Ghoulish's new rig

[ghoulish]

OK, I'm getting ready to drop some serious cash on a gaming system.
Below are the parts I'm planning on buying as of today. Purchase time in about a week.

I'm hoping this system will last more than six months before someone ups the graphics requirements on Half life or Aces high II.
Obviously I'm looking to run all graphics at highest settings, and on 3 22" screens.

Have I missed anything important here? I don't want to finish building it only to find out I boneheaded something and only get half the performance I expected.

Thanx in advance for your time and comments


OCZ Technology Gold Series XTC Cooler 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3-1333 (PC3-10666) 240 Pin DIMM Dual Channel Kit

Seagate Technology Barracuda 1TB 7,200RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
 
Samsung 22x DVD±RW Burner with Dual/Double Layer Support OEM
 
Microsoft OEM Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit OEM

BFG Technologies EX1200 1200W ATX 12V / EPS 12V Modular Power Supply

EVGA GeForce GTX 470 Superclocked 1280MB GDDR5 PCIe 2.0 x16 Graphics Card
2 each SLI configuration
 
Cooler Master HAF932 High Air Flow Full Tower
 
AOC 2236VW 22" LCD Widescreen Display 3 Each

EVGA X58 SLI LGA 1366 X58 ATX Motherboard
   
Intel Corporation Core i7-930 Processor Boxed

Total cost |$2,265.08  

[TequilaChaser]

OK, I'm getting ready to drop some serious cash on a gaming system.
Below are the parts I'm planning on buying as of today. Purchase time in about a week.

I'm hoping this system will last more than six months before someone ups the graphics requirements on Half life or Aces high II.
Obviously I'm looking to run all graphics at highest settings, and on 3 22" screens.

Have I missed anything important here? I don't want to finish building it only to find out I boneheaded something and only get half the performance I expected.

Thanx in advance for your time and comments


Asus Computer International P7P55-M Socket 1156 P55 mATX Motherboard
 
OCZ Technology Gold Series XTC Cooler 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3-1333 (PC3-10666) 240 Pin DIMM Dual Channel Kit

Seagate Technology Barracuda 1TB 7,200RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
 
Samsung 22x DVD±RW Burner with Dual/Double Layer Support OEM
 
Microsoft OEM Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit OEM

BFG Technologies EX1200 1200W ATX 12V / EPS 12V Modular Power Supply

EVGA GeForce GTX 470 Superclocked 1280MB GDDR5 PCIe 2.0 x16 Graphics Card
2 each SLI configuration
 
Cooler Master HAF932 High Air Flow Full Tower
 
AOC 2236VW 22" LCD Widescreen Display 3 Each

EVGA X58 SLI LGA 1366 X58 ATX Motherboard
   
Intel Corporation Core i7-930 Processor Boxed

Total cost |$2,265.08 

Why have you picked (2) MotherBoards?:

Asus Computer International P7P55-M Socket 1156 P55 mATX Motherboard

EVGA X58 SLI LGA 1366 X58 ATX Motherboard

do you need (2) video cards to actually run (3) monitors?

with those Nvidia high end videocards, I thought I read on this forum somewhere that the failure rate was somewhat high......

"eyefinity by Ati" offers use of like 3 to 6 monitors with just one video card ( may need to double check that ), could save you some money perhaps???

[ghoulish]

OPPS! Going with the SLI mobo.  The other one wasnt deleted out of the shopping cart I cut and pasted from. Post edited.

[ghoulish]

I will check out the Eyefinity stuff. Just hadn't considered it actually.

[Infidelz]

have you researched SSD drives? Tweaktown has some good articles and a few system builds on their site for reference.

[ghoulish]

have you researched SSD drives? Tweaktown has some good articles and a few system builds on their site for reference.

Ya those sound really cool for games that are hard drive intensive "half life 2". I think I will check some of those out.

I don't think they would make a big difference and AH though. Once the game is loaded and you're flying I haven't noticed much drive activity.

[Spikes]

My advice would be definitely check out ATI and eyefinity. Build looks good though.

[BaldEagl]

My $.02:

Instead of that single 1 Tb drive I'd put in 2 HD's.  A smaller (possibly SSD) drive for the OS and applications, then a larger traditional drive for data storage.  I'd also partition a portion of the larger drive to allow you to mirror the main HD (OS and apps) onto for quick recovery in case of a failure.

Lightscribe might be cool for the optical drive if you're into that kind of thing.

I'm not sure I'd buy a BFG PSU.  At this point I'd probably look for a Seasonic or Corsair (only because the Corsair's seem pretty highly rated by users).  My preference would be a non-modular single rail.

I've never seen the need to buy an overclocked or superclocked video card.  You can do it yourself if the standard version's not cutting it which I doubt will be a problem with what you've selected.  It would void the warranty though so there is that to consider.

Again, brand preference but I probably wouldn't buy AOC monitors.  I'd more likely stick with soemeone I knew like Acer, Samsung, LG, Veiwsonic, etc.

[EDIT]  Dont the LGA1366 CPU's need triple channel memory?  Answer:  Yes, they do.  Looks like you're buying 6 Gb triple channel memory instead of what you chose.

And there you have it.

[Ghastly]

BE is spot on, except that for the kind of money your spending I'd put in 2 traditional drives, so you can mirror the data storage as well.

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.

And as much as I at one times disliked ATI for driver problems (except for lowend upgrades for PCI-based systems) ATI is all I'm doing these days.

<S>

[1701E]

"I've never seen the need to buy an overclocked or superclocked video card.  You can do it yourself if the standard version's not cutting it which I doubt will be a problem with what you've selected.  It would void the warranty though so there is that to consider."


With EVGA overclocking doesn't void the warranty so long as the OC doesn't cause physical damage to the card.  Unless they updated the warranty info since I last checked the main concerns an OCer would worry about are covered.  OC is covered save for the above, and using a third-party cooler is covered so long as the original is replaced when returning it.

[ghoulish]

My $.02:

Instead of that single 1 Tb drive I'd put in 2 HD's.  A smaller (possibly SSD) drive for the OS and applications, then a larger traditional drive for data storage.  I'd also partition a portion of the larger drive to allow you to mirror the main HD (OS and apps) onto for quick recovery in case of a failure.

Lightscribe might be cool for the optical drive if you're into that kind of thing.

I'm not sure I'd buy a BFG PSU.  At this point I'd probably look for a Seasonic or Corsair (only because the Corsair's seem pretty highly rated by users).  My preference would be a non-modular single rail.

I've never seen the need to buy an overclocked or superclocked video card.  You can do it yourself if the standard version's not cutting it which I doubt will be a problem with what you've selected.  It would void the warranty though so there is that to consider.

Again, brand preference but I probably wouldn't buy AOC monitors.  I'd more likely stick with soemeone I knew like Acer, Samsung, LG, Veiwsonic, etc.

[EDIT]  Dont the LGA1366 CPU's need triple channel memory?  Answer:  Yes, they do.  Looks like you're buying 6 Gb triple channel memory instead of what you chose.

And there you have it.

Thanx, I think I got a nickles worth.  I'll swap for triple channel RAM.

[ghoulish]

BE is spot on, except that for the kind of money your spending I'd put in 2 traditional drives, so you can mirror the data storage as well.

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.

And as much as I at one times disliked ATI for driver problems (except for lowend upgrades for PCI-based systems) ATI is all I'm doing these days.

<S>

I'm glad I posted this, and thanx for your reply. I'm gonna do some serious comparisons on the Eyefinity and Nvidia solutions.
Since internal space wont be an issue, raiding the drives may be a good idea and cheap insurance of a HD failure. Thanx again

[BaldEagl]

I'm glad I posted this, and thanx for your reply. I'm gonna do some serious comparisons on the Eyefinity and Nvidia solutions.

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.

[cattb]

 I have been looking at drives, and from what I have been reading lately of seagate drives I would go with a WD black. Seems to be a high failure rate of seagate drives, referred to the click of death.
 This is coming from a person who always used maxtor then switched to seagate after they bought out maxtor.
 The WD black is a bit more expensive, but not by alot of money.

[Chalenge]

Unless there is a manufacturer that backs their cards as well as evga does...nothing wrong with sticking to the 470s. The new cards scale much better (the old criticism of SLI only giving 10-15% increase is no longer valid) and evga warranties cannot be beat.