All,

I did some search to get an idea of what's going on. I have not built a new PC in 5 years and my current PC is an old Dell XPS gen 3 (P4 3.6 HT, 7900 GTX, 2G), I am mainly looking for a new PC to try the new gen gaming titles (Age of Conan, Crysis, etc). I probably won't be doing an SLI combo, but I chose a motherboard than has that option so I have some flexibility. I have also looked at Memorial Day specials (Dell XPS , HP), those are tempting, but they don't give me the vid/HD I am looking for... but surprisingly, HP has the Q9550 (2.83 Quad Yorkfield), which I have not seen anywhere else! But if I went with the HP, I'd have to choose an 8800GT + the 7200 RPM drives.

Anyways, here is my build, and I am open to your suggestions... TIA!

PSU: PC Power & Cooling 610-Watt
Case: CoolerMaster Cosmos 1000 ATX
HD: Western Digital / Raptor / 150GB / 10K
Mem: Corsair Dual Channel 4096MB PC6400 DDR2 800MHz (2 * 2048)
Vid: EVGA GeForce 8800 GTS SSC Video Card 640MB GDDR3
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450
Mobo: Asus P5N-D Motherboard
OS: Windows Vista Home Prem 64-bit
WNIC: Linksys WMP54G PCI Wireless

I'd like to keep this around $1500

Thx
Houman

I have no clue about the wireless card.

The Raptor is obsolete - either wait for the upcoming VelociRaptor or get a WD6400AAKS.

The rest is great.

Add a cooler if you want to overclock. Here's a good one:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] =HDT-S1283

If you're serious about SLI get this 750W Silencer, it's at a really good price at newegg right now:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] cer%2b750W

The 610W version can handle two of those cards, but has less room for upgrades and disks and overclocking.

weird, my post did not show up (to your reply). I checked the VelociRaptor, I had no idea the next version was out... guess I'll have to squeeze that one in. I don't want to do SLI right now, so you think 750W is the way to go for future... eh ?

The 8800GTS seems to be the old one (not the new G92), might as well go for that one, though I read it's 512mb and not 640 which is alright.

That Hard drive WD6400AAKS you linked is great! though I am getting a bit spoiled w/ the 74G raptor 10k rpm on the Gen 3... it has worked great over the last 4 years.

-H

Yeah, a bigger PSU is more future-proof, and if it's on sale why not take advantage.

The 8800GTS 512MB is faster than the 640MB. It's a different card with more processors inside, and they were really dumb to keep the same name. It should have been called 8900GTS.

Makes sense, I was reading the hard drive forums (another board) and pricewise it makes sense to use the WD6400AAKS you linked (two in Raid 0) as opposed to using a Velociraptor.