My New Build For Aces High- Feedback Desired

[Skuzzy]

Congratulations, and enjoy the new toy. 

[Getback]

Sounds good Zazen. Glad it all worked out.

[Max]

Fun to build your own, eh?  Hope it's clear sailing for the next few years.

[Mustaine]

Zaz, great build

if you don't mind, what was the final cost?

[BaldEagl]

I had nothing but good experiences from my direct interactions with Newegg. They allowed me to RMA, for a full refund, the slower memory I had bought so I could instead buy the limited stock & faster memory, even though their memory policy is strictly equivalent/same item exchange only, no refunds. Their shipping was prompt and reasonable. I had to RMA several things, including the Noctua CPU Fan & Heatsink that wouldn't fit the motherboard and the dual bay fan controller that would not fit in my case. The entire RMA process was a breeze.

Top notch customer service.   

They get all my $.

[Zazen13]

Zaz, great build

if you don't mind, what was the final cost?

Absolutely everything for the build with the exception of the monitor from Newegg was $2,670 after Shipping and including instant & mailed in rebates. I purchased a 24" Samsung WS LCD from Sam's Club for $279.00. So, all totalled, under 3 Grand to go from an empty space on my desk to a gaming super-computer... To put that figure into perspective, the top of line line gaming pre-fab job, inferior to my build in every respect and only marginally customizable & upgradable, from Dell or Gateway, is around 4-5 Grand. A comparable computer from Alienware or Falcon-Northwest would be around 7-9 Grand. So, some thought, and about 15 hours of labor of love yielded me a net savings of roughly 2-5 thousand dollars.

[Getback]

Zazen,

Need an update report so I can live vicariously through you. 

[TilDeath]

Zaren

The OCZ Vendetta 2 will fit on that board.  You will need the 1366 adaptor.  Contact me if you need more info

[Zazen13]

Zaren

The OCZ Vendetta 2 will fit on that board.  You will need the 1366 adaptor.  Contact me if you need more info

Yea, the cooling is an issue. The stock CPU fan is insufficient for even causal overclocking.

[Mugzeee]

So....what is max FR in full out max settings? ( Bout to build one )

[gyrene81]

Still don't see a sound card. Did I miss it?

Built in on the mobo.

Just my 1/2 penny here...you're going for high end but you cut some corners where you wouldn't have to if you didn't go i7...I know 2 (so far) people here at work who have tried the i7 setups and both had to return the parts because of glitches...(none of it was off brand either)...the second guy spent 3 weeks trying to get it up and running until he gave up.

You could get higher internal clock speeds with a socket 775 and 95watt quad core processor...then you wouldn't have to deal with triple channel memory configurations (that aren't needed by the average home user)...and you wouldn't have to buy a 1000+ watt psu...
Step down to the socket 775 configuration with a higher clock speed processor and do 4 gigs of ram in dual channel configuration...you won't need more than that before you build a new system.

Ditch the Hanns-G monitor. I have several where I work and the quality stinks...even the Acers are better.

If you're going to do 64bit OS, Windows 7 is the way to go...Vista is just another Windows ME failure.

Forget the raid 0...no benefit to it in reality.




Looks like you got money to spare...save yourself a lot of headaches and stay away from the "bleeding edge" hardware that hasn't been on the market very long...it's depreciation value is higher than 1 generation back without the visible benefits you would expect.