Advice Please?!?!?

[blackhawk1928]

Okay so after many weeks of researching and trying and all of that I have finally decided what i want to build.
Please give me any advice on this build. I am a mediocre gamer, I play a couple times a week on 1920x1080 on 23" monitor so please rate, judge it, and suggest it for me.

Processor: Intel Core i7 Nehalem 920 2.66Ghz

Motherboard: Intel BOXDX58SO LGA1366 socket type, 6.4GT/s FSB

Ram: OCZ 6GB Triple Channel (3x2) 1600MHZ speed

Storage: 160GB Western Digital 7200rpm Hard Drive (*note*: I might and probably will upgrade to an 80GB solid stat within a couple of months)

GPU: Nvidia Geforce 8800 GTS 640MB (*note* I have had this in my old system but will upgrade next year to a GTX260 or something around that range)

Case: Full ATX Tower...

PSU: Coolermaster 800watt

CRITICAL: I had really important question, I cant seem to understand some motherboards say they have an FSB (Front side bus) of like 1600mhz or 1333mhz or 1066mhz or something but some motherboards like the one i am getting has (6.4GT/s QPI) Can someone please explain to me what is QPI and how does it compare to FSB and what should I get...a motherboard with a FSB of 1600mhz or a motherboard with a QPI of 6.4GT/s)

-THANK YOU FOR ANY HELP!

 

[hunter315]

Previously the processor connected to the northbridge which then connected to the various components through a FSB, the i7 uses QPI to directly connect to the memory and the northbridge at a much higher speed, this is similar to AMDs Hyper Transport. Since you want to run an i7 you need a board with QPI which you have.

If you could put down your budget and if you are in the US or overseas you can likely get a superior build for cheaper, also make sure to watch newegg's combos, they change more often than you would believe.

 

[blackhawk1928]

Well I do live in the US, all my stuff is coming from tiger direct and newegg (mostly newegg).
-Thank you so much for explaining, it makes sense now about the difference of FSB and QPI.
-Also, I head that using triple channel memory will increase its benefit with a Core i7 processor, well my question is in that case you can only get either 3GB,6GB,or 12GB...etc(any number divisable by three). Otherwise you will lose the benefit and performance of having triple channel memory. Well my question was, I was going for 6GB of ram but what if I wanted to have 8GB, i mean 12Gb is to much so what if wanted 8GB? I cant right? But I can have 9GB cause i can 3 sticks of 3GB? Can someone explain how this works...

 

[hunter315]

Unless you are doing some very memory intensive work like running multiple Adobe programs simultaneously you wont really use much more than 4 GB of RAM so if you start of with 6 GB of RAM you get the benefit of triple channel and wont need to upgrade for a while.

I assume you are running a 64 bit operating system otherwise you wont be able to use much over 3 GB of ram.

 

[blackhawk1928]

yes I am going to get a 64-bit vista or a 64-bit windows 7, i am not sure which one get yet. I am cautios with the windows 7 as i dont know if it will support my applications

-Anyway, I actually do need 6GB and I always want to have a cushion since vista+diskeeper(which defrags you hard drive realtime)+my anti virus+vista can take up 1GB+ right off the bat. Then I have this game called company of hereos that if I run it on 640x480 on all low settings it will overload my ram and go onto my hard drive in which case it becomes unplayable. IT uses massive amounts of ram, sometimes more then crysis so yeah.

-Also, can you tell me if I can get 8GB of triple channel??
-Can I get 9GB triple channel which 3x3 sticks???
-Thank you for help

 

[hunter315]

You cant get 8GB and still maintain triple channel configuration, and ram only comes in 1,2, and 4 GB sticks so you cannot get a single kit and reach 9GB. Also each application is limited to 2 GB of memory or 4 GB if it supports extended memory, see here for more details, so 6 GB of ram will be sufficient especially with a decent video card.

 

[blackhawk1928]

okay thank you, I will go for 6GB, thank you very much for helping me!
-IF anyone has any more suggestions about the PC please say something!

-Thank you for any help.