Building a new tower.

LOL Im not a Gamer, well part time I am.

I am building this for 80% graphics and 20% gaming. Cannot wait.

If my calcultions are correct there will be not too much out there to touch it.

Especially after I OC the whole shebang! Should be an animal. Then I will get the 6 more gb of ram and see what she can do.

Toms has my chip rippin A$$.
 
Get an Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 for $320 and save yourself a grand for 'other' things. (Hint,Hint)
 
Well I settled on the raid 0 hard drives.
Because it sounds like you'll be using this for work/stuff that's of importance to you, and because it bears repeating, be very diligent in backing up your data. RAID 0 is very fault intolerant--if you lose one disk in a RAID 0 array, you lose the whole array.

AFAIK, the difference in spindle speeds won't give you any problems.
 
Because it sounds like you'll be using this for work/stuff that's of importance to you, and because it bears repeating, be very diligent in backing up your data. RAID 0 is very fault intolerant--if you lose one disk in a RAID 0 array, you lose the whole array.

AFAIK, the difference in spindle speeds won't give you any problems.

Ill back up diligently for sure, plus these drives are said to last and last?

Thanks for the answer on the spindle speeds.
 
Ill crush it into talcum powder totally stock! LOL!
I understand the speed part.

I was talking more from a point of diminishing return.

3X more money for the Bloomfield stuff

They perform 25-35% better.

IMHO, the i7 CPUs are the best but not worth the price at this point.
 
I understand the speed part.

I was talking more from a point of diminishing return.

3X more money for the Bloomfield stuff

They perform 25-35% better.

IMHO, the i7 CPUs are the best but not worth the price at this point.


Under $500.0 for the i7-940 isnt bad. Plus it is coming down.
Plus I did ok on the board too. NO FSB is worth its weight imho.
 
Ill back up diligently for sure, plus these drives are said to last and last?
Google did a study awhile back, and, IIRC, they found that hard drives generally fail early or they'll run for years, but anything mechanical can fail--and remember, Murphy was an optimist. ;)
 
Normaly I would hop on the "you didn't need that train", but im interested to se this beast when your done, So far you are on track for a complete animal with that cpu, memory and raptors. your 7200 backup will work just fine with 10k mains, if your raptors don't fail in the first hour they will last for years. Let us know what your gonna do for vid cards so we can point you to a good power supply, you should wait to mid january when the new nvidia 295's are released to the public, it's gonna be the badest vid card on the planet.
http://guru3d.com/article/geforce-gtx-295-preview/

I am a firm believer in water cooling, been running water for almost 6 years. A complete system will run you 3-5 hundred check out dangerden.com it's the only people i trust for water cooling. Lightning fast shipping, paypal accepted.
 
Well for power supply since I will expand this tower to the maximum I figured I'd go with the Cooler Master Real Power Pro 1250 Watt unit.

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For $241.00 it's a bargain for a 1250!!
 
As for the Nvidia VS the ATI I honestly wouldn't trust any early tests.

If Nv is pushing a product before it's out probably to put some doubt in the minds of anyone that might otherwise be looking to buy an ATI alternative.

If this thing "destroyed" the 4870 X2 I'm sure Nv would be handing it out to reviewers left and right to get the message out.

Yet reviews are only showing up on a handful of sites and in those cases missing some benchmarks while at least one site has been claiming that Nv was limiting what they could benchmark with the new cards.

Plus I will be upgrading to another 4870 when they come down and Ill rip anything apart then.
 
All I have here in the office is my case.
I settled on the Thermaltake Spedo Advance Package, got it for $209.00 shipped.

I also have the ram here as well as the tv card which came today actually. It is the Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-2250 dual tuner ATSC/QAM PCI-E card. Got for just over $100.00.

I also have the Lite On Lite On IHES206-08 Blu-ray. Got that for $115.00.

Still have settled on an i7 yet, waiting to see if I can find a deal or if they will come down. My current comp is the biggest pos on Earth and it is ready to crap out anyday so I am ramping up the completion date! LOL! For the chip cooling I am going with the Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme 1366/775/AM2 RT CPU Cooler package.

For vid card I am going with the ATI 4870 X2. When they come down in price I will be adding another.

Im doing OK so far on budget. Im a tick over $1000.00.

Still looking for fair priced Raptors. The original deal fell through for $179.99 each!!
 
I have the i7-920 in my mom's computer, seems to function really well so far. I haven't really pushed it. It doesn't have a good graphics card or video card, but she's no gamer.:)
 
I know how it goes.... I still havent pulled the trigger on my $600 core 2 duo upgrade yet. My p4 machine is still going strong. I've got $400 in hardware priced out on Newegg and a $200 ASUS monitor. Too many other priorities right now and the economy is showing no signs of improving in the near future.

I got a cool acer aspire one for my birthday that I have been playing with lately. Not top of the line by any means but ultra portable and fun!
 
I know how it goes.... I still havent pulled the trigger on my $600 core 2 duo upgrade yet. My p4 machine is still going strong. I've got $400 in hardware priced out on Newegg and a $200 ASUS monitor. Too many other priorities right now and the economy is showing no signs of improving in the near future.

I got a cool acer aspire one for my birthday that I have been playing with lately. Not top of the line by any means but ultra portable and fun!

Dont always get everything from newegg.
SOME and only SOME of their prices are ok.
Then they hit you with tax and shipping.
Half my purchases were free or very low shipping with ZER0 tax..

Using google shopping was the best. Showed me the cheapest period.
I only got one item from new egg, my ram, then the VERY next day the dropped if $40.00!!

I bitched and they gave me $25.00 back.
Not a very impressive outlet imho. I shopped and saved tons off their prices.

Heres my rundown so far. All prices include shipping.

$219.00: Thermaltake Spedo Advance Package from Ewiz.com.

$319.50: Board - Asus P6T Deluxe OC Palm Edition from Ewiz.com.

$265.00: Memory - 2gb (3 chips) Corsair Dominator PC 12800 from Newegg.com.

$116.50: Blu Ray DVD ROM - Lite On IHES206-08 Blu-ray Disc Reader with DVD Writer Combo from Tiger Direct.com.

$114.00: Tv Card, Happauge WinTV HR 2250 from Digital Living Inc.
 
hummm, I have never paid tax on any item purchased through the egg. Perhaps because they have no physical location/warehouse in AR. As far as shipping goes, I completely understand. They can really screw you on that one. I try to find deals on items with free shipping or their markdown items. Manufacturer's rebates are ok but if I only have $50 to spend on ram I can't get that $70 ram with the $30 mail-in-rebate. Not worth the 4 month wait. :)

I'll definately search google for the items I have picked to look for deals. Thanks for the advise.
 
Just picked up a SEAGATE Barracuda 7200.11 ST31500341AS 1.5 TB SATA II 7200 RPM 32MB Buffer Hard Drive for $136.95 in a retail box from Dell.

Could have gone cheaper from Ebay with an OEM.
Read alot of the sellers feedbacks, the negatives and neutrals reflect a high margin of people who couldn't get the warranty validated from the serial numbers on the drives.

Wonder why this seems so common with the OEM drives?

So I figured for $20.00 more I have a retail box and no warranty issues.

Also my Thermaltake Spedo Advance Package Case showed up today. All I can say is WOW! Worth every pennt and more. Ill snap some shots later if I feel up to it. Few too many Hoegaardens. LOL!
 
Heres the case shots. Very wicked across the board. Very well made, A+ in every way. Look at the fan contact when you open the door. No more unplugging wires.

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I see wind up Evil Knievel, a sizzler ,speed racer, a 442.....is that your toy room ?
 

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