Building a Gaming Rig..Check it out! (so far) (Moved from Project Worklogs)

[BstOnTheBrain]

OK, iv made a list of all the parts im going to buy EXCLUDING the Case with the Watercooling and all the other WC blocks, raditors etc. and stuff i will need not to mention the sleeving too etc. Please give me some input

HDD: Western Digital Caviar RE2 WD4000YR 400GB 7200 RPM Serial ATA150 RAID-specific Hard Drive - OEM
MOBO: ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail
Power: PC Power & Cooling 510 SLI-PFC ATX12V 510W Power Supply - Retail
Keyboard/Mouse: Logitech Cordless Desktop LX700 967418-0403 Black PS/2 RF Wireless Standard Keyboard Mouse Included - Retail
RAM: G.SKILL Extreme Series 2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 500 (PC 4000) Unbuffered Dual Channel Kit System Memory Model F1-4000USU2-2GBHZ - Retail
CPU: AMD Opteron 175 Denmark 1GHz FSB Socket 939 Dual Core Processor Model OSA175CDBOX - Retail
Graphics: 2 x http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductCompare.asp?CompareItemList=N82E16814143036 ,N82E16814130234&SubCategory=48
! Both the same cards, is $20 worth it for the BFG Tech?

All together, with the 2 x eVga's is $2,423.15 including shipping, says NOT including tax and NOT including some mail in rebates. I still have yet to get my Monitor, WC Case, and all the other accesories (sleeving, WC blocks etc..)

[snefan]

wrong forum.................................

[Was moved from Project Worklogs to Q&A - Rankenphile]

[public_eyesore]

wrong forum.................................
not wrong fourm, just the wrong thread. Next time post this type of questio i the chatterbox or noob Q&A. AS for the products, isee you want power but are spedig it in the wrong places. I compiled a list of what i thik you should get. Its a bit more expesive than what you chose, but will be better for what you need.

x2 eVGA 256-P2-N527-AX........................$469.00 or x2 $938.00
x2 Update GeIL ONE Series 1GB................$184.50 or x2 $369.00
x2 Western Digital Raptor WD740GD 74GB....$161.00 or x2 $322.00
SILVERSTONE ZEUS 650W........................$169.99
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+..........................$322.00
ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe...........................$229.00
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic 8..$117.50

Subtotal: $2,467.49 before tax, shipping and without keyboard, mouse, case, water cooling setup, cdrom drive, and operating system.

You may want an extra harddrive like 300gb for space, but for a gamig computer you NEED dual hardrives in raid 0 over 10000 rpm.

You said you were getting a case with water colling in it....well dont, get a custom kit for like 300 and you will be much happier with temps, noise, and looks. Plus whe you go to a lan people wont make fun of you using a premade water cooling system ;)

[DaveTheCripple]

I would also do a little research into the X2 cores. From reviews on most sites (benchmarks too) dual cores are absolute crap for gaming, you get much better performance by disabling one of them. The main cause in this scenario is that games (And windows) arent properly setup for dual core (Multi-processors are a different story however). Also, I use that same mobo, the SLI deluxe, take advantage of the fact it can utilize SATA II (Or Sata 3.0Gb, whichever you perfer). And make SURE SURE SURE that your power supply is SLI rated, I dont care if it has a peak load of 1500W, if it cant keep a stable rail voltage, your going to have problems.

Edit - Also, for the RAM, while it is true lower latency is better (like 3-2-2-5-1T) , consider your options. There was a slew of reviews (Search through slashdot maybe) lately on the auctual performance difference between low latency ram and high(er) latency ram. Using the same rig with different timings, the performance difference between the two at high load was literally about 2% overall. Using benchmarks of games, and of typical applications, office, word, etc. Well, I lie a bit, there was a slightly notable difference when running games in LOW res with LITTLE detail, but considering you're building a gaming rig, I think its safe to say you WONT be running games in low detail and low res. (The problems occur when bottlenecking with CPU, and GPU, rather than the RAM latency). 2% overall performance for ... an extra 100 bucks, I dont consider it worth it in my book, even for a top of the line rig. Now, dont take what I say out of context and get the crappiest ram out there, still get namebrand stuff (Corsair, Kingston, OCZ, I personally use 2gig of OCZ DDR 400), and make sure it isnt overclocked to start with (Usually "value" ram is overclocked to start with, like DDR 333 being overclocked to DDR 400 and being sold as such).

And, last little tidbit, sound card, now I admit I heard some good reviews on the X-Fi soundblaster, but for a 120 dollar sound card, I dont know if I can justify it just for a gaming application (I use a SB audigy 2, but I auctually USE that front panel for recording applications). The 6.1 audio out of the Asus board is absolutely fine with me, and I cant tell a difference between it and the audigy 2 with a good speaker setup.

Just my 0.02
Looking to save ya some money!

Re-RE-edit
Looking over your original post, I forgot something. The ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe does not support DDR 500, 400's your highest clock (Unless you plan to .. underclock!)

[Rankenphile]

As far as sound cards go, you may be well off getting the SB Audigy 2. Removing sound equations from the on-board chip helps, especially in some processor-heavy games such as BF2, but I'm yet to be convinved that the newer X-Fi are worth the extra scratch. They do sound better, but I'm not an audio snob, and would rather see money going towards increasing frame rate and textures/resolution rather than upgrading audio fidelity.

My two cents.

[BstOnTheBrain]

OK, the Power supply IS SLI ready. I do want SLI so i plan on getting the 2 eVga cards. Iv never used RAID before so i dont want to get into any problems but should i get 2 10,000 (or 7,200) RPM 30gb SATA and use them in RAID or one big HDD. Whats wrong with getting the Case and the WC in one thing? Its the same thing as buying it its just installed ontop of the case instead of just sitting on it like buying it seperate would be..its configured into it. All the other parts (blocks etc..) would be seperate. Also, i already have a Audigy 2 ZS sound card with the Logitech 5500 5.1 surround sound speakers.

[public_eyesore]

no, a premade kit whether its in the case or external, is horrible. If you are to spend that much money on a computer, would you want the water cooling to actuall do something for your computer? Premade kits are only a little better than air, where a custom kit will give you MUCH better performance. Oh, and dont worry about the raid, it will work out all good. Get atleast 10000rpm tho, otherwise you wont notice much of a difference