Here are the specs -
Q6600, XFX 790i MOBO, 2 GB Corsair 1333 Mhz DDR3 RAM, 150 GB Raptor hard drive, 2 X 9600 GT SLI, PC&C 610W PSU.
Philosophy - I'm the kind of guy that gets a new computer every 5 years or so. My last computer is 4 years old and built for under 1000 bucks so it's definitely time - i can run things like company of heroes and command and conquer 3 at playable frames but anything more graphically demanding than that bottlenecks mostly at the CPU but also the video card, but it's an AGP board and I already have the best AGP card you can get.
The mobo and ddr3 ram are locked, and that ties me to Nvidia cards too - I could go with more than 2 GB but the price for 2 GB isn't so bad, comparable at least to DDR2 sort of, jumping to 4 GB is like three times more expensive than 2GB. My hope is to upgrade to 6 MB in the fall when I have more money and prices hopefully drop for ddr3. I'm not sure I can do this though and I might be sinking the $120 cost of the 2 GB just to avoid spending like $350 now for 4GB. So if you know how future upgrades of my ram would work given an initial buy of 2 X 1GB 1333 mhz sticks, please let me know. The board's capable of 2000 Mhz ram so at some point down the line I'll want to pursue that.
I could go with a better chip but I got the Q6600 for less than 200 dollars (it's fully returnable still though) so spending much more on a faster chip when I have a mobo that can overclock well, supposedly, seems iffy. I'd rather just get whatever the best chip intel makes for socket 775 for cheap 2-3 years from now and breathe some new life into the rig.
The alternative video card choice would probably be an 8800 GTX now, and another one in the fall when I have more cash. But I'm open to suggestions on that. Another thing that I've been wondering is that I've seen that the 9800 GTX isn't so much better than the 8800 GTX, but I have reservations about buying an older generation card due to driver support issues and such. I can't go 9800 GTX2 now, too expensive, but given my board I don't see any problem buying 1 9800 GTX now, and another in the fall, and perhaps even a third one though from the benchmarks I've seen in many new games (and more and more as time goes on) the 2 cards in SLI really does get you close to double the performance of your first single card, but adding the third has a much smaller performance gain. So I think I want to stay in the world of planning for 2 cards.
I used one of those voltage calculators and got 490W - probably so low since I'll never use more than 2 hard drives in RAID (though I won't start out with 2). The only peripheral I see adding down the line is a premium sound card since I'm kind of an audiophile. I like the PC&C single rail design so I'd like to go with them being tier 1 and all but there's a big price jump between 610W and 750W and I'm not sure it's justified but let me know what you think on that.
I'm holding off on a cooler for the CPU because a lot of them don't work with the 790i mobo and it's so new that there's not good info out there yet on what good coolers work with it and what don't. If anyone has or knows good cpu coolers that work with the 790i that'd be a big help.
Q6600, XFX 790i MOBO, 2 GB Corsair 1333 Mhz DDR3 RAM, 150 GB Raptor hard drive, 2 X 9600 GT SLI, PC&C 610W PSU.
Philosophy - I'm the kind of guy that gets a new computer every 5 years or so. My last computer is 4 years old and built for under 1000 bucks so it's definitely time - i can run things like company of heroes and command and conquer 3 at playable frames but anything more graphically demanding than that bottlenecks mostly at the CPU but also the video card, but it's an AGP board and I already have the best AGP card you can get.
The mobo and ddr3 ram are locked, and that ties me to Nvidia cards too - I could go with more than 2 GB but the price for 2 GB isn't so bad, comparable at least to DDR2 sort of, jumping to 4 GB is like three times more expensive than 2GB. My hope is to upgrade to 6 MB in the fall when I have more money and prices hopefully drop for ddr3. I'm not sure I can do this though and I might be sinking the $120 cost of the 2 GB just to avoid spending like $350 now for 4GB. So if you know how future upgrades of my ram would work given an initial buy of 2 X 1GB 1333 mhz sticks, please let me know. The board's capable of 2000 Mhz ram so at some point down the line I'll want to pursue that.
I could go with a better chip but I got the Q6600 for less than 200 dollars (it's fully returnable still though) so spending much more on a faster chip when I have a mobo that can overclock well, supposedly, seems iffy. I'd rather just get whatever the best chip intel makes for socket 775 for cheap 2-3 years from now and breathe some new life into the rig.
The alternative video card choice would probably be an 8800 GTX now, and another one in the fall when I have more cash. But I'm open to suggestions on that. Another thing that I've been wondering is that I've seen that the 9800 GTX isn't so much better than the 8800 GTX, but I have reservations about buying an older generation card due to driver support issues and such. I can't go 9800 GTX2 now, too expensive, but given my board I don't see any problem buying 1 9800 GTX now, and another in the fall, and perhaps even a third one though from the benchmarks I've seen in many new games (and more and more as time goes on) the 2 cards in SLI really does get you close to double the performance of your first single card, but adding the third has a much smaller performance gain. So I think I want to stay in the world of planning for 2 cards.
I used one of those voltage calculators and got 490W - probably so low since I'll never use more than 2 hard drives in RAID (though I won't start out with 2). The only peripheral I see adding down the line is a premium sound card since I'm kind of an audiophile. I like the PC&C single rail design so I'd like to go with them being tier 1 and all but there's a big price jump between 610W and 750W and I'm not sure it's justified but let me know what you think on that.
I'm holding off on a cooler for the CPU because a lot of them don't work with the 790i mobo and it's so new that there's not good info out there yet on what good coolers work with it and what don't. If anyone has or knows good cpu coolers that work with the 790i that'd be a big help.
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