Is my shopping list compatible??

[thun0r]

-Coolermaster RC-1100 V2 Cosmos S (Sport) Black Silent Full Tower Case

-Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550

-Zalman CNPS9700-NT NVIDIA Tritium Super Aero Flower Cooler

-2x 896MB Nvidia GTX260 MAXCORE Mem 2250MHz, GPU 655MHz, 216 Cores, 2xDL DVI-I/ HDTV

-EVGA 132-YW-E178-A1 FTW, NF780i SLI, 775, PCI-Ex16, DDR2 1066/1333/667/800, SATA II, SATA RAID

-750 GB Seagate Barracuda, SATA 300, 7200 rpm, 32MB Cache, 8.5 ms

-8GB Corsair TwinX DDR2 XMS2 Dominator DDR3 PC3-14400 (1800) 240 Pin, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 8

-1000W Corsair HX Series PSU ATX, EPS

-Creative SoundBlaster X-FI Xtreme

-KillerNIC M1 Network Card with 400Mhz Processing Unit

And would it give me a quick machine???

[PeterStoba]

Nope, for DDR3 you need a 790i board, like this http://scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=875437

But being realistic, do you need 2 GTX260s? If you need to spend alot of money then get a 4870x2 / 2 4870s and DDR2 ram and a P45 motherboard...

[jackvdbuk]

what res are you playing at, one card (newer) is always better than two

what are you using the pc for? 4gb will suffice for like 98% of home users IMO.

1000w is a bit overkill tbh, 620 or a 800 one will do the same job but cheaper

look at reviews the the nic, its a waste of money and better off spent else where

other than that its a kick ass machine

[staffsMike]

The cooler is esxpensive and not that great. Scythe's Ninja II will serve you better.

Go with one 280GTX on an intel based board (DFI P45 would be my choice). It's far more cost effective. If you are gaming at 2560 x 1600 then you might want an HD4870 X2.

A 640GB Western Digital AAKS/Caviar Blue will perform really nicely, Faster than the 750GB I think due to being based on 2x320GB platters.

4GB of DDR2 will be more than enough most likely unelss you are running lots of VM's. There is litterally no point buying DDR3 with Core 2's. Given you obviously have a very big budget you might consider an i7 based system but £500 on just the mobo and CPU is too much for my liking. DDR3 is stil quite expensive so thats going to be £650 ish before you have even go past the basics.

Killer NIC is like paying someone to shoot you in the foot..

I'd try integrated sound before I bought a sound card unless you have a particuar need for a dedicated one.

1000W is too much, if you follow the changes suggested 500W would be ample.

[Powderhound]

The CNPS 9700 isn't actually that good, the Killer NIC is a waste of money, 8GB DDR3 is ridiculously OTT, as are 2x GTX 260s. You are spending far more than you need to on a PC really.

[Webby]

Okay first up don't get that CPU cooler, it doesn't perform as well as coolers which cost significantly less. Thermalright Ultima 90 with a decent quiet 120mm fan will save you almost £10.

Next up Graphics cards and motherboards, unless you really want to stay with nVidia you will get better performance from a ATI HD4870X2 than GTX260's in SLI and it will be cheaper as well, also the nVidia chipsets are not as good as Intel's offerings so you would get a better motherboard as well. And you could get a board which will be more than good enough for ~£110 (for example the DFI DK P45 Plus)

If you go for the P45 board then you wont need DDR3 which will save you a big chunk of cash as well in fact you could have 8GB of DDR2-1066 for less than half the cost of 4GB of that DDR3.

In fact I make your budget for graphics, motherboard and memory to be about £1300

If I had that to spend you would get much better performance from,

Graphics: 2x HD4870X2 £670
Motherboard: DFI Lanparty LT X48-T2R £155
Memory: 2x 4GB Corsair Dominator 1066Mhz £175
Total: £1000

So I have saved you £300 and you will have far better performance in fact the graphics will be better than if you had 2x GTX280s in SLI, the is in fact nothing better graphics wise available at this moment.

Other than that the Network card is wasted money in my opinion.

[thun0r]

WOW thanks I was well off then !!!

I will make some adjustments and be back.... I want a kick arse machine.

[thun0r]

Ok think I have a kick arse list now !

Coolermaster RC-1100 V2 Cosmos S (Sport) Black Silent Full Tower Case w/o PSU

750W TX Corsair PSU, single 12V rail, energy efficient, quiet & cool, fully compatible

DFI Lanparty DK P45-T2RS Plus, iP45, S 775, PCI-E (x16), DDR2 1066/1200, SATA II, ATX

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550, Yorkfield Core, S775, 2.83 GHz, 1333MHz, 12MB L2 Cache, 8.5x, Retail

8GB (4x2GB) Corsair TwinX DDR2 XMS2 Dominator, PC2-8500(1066), 240Pin, NonECC Unbuffered, CAS 5, EPP

640 GB Western Digital WD6400AAKS Caviar Blue, SATA 300, 7200 rpm, 16MB Cache, 8.9 ms

32GB OCZ Technology, OCZSSD2-1C32G, 2.5", SATA 300, 143MB/s Read and 93MB/s Write speed SSD

2GB Power Color HD4870X2, PCI-E2.0, 3600MHz GDDR5, GPU 750MHz, 1600 Cores, CrossFire, 2x DLDVI/ HDTV

LG GGW-H20L Super Multi Blu-Ray Writer & HD-ROM Reader inc Lightscribe Support - SATA Retail kit

Scythe Ninja II Heatpipe Cooler, with 120mm fan Socket 478, LGA775, 754, 939 and 940 and AM2

Hows about that then?

[PeterStoba]

Some would argue the PSU is too much and that the SSD is not worth it, but it's an improvement!

[staffsMike]

Looks great but..

Why the SSD drive.. it's a lot to spend on 32GB. Do you have any need for it?

What was the 8GB for?

[thun0r]

I thought the SSD drives are the new thing around town, I see a lot of custom build websites that have them too !!

The 8GB RAM is for.... well that word that you guys hate so dont flame me..... 'Future Proof' !!!

[fastxfurious]

you'd probably be better of with 4gb of ram and wait to see what happens in the future, since different things will come out and it will be cheaper etc...4 should do you fine :?

[staffsMike]

well, you are buying a pc a week before i7 comes out so your already future unproofed Honestly you won't need 8GB of RAM for anything in the next few years unless you know what you need it for

You can always add it in later if you do find a need for it.

The SSD's are the new thing around town sure, very quick drives but the 640GB drive you have is going to show you the meaning of a fast mechanical HDD

[thun0r]

Thanks staffsMike and everyone else for that matter... I dont know if I want to wait for i7, how do we know its going to be as good as everyone thinks it will be... besides wont it be silly money to start with... So I could end up waiting months maybe for the price to come down..

I'll scrap the SSD though for sure...

[staffsMike]

Well an X58 + the 2.66GHz Quad + 4GB of DDR3 will be around £650 if you take overclockers per-order prices. So you might be able to save around £100 on that.

I wouldn't say it was really worth it right tbh. But know that you have no future proofing what so ever, not that it's going to matter in 3 years when this PC might start showing it's age.

[Webby]

If you are going to spend money on a solid state drive then the OCZ Core V2 is a much better version only states its size as 30GB as this accounts for the formating etc so its the same size as the v1 drive.

Are they worth it? at the current prices I would say not, but if you want a bleeding fast system drive then they don't get much faster and the OCZ drives are probably the most competitively priced.

Oh and I'm with Mike on the Memory unless you are planning on doing something majorly memory intensive then 4GB is going to be plenty, if you fancy faster RAM look at the OCZ Flex 2 modules 4GB (2x 2GB) PC2-9200 so that's 1150MHz (the ram sinks are large though so you wont be able to but the modules next to each other, fine on the motherboard you have picked but it means expansion to more RAM would be problematic) will probably cost you ~£120, worth the upgrade probably not but I can't help but recommend extreme things in this thread