Jax's New Rig

Jaxom92

Now, I haven't purchased this yet, but I'm soon to be graduated with my Bachelor's degree and am pursuing potential jobs. I expect to be able to build this new rig for myself sometime in August or September. I thought I'd post what I plan on purchasing to see what people have to say about it.

Case: Full tower case (brand and model aren't really important - I picked a quality construction)

Power Supply: 1200 W modular power supply. 20 amps on two 12V rails, 36 amps on the other two. Forgot what brand at the moment.

Motherboard: XFX 780i NForce

Processor: Intel Q9450

Graphics Card: EVGA 9800 GTX (it's a beefed up edition for only marginally more cost)

Memory: Corsair TWIX 4x 1GB

Hard Drive: 2x Western Digital 500 GB (forgot the speed at the moment, but fast enough)

Blueray + DVD + CD combo drive

Speakers: Logitec 5.1 system (don't remember the exact model)

Monitor: Dell 22 in.

Inputs: Microsoft wireless optical mouse and wireless keyboard

OS: Vista Premium 32-bit (got this for 10 bucks through my uni)

The plan is, after purchasing this, I'll be making future upgrades as time/money allows. Most notably is adding two more of the graphics cards for a triple SLI arrangement - which explains why I went witht eh 1200W power supply. Sometime after that I'll be going for some aftermarket cooling devices and overclocking the sucker.

I'm currently running an Intel Pentium 4 3.4 ghz, 2 gigs, 240 gb hd, ATI x800 vid card (AGP). So the idea with the new purchase is to give me something that will be upgradable in the future, but with good enough components that those upgrades aren't going to cost me a whole lot. I wanted to "future proof" the system as much as possible. I think I should be good for a little while with this.

Oh, and the buget was 2500 USD max. I'm fairly close to that.

Any thoughts, comments, suggestions?

Raxus

Jax it might help if you told us what you are going to use this computer for besides gaming.

Varlok91

Originally posted by Jaxom92


Now, I haven't purchased this yet, but I'm soon to be graduated with my Bachelor's degree and am pursuing potential jobs. I expect to be able to build this new rig for myself sometime in August or September. I thought I'd post what I plan on purchasing to see what people have to say about it.
Case: Full tower case (brand and model aren't really important - I picked a quality construction)

Power Supply: 1200 W modular power supply. 20 amps on two 12V rails, 36 amps on the other two. Forgot what brand at the moment.

Motherboard: XFX 780i NForce

Processor: Intel Q9450

Graphics Card: EVGA 9800 GTX (it's a beefed up edition for only marginally more cost)

Memory: Corsair TWIX 4x 1GB

Hard Drive: 2x Western Digital 500 GB (forgot the speed at the moment, but fast enough)

Blueray + DVD + CD combo drive

Speakers: Logitec 5.1 system (don't remember the exact model)

Monitor: Dell 22 in.

Inputs: Microsoft wireless optical mouse and wireless keyboard

OS: Vista Premium 32-bit (got this for 10 bucks through my uni)
The plan is, after purchasing this, I'll be making future upgrades as time/money allows. Most notably is adding two more of the graphics cards for a triple SLI arrangement - which explains why I went witht eh 1200W power supply. Sometime after that I'll be going for some aftermarket cooling devices and overclocking the sucker.
I'm currently running an Intel Pentium 4 3.4 ghz, 2 gigs, 240 gb hd, ATI x800 vid card (AGP). So the idea with the new purchase is to give me something that will be upgradable in the future, but with good enough components that those upgrades aren't going to cost me a whole lot. I wanted to "future proof" the system as much as possible. I think I should be good for a little while with this.
Oh, and the buget was 2500 USD max. I'm fairly close to that.
Any thoughts, comments, suggestions?

A - You have no need for a 1200 watt power supply, at MOST I'd recommend a corsair 750 watt. You can get by with a 550 watt corsair too easily.

B - Haven't heard great things about the 780i, but it is the most recent SLI board for DDR2 memory. But I will talk about SLI later...

C - I'd rather get a 2x2gb RAM kit rather than 4x1gb sticks, just leaves room to upgrade. And I'd suggest investing in Vista 64 bit if you wanna use all this memory down the road.

D - Consider looking into the newer 640 gb Western Digital drives, they are just about the fastest 7200 RPM hard drives out in the market now.

E - By the time you buy things in August, both ATI and NVIDIA will have release their new generation of cards. So definitely look into that. ATI might actually come out on top, which is why you might want to wait before you decide on a motherboard too, because there are much better options out there for crossfire than there are for SLI.

Jaxom92

Thanks for the replies.

I plan on using this computer primarily for gaming, although I'll be doing every other computer task I require on it as well. My main game is Lord of the Rings Online, but I also want to play Bioshock, Call of Duty 4, and Mass Effect among others.

 

 

A.   You'd recommend a 750 W for three 9800 GTX cards? That's what I ultimately want in there.

B.   I've heard quite the opposite about the 780i boards. To me, if I do SLI, it seems to be the best board to do it on. Overclocking ease and such as well. Then again, if I do go with ATI, then I'll be throwing this choice out.

C.   The memory suggestion makes perfect sense. I'll definitely look for the 2x 2gb solution. The reason I went with 32 bit vista was because I already own that one and it was heavily subsidized by my university. Convenience I guess is the key word there. Also, Lotro has problems with 64 bit Vista, and I don't want to negate my primary game. Then again, it's been having problems with SLI too so...

D.   Okay. I'll look around. I'm not dead set on my hard drives, except that I initially want 2 (plan to put them all in a RAID 5 once I get enough)

E.   I definitely plan on reevaluating my decisions in August when I go out to buy the parts - I don't tend to be a fanboi of either ATI or NVidia necessarily, so whomever offers the better card, I'll go there.

xxthecorexx

A. i don't think 750w will cover 3x sli with 9800gtxs

B. 780 rocks (i'm a happy owner) 790/ddr3 is VERY problematic (was an unhappy owner) i downgraded with thanks to evga from the 790 to the 780.

...

D. velociraptors in raid.. ... /drool.

E. good idea because none of this will mean crap in august.

Varlok91

I didn't know you were getting 3 9800GTXs, but even so I have seen a 750 watt from Corsair power 2 9800GX2s and still have enough power to overclock a quad.

And as we already established, you won't be getting 9800GTXs anyways, btw the new pricing came out for NVIDIA cards has been released, one is going to be $450 and the other is $650.

Jaxom92

 

Originally posted by Varlok91


I didn't know you were getting 3 9800GTXs, but even so I have seen a 750 watt from Corsair power 2 9800GX2s and still have enough power to overclock a quad.
And as we already established, you won't be getting 9800GTXs anyways, btw the new pricing came out for NVIDIA cards has been released, one is going to be $450 and the other is $650.

 

Yeah. Looks like I forgot to put that bit about putting in more vid-cards later on in my original post. So a 850 or 950 W, just to be on the safe side? Jump to 1000?

My price range for the graphics cards is 250-350 each, so those new ones are out. I might, might, might consider the 450 once I see some benchmarking and specs. If it's just crazy insane beating anything at the 350 price point by a huge margin, I'll go that way. I need to see benchmarking on the new ATI cards as well.

 

When are these new cards from NVidia supposed to be released?

Varlok91

Originally posted by Jaxom92


 
Originally posted by Varlok91


I didn't know you were getting 3 9800GTXs, but even so I have seen a 750 watt from Corsair power 2 9800GX2s and still have enough power to overclock a quad.
And as we already established, you won't be getting 9800GTXs anyways, btw the new pricing came out for NVIDIA cards has been released, one is going to be $450 and the other is $650.

 

Yeah. Looks like I forgot to put that bit about putting in more vid-cards later on in my original post. So a 850 or 950 W, just to be on the safe side? Jump to 1000?

My price range for the graphics cards is 250-350 each, so those new ones are out. I might, might, might consider the 450 once I see some benchmarking and specs. If it's just crazy insane beating anything at the 350 price point by a huge margin, I'll go that way. I need to see benchmarking on the new ATI cards as well.

 

When are these new cards from NVidia supposed to be released?

ATI's 4870 should definitely be out by the time you make your purchase and its supposed to be around $350.