Finalizing my new system (help me and win prizes!)

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CPU:
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600.
I'm pretty set on this. I had to swallow my pride to switch to Intel, but it looks like this is the best bang for your buck right now. The E6700 is about $200 more for a mere 259mhz difference, whereas the E6400 has half the L2 cache.

Good choice on the CPU. Kairyu might disagree that the extra L2 cache doesn't make the difference, but I say otherwise. Kairyu overclocked (3.2GHz) past E6800 speeds yet didn't even beat my buddy's stock E6700 in terms of performance. The cache DOES make a huge difference.

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Video Card:
This is the big one. At this point I ask myself if its worth it to spend a couple hundred more for a Nvidia 8*** card, or stick with a nice DX9 card. Like I said before, I won't be upgrading to DX10 for a long while, so I can always upgrade at a later date, when prices go down. Right now though, I'm looking at this:
ATI Radeon X1959 XTX. It is the fastest DX9 card available, and packs quite a powerfull punch for its pricetag. My only concers are thus: I would like to stick with ATI, because the cards will support AA and HDR at the same time. However, I'm not sure if the monitor I am thinking of getting will support 1:1 resolutions from 4:3 sources on ATI cards (although this is another matter).

Seriously roflin' at the 8800 suggestions. The card is brand new but is already outdated. Come February, the new revision of that card, the 8900, will be released. It will sport wicked fast DDR4 memory and faster clock speeds and probably for the same price. They did the same thing with the 7800/7900. It's meant to be released at the same time as ATI's new R600-based card, so you could pick up your ATI then.

For now, you could pick up a cheap PCI-E card to tide you through winter.

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Hard Drive:
Shouldn't be a biggie. A friend is offering to sell me two 200GB Seagate Barracudas for $120 total. I'll throw these into a RAID-0 config to get SATA2 speeds with 400GB.

As much as I trust RAID-0 configurations, make sure you back up your most important information. I run a small file server with RAID-1 for total security because I keep client's web sites and personal files. You could run two drives in RAID-0 and two others in RAID-1 on the same motherboard if you even wanted.

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RAM:
So many choices! I know I want 2GB, PC2-6400, and I'd like some fairly quick timings. The OCZ Gold XTC PC2-6400 sticks seem like a good buy, but then again I don't know too much about different RAM makes. Any suggestions here would be appreciated.

I would recommend going with Corsair XMS2 PC2-6400. It's known to be more stable, and operates at a standard lower voltage and is a great overclocker. Both me and my buddy use the stuff, after he RMA'd his OCZ.
http://www.ncix.com/products/index.p...acture=CORSAIR

Also, take note that RAM prices are fairly volatile right now for some reason.

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Motherboard:
I haven't done alot of research here, but I know I want this much:

• SATA
• RAID
• Socket LGA-775
• 2 PCI-E slots (Incase I want to Crossfire/SLI in the future)
• 2 Gigabit LAN ports

Any other nifty extras would be nice, but not necessary. I have a few questions: Can I get a board that will do both Crossfire and SLI, or will I need a seperate board? Do I need a special board for DX10 cards?

No special board is needed for DX10. I'd recommend the Intel D975XBX, AKA the BadAxe. It's the most stable Conroe board, period yet can overclock just as good as any of the other boards. There is the ASUS which is about $30 cheaper, but from my friend's testing, has a bunch of weird instabilities. This board has all of those features that you listed. And I see that you are looking for Dual gigabit ports, which isn't a feature of the BadAxe, but adding a NIC shouldn't be much of a problem.

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PSU:
No fucking clue.

http://www.ncix.com/products/index.p...acture=ENERMAX
A very good power supply by a reliable manufacturer. Since you're worried about Crossfire/SLI, you'll need something with some decent wattage and amperage. Best of both worlds here. The cables are modular too for good cable management.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

If you're going to SLI, then you might want to consider a motherboard with the nVidia nForce 680i chipset. Dual gigabit ethernet ports and all the other bells an whistles. It's supposed to be just as fast as the 975X chipset.

And I'm still disagreeing on the video card upgrade. Either the 8900 or the R600 is going to premiere in February - March and will be a significant upgrade over the 8800 for no increase in price. It's not even like there's a DX10 game to run in the meantime, so a cheapo card like a 7600GT would tide you over until the new cards come.

For those who know, the 8800 is most likely going to go the way of the FX5900.

DX10 is only Vista. I WISH they would just give XP support, but we all know that won't happen.

And, yes, you should be making note of your FSB to DRAM ratio. But if you aren't going to overclock, it shouldn't be a problem. Running an E6600 and PC2-6400, your FSB to DRAM ratio will be 533/800. This means you have a lot of headroom in terms of memory bandwidth, so if you wanted to overclock or get a faster CPU in the future, you won't be limited by the speed of your memory.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I'd be a little more prone to the eVGa board, simply because I've lost faith with Asus and their shitty motherboards over the last year. Their AMD AM2 offerings were weak, and the BadAxe competitors weren't as solid or stable as the BadAxe itself.

eVGA, on the other hand, is nVidia's largest partner when it comes to video cards. Their video cards are excellent and I would be lead to believe that their motherboards are decent as well. 1200MHz RAM is insane, but that really isn't much of a stretch into the future. I'm running my ram 1066MHz (overclocking) so I'm convinced that by next year we'll see some CPUs take advantage of that.

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by Free.User

Do I really need 750 watts? That seems like quite a bit. Also, because this PSU has 80mm fans, reviewers have said that this is quite a loud unit. If possible, I'd like to find one that is whisper quiet, and lower wattage (If I can run everything safely). Also, just to get this strait, you're saying that if I run a system with a more than capable PSU (way more wattage than needed), I don't risk damaging anything? One more thing, if you don't mind: What is modular cabling? Thanks!

http://www.ncix.com/products/index.p...acture=ENERMAX

Enermax is a much more reliable brand, and I just bought this PSU myself. I read a lot of reviews for this, and this will handle SLi 8800s. A single 120mm fan and modular cables, can't go wrong. And, by the way, you can't damage a system with a powerful power supply. You just raise the limit on the amount of power you can draw from it (ie: adding more hard drives or video cards).

If you look at the photos for the power supply I linked to above, you should be able to see what modular cabling is. You have the option to run as much or as little power cabling as you need. Do this helps improve airflow and increases workable space inside a case.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by Free.User

Ive just found out that there have been quite a few problems with the 680I boards. Right now I'm looking into some similiar LGA775 boards, but can you toss any suggestions my way? (I'm a bit upset, because I could have saved $100 by buying an EVGA 680I + 8800 GTS bundle). Do you think I should take a change and hope I get one of the working boards?

I was waiting for something like that to happen. The nForce series chipsets haven't had the best track record over the last 2 years. I bought my Intel Badaxe solely based on Intel's well-known, rock-solid stability and I'm glad I did.

I was speaking idiomatically.