I am going to be building my first computer on my own here soon, something I have wanted to do for a long time. Here are the parts I plan to use and my reasoning, but I would appreciate the input of any experienced builders.

1 - Case - Antec Nine Hundred Mid Tower Gamer Case (Retail) (100$)

I like the look of this case, especially with the tray on top for my iPod and such along with front USB support and the clear windows on the side.

1 - CPU - Intel Core 2 Quad Processor Q6600 2.4GHz (250$)

I want a quad core processor and the Q6600 seems like it will be good for a while to come and the price point is about what I was expecting a CPU to cost me.

1 - Mobo - GIGABYTE GA-EX38-DQ6 ATX Motherboard (260$)

I like this board. It may be a bit more than I was expecting to drop on the mobo, but I plan on getting into PC gaming in the future and would like a board that will support crossfire for my PC gaming. I also needed a board that has support for front side ports on my case and it seems like this mobo has what I need to support the case I am buying.

1 - HDD - Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1TB ST31000340AS SATA-II 32MB Cache (240$)

I am going to need a huge hard drive because I will be buying a Black Magic HD capture card and will be recording HD video to my PC (XBox game capturing). This seems like a good hard and has the 1TB I am desiring. Would 2 500 HDDs be better than 1 big HDD though?

2 - RAM - Crucial Ballistix 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR2-1066 CL5-5-5-15 Dual Channel Kit Retail BL2KIT12864AA1065 (85$)

RAM is RAM, but this is a good brand. I know that intially anything over 3 GBs is overkill being that I will only be using a 32 bit OS, but when the driver support is there, I would defintiely like to move to a 64 bit OS.

1 - Graphics Card - Sapphire ATI Radeon HD3870 512MB DDR4 2DVI/HDCP PCI-Express Video Card (200$)

This was on Tom's Hardwares March guide as one of the best graphics cards for your money, so I went with this. If I come across games in the future that are more graphics intesive than this card can handle, I can always upgrade or the mobo I selected is crossfire compatible.

1 - PSU - Gigabyte GE-S800A-D1 ODIN GT 800W Software Control Power Supply (180$)

This may be a bit overkill, but I LOVE the cable management system and if I ever go to crossfire, I will need the extra wattage. Everything about this PSU seems to impress me, but maybe I am missing something as I know very little about PSUs.

1 - DVD Drive - SONY NEC AD-7190A-OB BLACK DUAL DVDRW CDRW EIDE COMBO DRIVE (45$)

This was the downer. I wanted a Blu Ray writable drive but they are too much IMO. So my plan is just to use this cheapy drive and when prices on writable Blu Ray drives drop into the 200$ price region, I will add one to the computer.

So that is my build. Opinion, questions, or comments are welcome. As I said, this is my first build and I have done a lot of research. But I defer to the experts for your input and I look forward to any and all replies! Thanks guys!

Unless you are gaming on a 24" or larger monitor do not worry about Crossfire. There will always be a single card solution to compete with the best SLI/Crossfire systems have to offer. There's no reason to spend $260 on a motherboard.

Unless you are doing extreme overclocking, drop the DDR2-1066 memory. I have that Q6600 OC'd to 3.2Ghz with a 400Mhz FSB that works perfect with my half priced DDR2-800 memory. 1066 is a waste of money.

Go with the 1TB drive. And that's a great/FAST drive.

Haven't heard much about Gigabyte PSUs really. I tend to usually go with Seasonic, PC Power & Cooling, and Antec PSUs. But thats me. 800W is overkill for that system, but isn't hurting anything.

Intel's new 45nm quad core CPUs are coming out now. Might want to consider them over the Q6600 which is over a year old now.

The 3870 is a good card. And I just read the price is dropping to $170 for it. Its a good card. In 2 years when it begins to really slow down in games, having a 2nd one in crossfire wont help much at all. It will still be slow. You're better off just upgrading to whatever is new and good.

Everything seems great. You may want to invest in another HDD and go RAID. One of my harddrives just failed (it was 6 months old); I dont know about you but i'd hate to lose all that info.

take 2 500 gb hdds, better £/GB and best security and safety + managment.
another PSU like the corsairs 620hx is absolute best choice. (that system with 2x 3870 will peak at 400-410w )
i'd sugest the 45nm cpu's as well

Cheers

Thanks for the reply. What board would you recommend foy my system then? It needs to have support for front USB and firewire as these are on the case I picked out. I saw your sig and it looks like you are using the same case I picked out. Are you happy with it?

Also, where did you learn how to overclock? I have never done this before, but we all have to start somewhere. Also, is the heatsink and fan that comes with the processor in a retail box fine, or should I look into an upgrade? If so, what is good and is there anything else I would need? I saw some guy had some silver stuff he put on the processor before installing a third party fan, but I forget what it was.

gotta agree with deuce here i would go with a single 8800gt,to hell with sli/crossfire too costly,not energy efficient,etc,etc,still it's your choice though,also take a look at the cheaper asus p35 mobo's,,,or not so cheap,somewhat better,i personally do not believe in spending one more cent than i have to ,,,and no more than i need to,,,,enermax,ocz would be my choices for a psu,,but,, any good brand name should do,..
in any event the final choice/decision must be yours as you're the one who is going to live with,look at it for some time..enjoy...

Thanks. Unlike most people who would post this and hope for one person to agree with their build so they could start ordering, I really am taking everyone's advice to heart. I think I am going to scratch the mobo I had picked out for a cheaper one, so now all I need is one that has support for front side devices (USB and firewire) so all suggestions are welcome. It sounds like the RAM might be overkill too, so I will go with PC800, I think. I have been reading where people were able to overclock their Q6600 to 3.2-3.6 GHz, and if this is something I want to do, what suggestions does everyone have for a different mobo from the one I had picked out? What other considerations do I need to make with OCing?

Also what vendors do you guys like using. I have heard good and bad things about newegg. Whats the best places for great deals on PC components?

once you know, you newegg.

DDR2 800 is a better choice for RAM. If you are running XP then 2GB will be fine, if you are running vista then get 3-4GB of RAM. (even with a 32-bit version)

crossfire is nice but sli is easier to work with and an 8800gt 512MB is better than an 3870 anyway so that's a win.

always, always, always have 2 or more physically seperate HDD's. You can have the 1TB drive but my suggestion would be 2 - 500GB drives in a RAID 0 and 1 - 120/250 GB HDD as your windows drive...but if cost is a priority then that would change the setup according to your wallet.

over all, you done well. its more personal preference at this point.

I'd probably go with a single card solution as well, though people will argue both for and against xfire/sli. An 8800GTS (512MB) would probably work well for you, though if you're not running anything too demanding the ATI 3870 isn't too bad.

You'll want to replace the stock HSF if you plan on overclocking to the 3.2 - 3.6ghz mark.

For motherboards I'd go with either P35 or X38. The Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L is a decent board for around $90.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813128059

I don't have any experience with Gigabyte PSUs so I can't really tell you if that one is good or bad. I generally go with PC Power & Cooling (I'd probably go with a 610W or maybe 750W Silencer in this build) but they are not modular, which drives away some people.

Finally, you might want to consider getting a 2x2gb kit of DDR2 800 rather than 2x1GB so that if you want to go to 8gb in the future you don't have to get all new RAM. Crucial is my preferred RAM so I like your choice, and as others have said the 800 is fine for a 3.6ghz overclock.

I get most of my parts from newegg and have had good experiences for the most part.

There's a very good guide on overclocking the Q6600 on these forums. The thermal paste was probably Arctic Silver 5, but I believe the Arctic Cooling MX-2 is more popular these days.

Edit: Also, that DVD drive is kind of pricy. You should be able to get something cheaper; Samsung or Lite-On generally run less than Sony. Retail drives come with the DVD software so that's something to consider. SATA drives have smaller cables. I'd go SATA over IDE.

Thanks guys. Tons of great info. I love these forums. I am looking forward to getting my tax refund so I can start buying stuff!

Hey guys,

I have made some changes based on the suggestions, but the mobo still perplexes me. I understand I may be overbuying on it, but I can't find a good, reasonably priced one, that has support for the front 2 USB ports and the front firewire port the case has. Anybody have a good suggestion on a mobo that supports 2 front USB port and and one front firewire port?

Looks like a good system build. If you ever need more fps, you can always add another 3870.

Hard drives - i've always went with small capacity, high speed drives in a RAID 0 to run all of my applications on. If you need additional space for music, movies and such, consider getting a single large drive. I suggest 2 Western Digital Raptors 36GB or 75GB in a RAID 0 setup. Then 1 large drive like a 500GB or 750GB for everything else.

With this setup, you can easily reformat and reinstall your OS on a regular basis to keep your machine running smooth. You can also do other system tweaks, like moving your page file to the larger, slower drive and disabling it on the faster drives to improve some application performance.

If you can't afford the raptors, then 2 drives are better than 1. Leave the 1TB drive behind and go with 2 500GB drive in a RAID setup. You can setup RAID 0 for speed or RAID 1 for redundancy and reliability.

Processor - The Q6600 is a solid choice, but the Q9000 series has just launched and although they are in short supply, the wait is well worth it. They're on a new manufacturing process (45nm), they use less power, have an increase in cache and are just plain faster. I chose to go with the Q9450, which seems to be the all around best buy in the quad core market.

I would browse Abit and Asus products. I've had the most success and reliability with those two brands.

If you can post a list of the features you're concerned about when choosing one, i can help you prioritize a bit.

They pretty much all have internal USB connectors but firewire is another story. The Gigabyte GIGABYTE GA-EP35-DS3P has internal firewire as does the Asus P5K http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813131180