a must and these have excellent reviews and Rabb1t said to look em up too*

Sound Card http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16829102005
*The other X-Fi card was 90$ but this one had ram on the chip as well as being a slightly better overall card. I figured the extra 30$ was probably worth it.. anyone have other thoughts?*

Hard Drive http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822136011

Monitor (Have not found one I like yet.. need to look this up tomorrow). As I mentioned above, Im about to lose my TV, so Im looking to get a rather nice monitor. A 23 Flat Panel LCD is at least what I wanted to get. A TV in would be a definate plus because of that.. so .. anyone have any suggestions? I think my wallet is about to spontaniously combust... but I do want a good one.

[Fozzik]

I think you are going overboard on several of those items, the motherboard especially. That price is just utterly ridiculous for a motherboard...and you're buying stuff you'll never need (what the heck are you going to do with PCI-X slots?). There are many more affordable mobos with all the features you could need and which run cool enough.

I think if you drop to a more reasonable mobo and drop to the E6600 CPU (better price/performance), you would probably have enough money to bump your video up to one of the new Nvidia DX10 cards. That would be money well spent and gain you performance in future games.

[rabb1t]

Yup curiously overboard on some bits as Foz said.

Why the PCI-X slots? Does anyone even use those?

GPU, yeah the series 8 will pwn if it doesn't see the same early launch 20% price hike the 7 series saw. (If I recall that hike lasted about 3 months post launch.)

CPU, um you can shave like $200 off the cost by going with an E6600 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819115003) and I don't think you'd notice any performance difference.

Power... um... if you are willing to drop $200 on power, I'd recommend just dropping a touch more and going with a Silverstone 850w (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817256007) for $280. You get quad v12 lines @18a and quad PCIe x16 lines. Plenty of power and the connections needed to run dual 8800 GTXs. :D

As to using the monitor as a TV... unless you have space constraints which require you do so I'd recommend against it.

Consider the Sony Wega (http://www.sonystyle.com/is-bin/%20INTERSHOP.enfinity/eCS/Store/en/-/USD/SY_DisplayProductInformation-Start;sid=CSBgMg06DvZjmEh2GzZqOUI3p7D25isNvI0=?Pro ductSKU=KDS50A2000&Dept=tvvideo&CategoryName=tv_Full_HD_1080_Rear_Projection) 50". ~$2400, 16:9 aspect, 1080p, 2 HDMI connections... this would just kick the crap outa any PC monitor in terms of image clarity, quality and uberness.

[Fozzik]

As to using the monitor as a TV... unless you have space constraints which require you do so I'd recommend against it.

Consider the Sony Wega (http://www.sonystyle.com/is-bin/%20INTERSHOP.enfinity/eCS/Store/en/-/USD/SY_DisplayProductInformation-Start;sid=CSBgMg06DvZjmEh2GzZqOUI3p7D25isNvI0=?Pro ductSKU=KDS50A2000&Dept=tvvideo&CategoryName=tv_Full_HD_1080_Rear_Projection) 50". ~$2400, 16:9 aspect, 1080p, 2 HDMI connections... this would just kick the crap outa any PC monitor in terms of image clarity, quality and uberness.

Huh? Sure, the Wega TV is bigger...but other than that, what makes it better than a 23" or 24" monitor that has 1920x1200 resolution? The monitor has more pixels by a bit (although they won't get used much in movies), but more importantly the monitor's pixels are MUCH smaller. This produces a much sharper picture.

Probably the biggest difference between a TV like the one you mentioned and a computer monitor is viewing distance. If you are sitting 10-15 feet away, the TV is probably the obvious choice because the larger pixels will look just fine at that distance, and the picture will be easier to look at. The computer monitor is really meant as something you look at from only 1-4 feet away...so the usage is much different.

Apostle, if your situation really calls for a monitor, I'd look at the Dell 2407wfp. Great quality and all the inputs you could need.

[Lyeth]

GPU, yeah the series 8 will pwn if it doesn't see the same early launch 20% price hike the 7 series saw. (If I recall that hike lasted about 3 months post launch.)

And in those three months the ATI R600 could/should be out. And competition is good. :D

[Apostle]

Hmm.. I honestly did not see that listed in the specs for that board. I just saw the 2 x16 slots listed and kinda ran past thinking it was just the standard 2 slots. That helps save about 100$.

So you really think the 6600 would be the way to go huh? I almost expected someone to say my choice in a non-namebrand set of memory was more of a bad idea than that was. If not, then that could be another 250ish saved. (hmm I thought OEM chips did not come with a fan and heatsink..*/me looking at newegg's site right now*.. so whats the difference between the retail and OEM version besides the 32$ difference?)

Thanks for the link to the DELL monitor. It was seeming that the 23-24 inch barrier as I call it was where the price started to jump from the 600$ area up to the 1400$. I dunno why its such a big jump even within the same resolution category. I saw 23 inch monitors selling for both 600ish AND 1400ish. *sigh*

Apostle

[Fozzik]

The difference in price with the same size/resolution monitors probably has to do with several things.

Name brand of course - sometimes adds to the price.
Color depth - I don't know if they make 6-bit monitors in that size, but they might. Something to watch out for.
Inputs - having lots of inputs, and being HDCP compliant might add to the price.
quality and speed (real speed, not the advertised response times)

Yes, the E6600 is kind of a sweet spot in terms of price/performance. Yeah, the E6700 performs better...but the price is so much higher that it really isn't that great of a deal.

As far as the RAM you linked... *shrug* Buffalo Tech. is not an unknown brand...it's been around quite a while. I'm sure that memory would be fine. Corsair, Crucial, Mushkin, Patriot, etc. area also good names, and since pretty much all RAM is overpriced right now, it probably doesn't matter from one to another. Do understand that DDR2-800 doesn't really give you any more performance on the Intel platform than DDR2-667 does...so if you can find something you like in the DDR2-667 speed and it is cheaper, it's a good way to go.

[rabb1t]

Huh? Sure, the Wega TV is bigger...but other than that, what makes it better than a 23" or 24" monitor that has 1920x1200 resolution?

2.5ms response, um... shoot can't find it but it's something like 7000:1 contrast ratio, and most of all it is designed for TV and movie images. I don't know about other people's monitors, but my HP L2335 looks like complete crap if I view a TV image full screen. (Though it is going in through composite cable.) On the other hand, on my HDTV (through S-Video) the input from TV cable box looks perfectly fine.

As I said, if you are going to try and combine aspects you are going to make sacrifices. I wouldn’t want to sacrifice anything in my TV / movie viewing.

As I’ve said countless times, I highly recommend against trying to merge the media at this time. From what I’ve seen you always take a hit on ‘the opposite function’ (in this case you are loosing non-PC use quality.)

Although, I suppose under the right conditions it may be ok. Like my roomie works for Tivo and he has one of the high-def units hooked up to his Dell 24” and it looks just fine. (High-def signal through component cables.) (Why he didn’t think to give it to me, since I’ve been saying he should get me a Tivo so I don’t miss my shows is beyond me. :rolleyes: ) I don’t know though, whenever I run 3dMark06 and it gets to the part with the muzzle flash my screen looks like a slide show. I’m guessing that is due to the monitor response rate (going from very bright to very dark) since I’m showing like 40+? FPS in that section.

Maybe it's just me, but I just don't trust that we are close enough to the merge point to 'risk' the quality of my movies by going with a PC screen instead of an HDTV unit. :rolleyes: :p :D

I almost expected someone to say my choice in a non-namebrand set of memory

Buffalo is a ‘name brand’. It’s just newer, appeared in the past few years. They have lifetime coverage just like all the other big guys, so it should be fine.

(hmm I thought OEM chips did not come with a fan and heatsink..*/me looking at newegg's site right now*.. so whats the difference between the retail and OEM version besides the 32$ difference?)

The one I linked is the full retail package. I don’t see any at all on NewEgg that are OEM.

Looking at an OEM AMD core, you get 1 year coverage instead of 3. IMO that is so totally not worth the price reduction unless you are maybe talking about a 30% savings or something, in which case everyone would likely go OEM. :p

[Ryun]

I think everyone has covered what I would have said.

But...

1.)As far as RAM goes I would go with the pqi turbo series. They're cheap, and they run very well on my rig. I don't have too much experience with RAM, but my friends tell me that RAM doesn't really differ from company to company. RAM is RAM :D . Whether they're correct or not, I'll have to see later.

2.) Yeah the motherboard is total overkill. However, I would wait until nVidia releases their nForce 6 series chipsets. They're supposed to come out this month and (or so I've read) a big improvement over the nForce 5 series. If you don't plan on SLI or nVidia's overclocking features then I wouldn't worry about it.

Good luck :)

[Brockhammer]

I just finished a build on the P5W DH Deluxe/WiFi. I dont know what some people are talking about when they say it runs hot. I am stress testing mine right now with my E6600 OC'd to about 3.2G. I have had seti@home running my CPU @ 100% load for the past 6.5 hours and my mobo temp is 37 C, and my CPU temp is 39 C. Idle the CPU is at 30 C and mobo 34 C. Using Zalman 9500 heatsink, and a NZXT Zero case. So I wouldnt worry about mobo temps unlsees you are trying to cram it into a very small case or somethin. I say go with the E6600, it overclocks real smooth, and as you can see the temps are pretty low still. I have the 1950XTX on mine, my 3DMark06 score is 6817, but I think I can improve on that a bit, hopefully get it up to 7000. I have read that the Asus 975X boards are a bit fickle when it comes to the memory, I can tell you that it picked up Corsair XMS2 DDR2 800 at 4.4.4.12 no problem. I got it for like 10 bucks more than the mem you have listed at Newegg. it was on sale though. Other than that, good luck with it:D