[Jabbaloo]

So, my current box is old old old. It has an AGP and no PCIe on it so there are no upgrade options for the thing. Time to build a new rig! I plan on doing this within the next month or so (assuming everything goes well with my budget).

This new thing needs to last 5+ years, so I'm going with current components - i.e. Intel i7 processor, X58 mobo, an NVidia 285 gtx vid card, 6 gigs of DDR3 memory, and a RAID 0 dual-drive setup. Here's the components I'm looking at:

Case - 259.99: Cool Master ATCS 840

This is probably the hardest decision for me - choosing a case. Runner ups were the Cool Master HAF 932 and the Thermaltake Spedo, both significantly cheaper than the ATCS 840. But the ATCS 840 case is a for-lifer - it gets rave reviews in every area; with this case, I get what I pay for. I'm not 100% sold on it yet, but I haven't seen anything that matches it in it's price category.

Mobo - 299.99: ASUS P6T Deluxe

This seems to be a good enthusiast X58 board; I've also looked at the EVGA 132-BL-E758-A1 (also 299.99) and the GIGABYTE GA-EX58-UD5 (288.99) - really not sure which to go with. Ultimately I'd like the ASUS P6T6 WS Revolution, but that runs 369.99. Helluva board though. There are some $200ish solutions but I haven't done enough research on those.

CPU - 289.99: Intel Core i7 920 2.66GHz

From what I've read it's fairly straight-forward to OC this to 3.8GHz with the ASUS P6T and a good heatsink.

CPU Heatsink - 38.99: Xigmatek HDT-S1283 + the I7361 mount for LGA 1366 /775 socket

For less than 40 bucks, a heatsink that performs in the same class as the TRUE 120 (which costs twice as much). Also looked at the Scythe Mugen-2, but Newegg doesn't sell it. Either would do, this one's on sale, and it's in FrostyTechs's Top 5 for Temp list.

Graphics Card - 354.99: XFX GX285NZDFF GeForce GTX 285

Dammit, I bought my ATI x-800XT All-in wonder for about the same price. Go frickin' figure

Power Supply - 139.99: CORSAIR CMPSU-850TX 850W

70A on a single 12V rail for 140 bucks. Nice! Was looking at some modular solutions until this caught my eye - price is right on this one. The ATCS 840 case has no window on the side so I really don't care if extra power cables can be seen.

Hard drives (2 of them, 74.99 each) - 149.98: Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD6400AAKS

These drives have a good rep for being stable and fast. Not as nice as raptors, but RAID0 should be fast enough. I can always add velociraptors later and use these as storage.

Memory - 119.99: G.SKILL 6GB (3 x 2GB) DDR3 1333

Good price for DDR3 1333. Reviews are good and users have had no problem using this in the ASUS P6T board and OCing to 1600.

All told, with shipping and some misc items (static guard wrist strap, arctic silver, CD/DVD burner) and some combo discounts, the total comes to:

$1,716.14

For about $300 less I can get a Q6600 intel quad core with an appropriate mobo and 8 gigs of memory, but I'm not sure that's a good idea for a system that I want to last 5+ years. [UPDATE] I priced out a Q6600 system with the following changes: a P45 mobo, 8 gigs of DDR2 800, and the Q6600 cpu and the difference is $225.17 - I'm not sure that's enough to persuade me to go with the older intel solution.

Anyone have any suggestions or questions/comments?

[WIDOWMAKER99]

bump the harddrive up to the BLACK edition 500 gig sata drive .. get the ones with the 32 meg cache

i got one and it loads games FAST!

http://www.newegg.co...N82E16822136320

plus adds two years to the warranty!

yea it's not 640 gig per drive ..but the bump in cache ..and added 2 yrs warranty ..

something to consider ..thats all i can say

[WIDOWMAKER99]

also i can highly recomend this vid card .. comes with 3 way SLI and ..yea it's not top of the heap .. but supports HYbrid power like the mainboard ya picked

but next week (givin any week )any vid card is outdated

but i got a good solid 91 fps with COD 5 (world @war..comes free with card too ) out of mine ..and GPU and Physx temps never hit above 50 C

yes the card has PHYSX ! shader clock set to 1500 MHZ currently you wont find that in any ATI card!

http://www.newegg.co...N82E16814121268

[Jabbaloo]

Thanks for pointing out the AALS - there's a 640 gig version as well for 5 bucks more here, which is what I'm getting. I think the added 2 year warranty is definitiely worth the extra 5 bucks even without the increased cache

As for the card, I *reeeaaaallly* wanna get the new 285 gtx. That 9800 is a nice price though, so it was kind of a tough decision. I'm planning on running on a 1900x1200 monitor so I'll need the gpu power. But yeah, NVida PhysX FTW!

So I pulled the trigger -- we'll see if I can pull some n00b luck building this thing

[bluemeenie]

Hey jabb...I think I have that same exact case (but I payed for the see through side panel as I have lite fans). It was very forgiving on me when putting my components in, and if very light.


Only problem I had was I put in an internel liquid cooling system which takes up the top 2 external drive bays, and I had to do some shaving to make it slide in...which is not the cases fault at all..

[Jabbaloo]

Sooooo ... got the components today (from NJ), but the case shipped separately (from CA), so I am a-waitin...

And I found out I screwed up my order - didn't get a CD/DVD burner, and got the Blue WDs instead of the Black :-\ I had to cancel my order and try again because I kept trying to fix my address to be USPS compliant but I didn't realize I had to fix it in Paypal, not at Newegg. And in all the excitement I ended up getting a couple of things wrong, but no biggie. I put in a separate order for the CD/DVD burner, and I may put in another order for the Black WD 640s and use the 2 Blues as RAID1 storage, but we'll see.

[WIDOWMAKER99]

oich!

or ouch ..or F*CKME ..yea i had about the same issue when i built mine and the old AGP/FGE slot was not working
on the foxconn MB
also it seems neweegg ships cases out of another warehouse

dunno what cd /dvd burner ya bought

i picked up the sony /opti 22X dvd for 19.99 ..should have gone SATA but i picked IDE

http://www.newegg.co...N82E16827118022

[Jabbaloo]

I picked up a Lite-On sata burner with litescribe for $25.

Been reading installation manuals all night - will posts pics of stuff as soon as I start building

[Jabbaloo]

Here's a pic of the parts:

 JabbRig___Boxed_Parts_800.jpg (321.83K)
Number of downloads: 7

or if you have Silverlight installed:

[WIDOWMAKER99]

sounds nice bro .. just do not make the mistake i did

when building my new rig .. i bolted the in the motherboard with all the stand offs in the right places for my case .. but forgot to pop in the backplate around the connectors (the silver one around the keyboard/mouse/parallel port/serial /USB/NETwork )

was pissed i made that mistake on my build ..hadda rip it all apart

sounds like a great rig your building tho .. blows mine away !

but my goal was to do it as cheap as possible ..and stay back from the edge for a bit