Ghoulish's new rig

[Pudgie]

If you decide to go with an ATI card then you'll want to switch motherboards.  I hear the Nvidia chipsets don't play together well with the ATI cards even in a single card set-up.  I don't have first hand experience with this though.  In an SLI or Crossfire set-up the motherboard needs to support it and I don't think there's any motherboards that support both.

I've got a C2D in an Nvidia (Evga) 780i motherboard with an Evga card.  I've loved this motherboard... very flexible and user friendly BIOS.

BE, since the lawsuit between Nvidia & Intel flared up EVGA has been using Intel chipsets on all their enthusiast mobos which will support both SLI & Crossfire setups. This started w/ the X58 series. I also believe that Intel has made this a requirement in order to use their chipsets that they support both platforms.

Check out the EVGA website......you'll find quite a few folks running ATI Crossfire as well as Nvidia SLI setups on EVGA X58 & P55 mobos. The early EVGA x58's (I believe the Classified series w/ the NF200 chips on them) are the ones that you would need to steer clear of.

I currently am using the EVGA 780i FTW mobo w/ a EVGA vid card myself but I plan to go to an Asus Maximus III 1156 ROC mobo so I can go ATI or Nvidia in the future. This mobo is the only enthusiast-grade mobo I could find that has no onboard sound (uses a seperate PCI-E 1x sound card) built into the mobo.

 

[Reschke]

Speaking of brands, I have nothing specific against EVGA motherboards, except that I've never seen mention of them, and I'd be going with an ASUS or possibly a Gigabyte.

Any of those is good but EVGA puts out some seriously kick butt mobos and their warranty is absolutely the best in the business right now.

[DREDIOCK]

Seagate Technology Barracuda 1TB 7,200RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
 

WD Caviar Blacks are second only to the Velociraptor

And dollar for dollar is the best Bang for buck including the VR

Western Digital Caviar Black WD1501FASS 1.5TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive $109.99

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136592

Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive $99.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136533


Nice drive. Fast, reasonably quiet.  I have one in mine and haven't had any problems that I didnt somehow create. I'd buy another in a heartbeat

[Buzzard7]

You will like the setup you have chosen. Only real difference from mine will be the vid card. I run hires and everything maxed out. 60fps rock steady in heavy furball on Titanic Tuesday.

[Dragon]

Any of those is good but EVGA puts out some seriously kick butt mobos and their warranty is absolutely the best in the business right now.

+1


I used a P55 for my last build.  Layout makes cabling easy and BIOS is very user friendly.  Easy overclock utility works well.


I too would recommend a second hard drive.

[ghoulish]

You will like the setup you have chosen. Only real difference from mine will be the vid card. I run hires and everything maxed out. 60fps rock steady in heavy furball on Titanic Tuesday.

That's exactly what I'm looking for then.

[Masherbrum]

That's exactly what I'm looking for then.

Noticed you're in SE Michigan, you need any help putting it together?   

[Buzzard7]

6gb RAM should be your minimum for it. The 930 won't even break a sweat for most programs I run.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

If you're building a new rig with Windows7 I would not make one without a 100gib Intel x25G2 or OCZ Vertex2 SSD for OS and games. The bootup times will be drastically reduced.

You like to defragment often? Well consider this, SSD has access times of 0.1 ms. Fragmented or non fragmented. Your regular drive can have fragmented (average) access times of 40 ms and defragmented 34ms. Fragmentation means your drive is forced to jump around the disk to read all the data. This jumping is very unefficient in HDD:s and extremely efficient in SSD:s. So its like polishing a turd basically if you allow that in comparison.

[ghoulish]

Noticed you're in SE Michigan, you need any help putting it together?   

Thanks for the offer, but I think I'll do the build solo. 

[ghoulish]

This jumping is very unefficient in HDD:s and extremely efficient in SSD:s. So its like polishing a turd basically if you allow that in comparison.

POLISHING A TURD!

[ZetaNine]

if I may......run..don't walk away from that vid card choice.  it sounds like a smoking system...and it deserves the very best card out there now......the ATI radeon 5800 series.  I'll NEVER use an Nvidia card again..ever.  this 5800 card smokes...give it a look.

[ghoulish]

OK, thanx to everyone who contributed to my query.  Below is the system I'm buying today or tomorrow at the latest.  All the components are available at my local microcenter.

I've dropped the new monitors as I've got three right now that will work.
Also gone is the BFG power supply. I found one that'll do just fine for less cash. I did check thoroughly on my power requirements for this set up, its 955W peak.
Found a new motherboard with great specs and less cost.
Decided against an SSD right now as I'm not running any HDD intensive games, I can always add that later.
Went with a no frills case as I'm not planning on showing off my build skillz.
The tray kit is just for fun.
I'm not into overclocking so I traded to the reference 470 graphics cards.
Included triple channel memory.

To the ATI folks, I did look seriously at the eyefinity cards, hard. I went with the Nvidia because it'll give me 4 dvi connectors and no display port adapters are needed. Also, the card I really wanted was $700.  That's a lot of lettuce for a single point of failure. In any case it was a close run thing. Time will tell if I went the right way or not.


Intel Corporation Core i7-930 Processor Boxed

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium (PC)                                                                                            
 
EVGA X58 SLI LE LGA 1366 X58 ATX Motherboard
 
IOGear Long Range Media Center Desktop       
 
Barracuda 500GB 7,200RPM Hard Drive      
OCZ Technology 6GB DDR3-1600 (PC3-12800) Obsidian Triple Channel Memory Kit (Three 2GB Memory Modules)
                  
22x DVD±RW Burner  OEM            
 
XION AXP  Mid Tower ATX Case         
 
Thermaltake USA Inc Xray 5.25" Drive Bay Kit
 
EVGA GeForce GTX 470 1280MB PCIe x16 2 EACH 

XION Power Real 1100W ATX Power Supply      

                  Total:         $1,952.39 
All this will be driving a 26" center monitor and two 21" side monitors, TrackIr, X-52 HOTAS and CH rudder pedals. I've got a couple sets of surround speakers with sub-woofers so at some point I'll be hooking up the integrated 7.1 sound system. Prolly while the wife and kids are away.

[Dragon]

I've used the EVGA MB for last 2 builds, the on board restart button is a great feature. 


Get the BIOS updated ASAP, before installing Windows preferably or at least before installing the second VC.  Very important to do this to remove the headaches.

 

 

[ghoulish]

OK, it's bought and built.  Loaded the 64bit version of windows7,  and having problems getting the SoftTh software to work for AH and Half-life(I may have to reload with the 32bit version).  Other than that, working out pretty good.