Hello, I know this says its my first post, but I posted a bit a long time ago and I think my account went poof at some point.

Anyways, I'm about to finally build a brand new rig to take with me to MML7 in Louisville, KY and I wanted some advice on a couple things before I finalized my design plans and bought all my stuff. I'm a budget for power kind of guy and most of everything I get I try to get the best of the best at the best cost, ie. the most bang for my buck, yet allowing me to stay on top of the game for along time and allow for upgrading.

Right now this is what I have picked out:

Case: NZXT Tempest
CPU: Q6600 (This is a problem spot)
GPU: 2x 8800 GT 512 MB (Another advice spot)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix DDR2 800 4gb
Motherboard: Can't pick yet - Will need advice
Hard Drive: WD Raptor X WD1500AHFD 150GB
PSU: I usually go with some kind of PC Power and Cooling

Alrighty, so on to my questions. For a while now I decided that the Q6600 was the way to go. I wanted to get a quad core, have really good OC ability, and not be too expensive. I figured the 6600 was the champ here at a $230 retail price, and great reviews on OCing. Then a friend of mine went on and on about a Q9450 and about 45nm vs. 65nm and now I'm confused. So I went online did some review research of the Q6600 vs. the Q9450 and all I've come up with is more questions because I've read a few different things about the same thing saying go with a E8400 instead. So now I'm really getting mixed up on what CPU to buy considering I hear really good things about the E8400 OC ability, its cheaper than the 6600, and apparantly will get just as much use at the 6600 considering the lack of Quad Core Support for things. So... uh help me please.

As far as the GPU is concerned, I'm pretty set on what I want here. I'm gonna go with 2x 8800 GTs, the only reason I want a second opinion here is, the new vid cards are releasing in like a week, and obviously price drops are going to happen. I'm willing to spend $300ish on my video cards, so after the price drops should I just go with the cheaper 8800 GTs? Or is there another single or pair of cards I should be looking at because it'll fit the price range with better performance?

If you can, I'd like some assistance on what mobo to go with after I figure out what proc to go with. I obviously need socket 775, SLI support, and I'm a full feature kind of guy. So I like good amount of expansion slots and all that jazz. I really haven't done any research on this hardware for my system yet, figured I'd wait till I got a CPU set.

What I plan to do with the system - I play a lot of games, right now Age of Conan is kicking the **** out of my system, I'd like to play it will everything maxed, 16x AA and max resolution with at least 30-40 FPS. I do some video\audio encoding occasionally but, by no means do I need that to be blazing fast as I don't do it all the time. I multitask a little bit, ie. run some stuff in the background while I game, but I'm not a multi monitor, video encode while I photoshop, and play Age of Conan at the same time kind of guy.

Thanks for your help ahead of time.

Gaming only system: E8400
System with CPU intensive applications that take advantage of multicore systems: Q6600
If you want to spend $300+ on a CPU and it does not break the budget: Q9450

GPU: Do NOT for ANY reason buy 2 8800GT cards right now. SLI is a bad way to go to start with, but its terrible right now with the 2xx series card coming so soon. ONE 8800GT for under $200 then trade it up to a 2xx series card in 90 days. Make sure you buy an eVGA card so you can take advantage of this program. If you do not game at resolutions higher than 1920x1200 SLI makes almost NO DIFFERENCE! It is just a waste of power and higher temps.

Motherboard: nVidia's SLI motherboards for Intel frankly suck, another reason to get rid of your SLI dreams. Look at Asus or Gigabyte P45 of X38 boards. P45 is a good choice- like the P5Q Pro from Asus.

Hard Drive: No, skip it. Normal 7200RPM hard drives are just as fast as the Raptors now. Velicoraptors are still faster, if you want to sink $300 into a hard drive. Otherwise 500GB 7200.11 Seagate Drive 32MB cache.

Memory: skip what you picked, not what it used to be! Has problems with boards now. Pick up 4GB (8GB would not hurt with PS work) of G.Skill 4GB 4-4-4-12 RAM. It is $94 at Newegg. DDR2-800 is just fine.

PSU: Good choice!

Shadowduck, dude I don't know where you come from. It must not be this planet because nVidia's boards are the best on the market.

Shibumi, I would tell you to go for the Q6600 because it's good for just about everything.

For the hard drive, yea go for the Seagate Barracuda 500GB. For the graphics cards, if you want to wait for new cards from nVidia then wait for them. But if not go with something from Evga for the exchange deal.

For the mobo, I would suggest getting the Evga 780i. Very future proof and also very full featured.

you should buy a quad core. its not going to perform quite as well as the E8400 but will last a lot longer and they are good at overclocking.the q6600 is just fine. if your worried about the 45nm thing yes they are better with power consumtion and i think they are better overclocking but they can be a hassle to get them to work on your mobo. for a gpu. well there is nothing wrong with sli. at the vary lest its not going to hurt perfomance. but i would suggest you get the 8800gts 512mb. its the same as the 9800gtx just a little slower and a lot cheaper. and you can do what shadow duck says get an evga one and in a few months upgrade to the new cards coming out. for the hard drive if you can afford the raptor go for it but its probably better to just get a 7200 rpm. seagate's are good harddrives. for memory get like 4gbs of OCZ. last i checked it was 98 bucks from newegg. for a mobo get a evga 780I. seriously. i have only seen one post on toms hardware forums saying any one had a problem with it. its a good board. for a psu mmmm well pc power and cooling is not bad i hear they run on the expencive side. just make sure to get one that has 80+ efficiency.

HAHAHAH thats rly funny...
Is this another thunderman???

Nvidia boards suck cause 1) unstable 2)unreliable and 3) they are picky and **** for overclocking

OP: Drop SLI and get a nice P45 board....like Shadow said

Would you expect anything differen't from somene who uses a forums moniker of "Ibuypower".

^ i actually came up with that name thank you very much.

now thats were your wrong( in my experince ) i have the bfg 680I and it works like a charm. it overclocks wonderfully and is perfectly stable . if i were you i would look at your signiture. 99% of all computer problems are user related. im not saying the P45 is a bad board but there is nothing wrong with nvidia boards.

The Nvidia chipsets (like the 750s Video corruption) have problems.....some are good like urs. 680i was plagued with memory problems BSODs the works. But compared to the P45 which is running 500 stable with a quad on an immature BIOS....how can u compare?

@Why_Me: R O F L

Thank you deputy. And my word on that, I have never, nor will I ever buy anything from ibuypower. I liked the name that's all.

^ ????? well as i said in my experiance with my mobo i have never had a bsod the bios updated with out a hitch and my memory has never failed me. i have heard that all of the 50 series had problems( ie 650i, 750i). but the 80 series were much better( ie 680i, 780i) so dont talk about the 750 wen i aint.

who says i was talking about the 50's?!?! The 680is were RAM killers....maybe u got lucky but its known they had such issues...google it

Ahem, well flames aside about boards and such, I'll have to look into some research about the 780i and the P45, thank you for that.

As for the video cards, I guess I worded myself incorrectly, I'm definately going to wait for the card release because it'll drop the prices. What I'm asking is, should I stick with a then cheapened 8800 GT or look at something else that will then be around the price range of what 8800 GTs are at now? (Oh and ATI cards are not an option, I used to be hardcore nvidia cards, then I had 2 ATI cards and I just can't stand a lot of things about it all)

I'll stick with PCP&C, I know they're expensive but they're rock solid.

I guess I'll change my perspective on ram, and as far as the hard drives are concerned, 10,000 RPM drive is only for OS and games, I have a 500GB drive for all my data like movies, music, files, and all that junk. Thanks for the suggestion but I'll stick with the 10k

So I'm still undecided about the Q6600, I guess I've ruled out the 9450, but why exactly should I got 6600 over 8400 if the 8400 will outperform it for less money? Just because its quad core and be a bit more future proof?

Oh and thanks for letting me know about eVGA's upgrade program I'll have to look into that for sure, I never knew about that. Thank you.

What about this for ram? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6820227199


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6820227269
And what makes this ram better? I know it says sli ready or w/e but I'm not entirely sure why I should pick one over the other exactly. Its been a long time since I bought ram, and back in those days you bought whatever ram fit your board, and your only option was dual channel and company.

No, that ram has bad timings. Get this instead, its barely any more money after rebate:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6820145194

Edit: That ram is actually better because it's timings are lower. SLI ready means NOTHING, i repeat NOTHING. It is simply marketing ****. The RAM i linked is better than that still, and is fine if you plan to do SLI.