Looking to build a new computer in the $1000 range. Here's what I'm looking at building:

EVGA 780i A1 Mobo

EVGA 9800GTX

4GB of OCZ DDR2 800 (2x2GB)

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300

Zalman 9700NT Heatsink/Fan

The rest of the parts I'll be using from the rig I have now. Grand total after shipping and mail-in rebates, $999.10

Thanks for any advice, I've been building systems for many years, but I always like to get opinions first before building.

sounds good to me

zilla,
I've been going around and around about a system upgrade for a while now.
I'm running a 939 system.
I looked at an Intel system, and was crushed on the cost.
I've recently looked at a quad core AMD solution using the 9850 and found myself at less than half the cost.
Now that won't be as monsterous a increase in performance "hoped for", but at <$900 (including 8GB DRAM and an additional drive for RAID5), I'm actually leaning towards the AMD x4....but I've not yet pulled the trigger.

Gerritt

Yeah looks good to me but the new 9900GTX/GT coming out in July

After looking around on the Internet and talking with some people, I'm leaning towards buying an E6850 Core 2 Duo instead of a Quad. The E6850 is clocked 600Mhz higher, and have a 1333 FSB versus the 1066 of the Q6600.

Plus games are just becoming dual core compliant never mind quads for now.

Are you really planning on using 3 way sli? Still I wouldn't recommend the 780i I've read it has the same problems for overclocking Quads as the 680i, instead go for the 790 if you're planning someday on using 3 way sli or if you want to save a little bit more go for the 750i FTW. I'm sure someone here can tell you how good it is at overclocking *tssk* *tssk* Mothow

I love my 750i F T W

Pwnzilla said:

Well that would be good if you don't plan on encoding and doing other stuff that take advantage of four cores including steam games, Crysis, RTS games and more with coming patches. Aren't you afraid that the E6850 won't give the same multi-thread capabilities as a Quad? It will be limited to 2 cores only with no headroom to do anything else and that gap can be filled quickly. I still suggest going for a Quad as I don't see a dual core a worthy upgrade from a single core.

If you want real life experience *tssk* *tssk* Mothow is your man.

I have revised my cart, here's what I'm probably going to buy tonight:

- EVGA 780i A1

(I dont want to get into DDR3 with a 790i in this build, I can get 8GB of DDR2 for half the price of 4GB of DDR3, granted it's not as fast, but with a 128bit dual channel motherboard there's so much bandwidth it doesn't make a huge difference versus price.)

- EVGA 9800GTX (stock clocks)

- OCZ 8GB DDR2 800 (RAM is so cheap why not throw 8GBs in)

- Intel E8400 or Q9300 (still up in the air about which CPU to buy)

- Zalman 9700NT Cooler

I'll be ordering my rig tonight, I'm probably going to get a Q9300 but everything I read points to a E8400 if you only care about games, I do no encoding, photo shop, vegas, etc.

Also, I'll be using my Cooler Master Cosmos chassis, my PC Power & Cooling 610W PSU, and my WD Raptor X from my current machine.

Thanks for the input.

Yes, please, stick with DDR2. As far as the E8400 vs. Core 2 Quad argument, its a tough choice and I had to go through it as well. I ended up getting the Quad, as I figured I'm gonna overclock it anyway, and so I decided I'd like to have a Quad core since I plan on having this system for at least the next four years. The E8400 will clock much higher though, and will hit 4Ghz pretty easily, while a Q9300 (or Xeon equivalent) will hit around 3.4Ghz or so. Theres actually a Xeon equivalent of the E8400 as well, but the exact name escapes me at the moment.

I'd personally go for a Thermalright Ultra 120A/120 Extreme, Tuniq Tower 120, or ZeroTherm Nirvana over the Zalman 9700. All four of those coolers offer better performance, and are generally quieter. The Ultra 120 and Tower 120 also allow you to swap out fans to any kind of 120mm fan.

Just ordered my s**t, here is the final cart:

EVGA 780i A1

EVGA 9800GTX

4GB 2x2 DDR2 1066 Corsair Dominator 5-5-5-15

Core 2 Quad Q9300

Creative X-Fi Xtreme Gamer

Zalman 9700NT

I got next day shipping, so I'll post when I have her all built and let you guys know what I think.

Again, thanks for the info.

She's up and running first try. OC'd to 3.2Ghz right out of the gate with only changing the FSB, locked at 3.5Ghz (500x7 or 2000FSB). She might want some more juice for 3.5Ghz, I haven't gotten that far yet.

Just getting Crysis installed and patched now. I'll post back later with the results.

**Woops posted under my other username**

Please, one username only. Or we might have to suspend your lesser used account.

9700NT handles quads quite well.But I wouldnt go over 3.5ghz.I traded my Ultra 120 Extreme for the 9700NT and im not at all upset that i did.

Surpassed my expectations!

Crysis at 1440x900 on High is a solid 45fps with stock clocks.

Crysis on my 1920x1080 HDTV on High is a solid 30fps stock clocks.

Unreal Tournament 3 1440x900 everything maxed is 60fps constant under v-sync.

Unreal tournament 3 1920x1080 HDTV everything maxed is 50-55fps.

Now given that my HDTV has about 700,000 more pixels I'd say the 9800GTX scales very well with higher resolutions.

Overall I'm very pleased with this system, I haven't done any benchmarks while OCing.

glad to hear you went with the Quad, you won't regret it. You have a very good Pc there.

Today I decided to splurge a little and buy another 9800GTX since I already sold some of my old parts to a friend.

I'm trying to figure out if my PC Power & Cooling 610W (825W Peak) PSU can hold two of these cards up and the rest of my system, I'm thinking it will be fine, but I would like a second opinion.

Thanks for any input.

If you scroll towards the bottom of this thread:
http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/71416/?l=1
and look at Johns input, you should be able to find the information you need in the links he provided.

I called PC Power today, they asked me what each part in my computer was, calculated the total, added 20% and told me if everything was running 100% load I would still have about 100W headroom.

Good news.

Second 9800GTX should be here Mon or Tue.

Pwnzilla said:
Yeah PC Power & Cooling's 610W PSU is equal to the 700W PSUs of some other respected PSU brands. You get what you pay for, most of the time. That's a really nice PC your gonna have, your gonna have alot of fun with it.

Here's the Sli certified Psu's, I wouldn't take that list too serious though.

http://www.slizone.com/object/slizone_build_psu.html