Yet ANOTHER gaming rig spec to consider

[clue69less]

OK, I'm getting closer to buying the last batch of parts to assemble my son's gaming rig. So far, we have:

Aerocool Jetmaster Jr. Case -

http://www.aerocool.us/p-case/jetmaster/jetmaster.htm

Coolmax CX-500B power supply:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817159025

Western Digital 74BG Raptor hard drive.

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Those parts are in-hand, decisions are done and that's that. (Translated: I pointed him at different cases but he liked the Aerocool design and reviews here and there were pretty solid.) Actually, it looks like a fine case. My son wants to do some case mods, mostly simple stuff like DIY cables, lights, paint, etc., so this will be fun when we're not feeling bitchy if you know what I mean... I also tried to get him to start with a 250GB HD which would have saved a few bucks but the Raptor is fine and we got a great deal on Newegg. So it will have OS + PF + apps and games and we'll get a data HD later. This is meant to be a gaming box for him so all's fine so far.

So I've been loking at mobos and CPUs and am tentatively considering:

DFI Lanparty UT nF4

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817159025

AMD Opteron 165

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103588

I'm not yet settled on RAM but will probably go with 2 x 1GB Corsair or OCZ. I'm also trying to find out if you can still get a student deal on XP but am having ISP burps all day when I look at microsofts site. For a graphics card, I have an eVGA 6800GS that I might put in his box but first I'm going to try to do the eVGA upgrade deal if I can get a 7900GT. All the above will put me about 100 bucks over budget but my son is working extra to make more bucks and is contributing his allowance, etc. I'd like to get him something he's not in a rush to upgrade and also a rig he can learn from. He's seen me piddle with OCing and he wants to play. Sounds dangerous but we'll try to be patient.

My question is this:

Does this look to be a fairly balanced combo? I don't know much about Opterons and don't know what to expect in terms of OC'ing the 165 in an air-cooled rig. I don't even want to think about water or more exotic cooling setups for this and also don't plan to do SLI. I'm looking at a dual core processor because he does a bunch of graphics-intensive drawing and design stuff like mini-cad, Photoshop and the like for school and I'm also hoping this will last him through 4 or 5 years of school work. It's tough to try to balance all those needs and still get max gaming bang per buck but that's what I'm trying to do. Any advice will be appreciated!

 

[EllisD420]

Nice selection of parts there. For the Opty 165, i can say 1st hand that this is a beast of a processor for overclocking, i have it up 600Mhz from stock on air cooling with temps that stay mid to high 40'sC.

That link for the Motherboard is actually linking to the PSU so i dont know exactly what board you are looking at, but if its a DFI, your looking good in the overclocking realm. One thing about those boards though, they can be really finicky with settings and such so i would suggest heading over to the DFI-Street forums to get a little help in that area.

If you can upgrade that video card that would be the best option, but if not..you should still be more than OK in the Photoshop and CAD apps, but might feel a bit of slowdown in highly intensive games. But its nothing that a little upgrade down the road cant fix.

I think thats going to be a pretty smokin system. Good Luck with it.