$2,000 budget Gaming and Animation System

[AubreyJr]

Sorry for posting this in the wrong area.

I've built a few PC's in the U.S. but there have been a few years since my last creation. I have a 2k budget to build a midrange system that has high end upgrade ability to 4k+. The parts I'm considering purchasing in the next 24hrs are listed below. I'm requesting suggestions and opinions of the rig I intend to build that might help me get the best bang for my buck. I've posted to this thread because I have not built a system in some time and welcome experienced advice that will limit my frustration and mistakes. All prices are from Newegg. Parts that I did not research enough to formulate an opinion are represented by a question mark. Parts I already posses are represented by a $0. I realize the Radeon 4870 X2 is not available for purchase so it represents a future desire. All comments are welcome. I have favored ATI and AMD in the past. I have not read any other Anandtech threads for information or suggestions. I have not considered installing Vista. I'm also considering installing a VelociRaptor as the primary HD.

$2,000 budget Gaming and Animation System
Motherboard ASUS M3A32-MVP Deluxe AM2+/AM2 AMD 790FX $190
Videocard Radeon Dual-GPU HD 4870 X2 or (2) GeForce 8800 $500
CPU Phenom X4 9950 2.6Ghz $235
CPU Cooler Zalman ?
Memory Patriot Extreme Perf 4GB DDR2 800 PC2 6400 CAS4 $88
Case NZXT Tempest $110
Power Supply PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750 Quad (Red) 750W $160
Hard Drive WD VelociRaptor WD3000GLFS 300GB 10000 RPM $290
Hard Drive Samsung HD103UJ Terabyte $175
Optical Drive Samsung SH-S203N 20X DVD Burner w/LightScribe $29
Soundcard Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Gamer $91
OS Windows XP Professional or Windows Media Edition $0
Mouse Logitech G9 $0
Keyboard Logitech G15 $0
Joystick
Monitor HP 2207h 22" Widescreen Flat-Panel 1680x1050 $0
Speakers ?
$1,868

 

[DaveSimmons]

Motherboard ASUS M3A32-MVP Deluxe AM2+/AM2 AMD 790FX $190
Videocard Radeon Dual-GPU HD 4870 X2 or (2) GeForce 8800 $500
CPU Phenom X4 9950 2.6Ghz $235
CPU Cooler Zalman ?

Have you read then AnandTech.com review? The X4 9950 seems to have erratic behavior with cool n quiet enabled, and stability issues with it disabled. An intel core quad seems like a safer choice.

For heatsink recommendations check out www.SilentPCReview.com

Don't get 2 x 8800GT cards unless they have better (not reference) cooling, the cheap single-slot fans can have an annoying whine that shifts in and out.

PC Power & Cooling Silencer

recent models have been far from silent, other brands like Seasonic use 120mm fans (slower for more airflow) instead of PCPC's 80mm whiners.

 

[AubreyJr]

WoW!! Thanks. I have not read the X4 9950 review highlighting its problems. Which Intel core quad would you recommend? Would you recommend any AMD processor.

I've considered the Superclocked edition 8800 GT's. I have to verify if they have better than reference cooling. Good call on the power supplies I chose also. I'll check out the Seasonic PS's.

Great advice. Anything else you could share would be helpful preferably concerning the heatsink and maybe 7.1 speakers.

 

[Modelworks]

Originally posted by: AubreyJr

$2,000 budget Gaming and Animation System

What kind of animation ? Which applications ?

Videocard Radeon Dual-GPU HD 4870 X2 or (2) GeForce 8800 $500

Current 3d applications do not make use of sli .

 

[AubreyJr]

I intend to install Maya, Lightwave and 3D Studio Max on this machine.

 

[Modelworks]

Originally posted by: AubreyJr
I intend to install Maya, Lightwave and 3D Studio Max on this machine.

I do not recommend vista at this time. Vista will work with all three applications, but there are some glitches like viewports that do not re-draw properly sometimes. There are also plugins that don't work with vista.

As I said, SLI will have no benefit with the applications , and all three still work better with OpenGL than direct3d. Although Max 2009 is better now with direct3d since Autodesk is trying to keep game developers happy. They have added some cool directx features in the latest release like improved hardware texturing in viewports. But if your not doing games then I would use OpenGL in Max.

ATI or Nvidia really doesn't matter much, any of the current cards will work fine. Try to get as much memory on the card as possible as the programs use that to cache textures for viewports. If you have too low a memory on card, like 256MB, then when you rotate objects with lots of high res textures in viewports, the scene will stutter as the card updates the memory from the hard drive. I currently use 8800GTS 640MB and Quadro cards.

4GB memory is fine. If you have the cash , get 8GB but I have been doing this for 12 years and still rarely see 4GB usage on the workstation. The render boxes see 8GB usage but only because they are rendering 1080P scenes. If you do go with 8GB you will need WinXP x64 and there are driver issues with that sometimes, but I don't see anything on your list that should be a problem, it is basically old stuff that has issues. Also some plugins do not have 64 bit versions, so research that as well.


Everything else looks fine.
Should work great for animation.

 

[KaOTiK]

Don't get Vista as Modeworks said above. I agree with everything he says as well.
Since he covered most the basis I will talk a bit more about the XP 64 things just incase you are curious.

8x series Nvidia cards have some spotty weird bugs here and there in Xp64, most seem to oddly enough kinda disappear after being in the program for a few minutes, why I couldn't even make up an answer to know why, it is just weird.
As Modelworks said, there are not some 64 bit versions of extensions out there. I personally have both Maya 32 and 64 bit versions installed. Just need to learn/know which you will need for whatever, I use 32bit for mostly all my geometry needs and 64 for the rest, though there are expecetions.

video ram, ram, and a good dual/quad core are your big three you need to invest in. It is hard to say how much or what you will need exactly cause you simply say animation, will you be rendering out or just playblasting it basically. What are you gonna use the animation for I guess I really should say. Your reel? Personal side projects? etc and what is your goal with that.

If you throw rendering into the mix, even doing some simple HDR and simple shaders can rack up rendering time depending on the res you are doing, like I said all depends on what your goal is for the work.

 

[AubreyJr]

I had not considered Vista for various reasons but I was not aware of the issues shared by Modelworks. Thanks for your input. If I understand Modelworks post he's saying the software I intend to use will not take advantage of SLI and they work better with OpenGL. Will any software I may need take advantage of SLI? If not, I'll be putting two cards in crossfire mode just for gaming which is contrary to the intended purpose. The Asus mobo I'm considering supports 8GB so ram should not be a problem even though according to your post, I should not need more than 4GB and if I choose to install 8GB of memory or upgrade later, I'll need the 64 bit version of WinXP and I should not have related driver issues because my peripherals are new. I also gather according to your post a 1GB 9800 will outperform your 8800GTS 640MB and Quadro cards because of the amount of onboard video RAM. Thanks a bunch for your input Modelworks. I have been enlightened.

Modelworks and KaOTiK also seem to be suggesting I need to determine a specific purpose for the system with the distinctions between workstations, render boxs and playblasting. Please forgive me KaOTiK for not understanding the term playblasting. My specific purpose is to create cartoon animation. All work performed on the system will be personal side projects developing characters and short cartoons. I hope that helps KaOTiK.

I was under the impression any system powerful enough to run the software I intend to install would be considered a rendering workstation. Evidently, I am incorrect. I also thought workstations can be found for $2-20K and become full blown rendering stations with the installation of software such as Mental Ray or Renderman. I also thought render farms are created when these systems are networked. Have I been misled.

 

[KaOTiK]

Originally posted by: AubreyJr
I also gather according to your post a 1GB 9800 will outperform your 8800GTS 640MB and Quadro cards because of the amount of onboard video RAM. Thanks a bunch for your input Modelworks. I have been enlightened.

Modelworks and KaOTiK also seem to be suggesting I need to determine a specific purpose for the system with the distinctions between workstations, render boxs and playblasting. Please forgive me KaOTiK for not understanding the term playblasting. My specific purpose is to create cartoon animation. All work performed on the system will be personal side projects developing characters and short cartoons. I hope that helps KaOTiK.

I was under the impression any system powerful enough to run the software I intend to install would be considered a rendering workstation. Evidently, I am incorrect. I also thought workstations can be found for $2-20K and become full blown rendering stations with the installation of software such as Mental Ray or Renderman. I also thought render farms are created when these systems are networked. Have I been misled.

First part, Quadro's will always walk all over a gaming card, few gen old quadros will run faster in most 3D apps then the newest gaming card. A ton of that has to do with the drivers and the openGL with the cards. But don' t get me wrong, a gaming card is fine for most out there long as you aren't dealing in highly dense models and a lot of crap at once. But yeah, don't worry about SLI at all unless you want it from a gaming perspective.

Playblasting is basically a render of whichever camera you choose to render out exactly what you see in the viewport. It is raw footage, a lot of animators do playblasts for their reels because their work is all about obviously the animation, graphically it doesn't need to look pretty (thats my job as a texture artist ).

For what you sound like you are wanting to do and I'd wager you'd be fine with a nice gaming video card with 4GB ram and a nice dual/quad core.

With rendering, it can get tricky and slow very quickly. Even if you know how to optimize a scene and know how all the lil tricks to cut down on render times you will generally as a rule of thumb for your medium to smaller studios and even guys like yourself, rendering will take almost half the total time of a project depending on style and resolution. So for example say you worked on something for 20 hours, you can aspect nearly that much time rendering.

Though that rule of thumb is starting to become less true due to multiple core systems becoming so cheap now but it gets you an idea depending on what you are doing and your hardware.

So because of rendering taking so much time and because you can't do anything with the computer when it is rendering you are literally staring at a screen just waiting, that = huge waste. So if rendering was a thing that was gonna have a lot of time spent on investing in a beefier cpu and more ram would be extremely beneficial. You can create render farms, but that is a whole other bucket of worms, I sometimes use few of my computers to render when I need something done quickly, I'll throw part of ascreen and whatever frames on one system and peice it out while giving my workstation the bulk of the load.

Mental Ray is great (I love it deal with it a lot), but it is slow. Renderman, while my experience with it is minimal it is phenominal. Super quick and jaw dropping quality but I never really sat down to play with it much.

2K is fine for your first workstation. It is easy to upgrade what you feel meets your needs more once you have it up and running. That is something you'll only know once you are done with your first project.

You can go nuts racking up the amount spent on a system, hell one of those beatiful Quadros FX5xxx will set you back a few thousand alone. So you get an idea, I am an texture artist and also do environment modeling, lots of rendering and stuff. So my system is built around have lots of very large textures and fast renders mostly. I built it a year ago, currently running 2xXeon5355(Quadcores) 2.66GHZ, 16GB ram, 8800ultra, and 2x20in LCDs . I can render out whatever I need with this in a good hurry and usually by the time I wake up the next day most work is finished. I don't do anything super long but I am a very inpatient man.

 

[DSF]

Just FYI, the Corsair 750TX is another good PSU that's often less expensive than Seasonic and PCP&C. You won't need a power supply that large if you decide not to go SLi. And if you don't use SLi and you're going to use an Intel processor, I would recommend selecting a board with an Intel chipset.

 

[AubreyJr]

Christ, KaOTiK, (2) Xeon5355 servers. They are $7k alone. You said it's slow! Wow! I assume you have move systems. Sounds like you have a render farm. I truely appreciate your advice. Only knowledge, understanding and experience can ensure a quality choice. Thanks for helping me to obtain the first two.

OK, if I've summarized your comments properly, I probably should be concentrating on building separate gaming and animation systems because the benefit from SLI is only through gaming, the video cards are built to serve specific purposes and rendering RENDERS the system unusable.

Since I definitely don't have your budget, if I focus on building my first workstation, instead of a gaming rig, and invested another $1k which mobo, processor and video card would you suggest. I'd obviously be concentrating on selecting Intel and Quadro products unless my budget limits me. I'll begin researching after this post. BTW, you never mentioned FireGL. Is there something about them I should know or do you just have a preference.

 

[KaOTiK]

Originally posted by: AubreyJr
Christ, KaOTiK, (2) Xeon5355 servers. They are $7k alone. You said it's slow! Wow! I assume you have move systems. Sounds like you have a render farm. I truely appreciate your advice. Only knowledge, understanding and experience can ensure a quality choice. Thanks for helping me to obtain the first two.

OK, if I've summarized your comments properly, I probably should be concentrating on building separate gaming and animation systems because the benefit from SLI is only through gaming, the video cards are built to serve specific purposes and rendering RENDERS the system unusable.

Since I definitely don't have your budget, if I focus on building my first workstation, instead of a gaming rig, and invested another $1k which mobo, processor and video card would you suggest. I'd obviously be concentrating on selecting Intel and Quadro products unless my budget limits me. I'll begin researching after this post. BTW, you never mentioned FireGL. Is there something about them I should know or do you just have a preference.

Sorry, didn't make it clear, have 2xXeon5355's in my workstation, so 8cores in the station total. Each Xeon goes for about $800 now. For the most part if flies, but when I have to render at like 1080P quality it slows down . Can't win them all, I have a C2D system for backup purposes that is use more as a server then anything and my MBP I use for Shake and Final Cut Pro.

For the most part you can game on on workstation depending a lot on which video card you decide to go with. If you get a Quadro don't count on playing much in the way of any newer games. But generally you can get away with a good gaming card for the most part long as you aren't doing a lot of dynamics and effects or heavy geometry. So stick with the gaming card for your system.

As for what you should look to get, I haven't been following hardware closely since I built my computer, so you'll either have to read around here or check out some other sites but I would aim for the following, quad core as they can be had pretty cheap and whatever motherboard that is suppose to be good for it. 4GB or ram would be fine, giving the system more ram will just help with renders mostly for you. Video card, stick to a high end gamer card, for what you want to use a quadro probably wouldn't be worth and you can still game on the system easily.

As for FireGL, a few years ago they sucked real bad in Maya due to drivers and other problems, lots of bugs and stuff, I'm pretty sure that has all been cleared up now. But since I use Maya 95% of the time and since I've been using nvidia products for nearly 10 years and haven't had problems with them I tend to stay with them, more of a preference at this point in time then anything else I'd say.

So to recap the hardware.
CPU Quad Core, try to get in the mid 2's like 2.6GHz range for speed at least
Motherboard whatever is good for the processor that will fit your needs, most support 8GB of ram I think now so you always have the future option availabe
RAM, stick to 4GB for what you are doing
Video Card, get a high end gaming card and you'll be fine for what you want to accomplish

One thing we didn't go over, storage, make sure you backup stuff religiously , I have 2 drives for backing up only that I keep discounted from the computer all the time expect obviously when I am backing them up.

 

[Spicedaddy]

Core 2 Quad Q9450
Asus P5Q-something or Gigabyte EP45-DS3R
2x2GB DDR2-800
ATI Radeon 4870
WinXP Pro

 

[AubreyJr]

KaOTiK, I've read a few articles since my last post. Most seem to be pretty old but they have given me direction for more research. I've been researching these items:

Intel Xeon E5430 Harpertown 2.66GHz 12MB L2 Cache LGA 771 80W Quad-Core w/heatsink $485
PALiT NE/88TSSXT302 GeForce 8800GTS (G92) SONIC 1GB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI $370
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 Yorkfield 2.83GHz 12MB L2 Cache $550

I'm trying to find info that compares these products with others on my list. I'd like to know how the Intel Xeon E5430 performs compared to AMD and Intel quad core processors. At the same core speed, I assume the Xeon outperforms them. Why did you purchase a Xeon? The PALiT GeForce 8800 seems to be more powerful than a stock 9800 GTX with 730/1825/2100 clock settings vs the 9800's 675/1675/2200. It even has 1GB video memory, but at 256-bit. I'm curious whether it outperforms the 9800. I found a Yorkfield for $550 and I'm wondering how it compares to the Xeon and Phenom 9950.

If I take your advice and stick with a gaming video card instead of creating a workstation, I need to decide on a processor and mobo to finalize my system. Hopefully I can gather enough information today to make a decision tonight. Most people suggest going with Intel, but I wonder if the Phenom gives me more processor for my money with the new releases at reduced prices .

 

[AubreyJr]

Spicedaddy, is that your system or your suggestion. Either way, why the Radeon 4870. What's your opinion of the Q9550.

 

[KaOTiK]

Originally posted by: AubreyJr
Intel Xeon E5430 Harpertown 2.66GHz 12MB L2 Cache LGA 771 80W Quad-Core w/heatsink $485
PALiT NE/88TSSXT302 GeForce 8800GTS (G92) SONIC 1GB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI $370
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 Yorkfield 2.83GHz 12MB L2 Cache $550

I'm trying to find info that compares these products with others on my list. I'd like to know how the Intel Xeon E5430 performs compared to AMD and Intel quad core processors. At the same core speed, I assume the Xeon outperforms them. Why did you purchase a Xeon? The PALiT GeForce 8800 seems to be more powerful than a stock 9800 GTX with 730/1825/2100 clock settings vs the 9800's 675/1675/2200. It even has 1GB video memory, but at 256-bit. I'm curious whether it outperforms the 9800. I found a Yorkfield for $550 and I'm wondering how it compares to the Xeon and Phenom 9950.

If I take your advice and stick with a gaming video card instead of creating a workstation, I need to decide on a processor and mobo to finalize my system. Hopefully I can gather enough information today to make a decision tonight. Most people suggest going with Intel, but I wonder if the Phenom gives me more processor for my money with the new releases at reduced prices .

I bought Xeon's cause I wanted an 8 core system and the only way to do that was to buy Xeon's and a workstation/server motherboard that supports two individual processors.

Stick with the Core 2 Quad cores, unless you are gonna go for 2 Xeon processors it is not worth getting them and I would recommend you don't for what you want to do.

Spicedaddy's recommendation for a CPU/Motherboard looks fine as it is in the nice price/peformance ratio for quad cores. If you want some more speed just step up to one of the faster ones.

As for video card, the amount of memory is more the issue then all the finer specs since it's a gaming card. I haven't read up on video cards in nearly a year but I would just suggest getting the best card you can with whatever is left with your budget, since this computer will be used for gaming also. If you can walk away with at least 756 I think it is ram on a card you'll be ok probably, I'd go for a gig probably myself since I usually buy stuff that will last a long time, plus I like having the best when I can get it

 

[AubreyJr]

You've been a great help KaOTiK. Because of your emphasis placed on the video ram, I've decided to go with the PALiT GeForce 8800GTS 1GB GDDR3 oc'd 730MHz. Second runner up was XFX GeForce 8800GTS 512MB GDDR3 Alpha Dog Edition oc'd 678MHz. DaveSimmons, both have enhanced cooling. I think I'll take Spicedaddy's advice and get the Q9450 Yorkfield. I think I'll get more product for my money with the Q9450 vs the Q9550. I've also found a mobo that supports 16mb of RAM and extreme cooling, MSI P45 Platinum LGA 775 @ $180. My current system:

$180 MSI P45 Platinum LGA 775 Motherboard
$370 PALiT NE/88TSSXT302 GeForce 8800GTS (G92) SONIC 1GB 256-bit GDDR3 730MHz CC Videocard
$330 Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450 Yorkfield 2.66GHz 12MB L2 Cache LGA 775 95W Quad-Core CPU
$50 ZALMAN CNPS 9300AT SuperFlo CPU Cooler
$110 Patriot Extreme Performance 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500)5-5-5-15 Memory
$110 NZXT TEMPEST Crafted Series CS-NT-TEM-B Black Steel / Plastic ATX Mid Tower Case
$110 FSP Group FX600-GLN V2.2/EPS12V 600W Power Supply
$290 WD VelociRaptor WD3000GLFS 300GB 10k RPM 16MB Cache Primary Hard Drive
$175 Samsung HD103UJ Terabyte Hard Drive
$29 Samsung SH-S203N Black 20X DVD Burner with LightScribe Optical Drive
$0 Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Gamer Soundcard
$0 Windows XP Professional or Windows Media Edition Operating System
$30 Koutech IO-FPM220 3.5" Floppy Drive & Multi Card Reader Front Panel Floppy Drive
$0 Logitech G9 Mouse
$0 Logitech G15 Keyboard
$0 HP 2207h Widescreen Flat-Panel 1680x1050 Monitor
? Joystick
? Speakers
$6 Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound Thermal paste
$1,790

Thanks for everyones input so far. Any other suggestions will be welcomed.

 

[AubreyJr]

Sorry Spicedaddy, I just read the Asus P5Q3 article and agree that might be my best choice for a mobo because of its support for future 45nm processors and power consumption alone. It offers all the features of the MSI P45 and then some. Now I'll have to look into DDR3 memory.

What is your opinion of the PALiT GeForce 8800GTS.

 

[AubreyJr]

Just read the Radeon HD article. "4870 is close to the speed of a GeForce 9800 GX2". It's kinda hard now to buy a $370 GeForce 8800 even if it has 1GB memory when I can get a Radeon 4870 that outperforms it for $210. I'm set if I can find a 4870 that has more than 1/2Gb memory.

 

[Spicedaddy]

Yeah, the P45 chipset is meant for the 45nm CPUs... Don't go Xeon unless you want dual-socket, you'll just pay more for the same chip.

And there should be 1GB 4870 cards coming out soon.

 

[AubreyJr]

Spicedaddy, I guess I'll have to go with the 4870 for now until the 1GB versions come out. I assume I'll be able to use both in crossfire mode even though they will not be identical.

What's anyones opinion of partitioning the VelociRaptor to seperate the OS from programs and using the Samsung terabyte strickly for storage. Because of past experiences, I'm skeptical about partitioning the VelociRaptor at all.

Because I still have room in my budget and the Asus P5Q3 supports DDR3 1600 I'm wondering which ram option is most cost effective. OCZ is the only DDR3 1600 I've found under $300 for 4GB. Because of timing and cas latency, I'm sure the Platinum is the best buy out of the three options I have listed, but I wonder if stepping up to DDR3 1600 from DDR2 1066/1200 is cost effective.

$240 OCZ Special Ops Urban Elite 4GB (2 x 2GB)DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)8-8-8-26 CAS8
$270 OCZ Gold 4GB (2 x 2GB)DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)8-8-8-26 CAS8
$290 OCZ Platinum 4GB (2 x 2GB)DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) 7-7-7-24 CAS7

DaveSimmons, what's your opinion of the FSP Group FX600-GLN 600W PSU. I read somewhere in the last few days it was used in a system I liked. I assume 600w will not be enough to support crossfire when I enventually get a second video card.

 

[AubreyJr]

I've never used LightScribe and don't know many people that have. What's anyones opinion or experience.

 

[sonnygdude]

Hey Aubrey - are you dead set on using DDR3? It doesn't look like it's really worth it unless you think you can OC to some really insane looking FSB values. Check out this link from another thread on the forum here:

http://www.nehalemnews.com/200...mc-and-why-fsb-is.html

I don't think you'll be able to take advantage of any of the capabilities of DDR3 over DDR2 - unless you're looking to recycle your RAM in the future after Nehalem comes out? Of course the price might be less then, so you may not save anything by getting it now vs buying 8Gb of DDR2 now and buying even faster DDR3 when Nehalem and the new mobos come out.

If you're not dead set on the P5Q3, the other P5Q's seem to be really good performers. I just built on a P5Q Deluxe and it has made OC'ing so easy that I'm dabbling in it even though I had not planned to.

 

[AubreyJr]

Ok Sonnygdude, between the article in your link and the Anandtech article I read yesterday comparing DDR2 to DDR3 and an article about the Asus P5Q3 Deluxe I share your opinion. I guess I've been waiting for some confirmation over the last few hours to move away from the P5Q3 and DDR3 but I was unable to determine whether other versions of the P5Q that support DDR2 also support 45nm processors. In the long run, I guess its not that important. It just seemed more reasonable to spend another $20 bucks on the P5Q3 that supports 45nm processors over the P5Q Deluxe even though the supported memory is more expensive. Why did you get the Deluxe over other options and what memory did you choose?

If I choose to go with the P5Q Deluxe, should I get DDR2 1066 giving me an 8GB ram max or DDR2 1200 that will limit me to 4GB total ram if their timings and latency are the same.

$150 (2) Patriot Extreme Performance 2GB (2x1GB)DDR2 1200 (PC2 9600)5-5-5-12 CAS5
$110 Patriot Extreme Performance 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500)5-5-5-15 CAS5


Whats your opinion of the Zalman CNPS 9300AT SuperFlo CPU Cooler and the FSP Group 600W power supply.

 

[AubreyJr]

I'm serously contemplating purchasing this system tonight. The system is cheaper now than the parts I originally listed even with the purchase of a new OS. Anyone have another suggestion for an energy and sound efficient power supply.

$210 ASUS P5Q Deluxe LGA 775 Intel P45 Motherboard
$330 Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450 Yorkfield 2.66GHz 12MB L2 Cache LGA 775 95W Quad-Core CPU
$50 ZALMAN CNPS 9300AT SuperFlo CPU Cooler
$210 MSI R4870-T2D512 OC Radeon HD 4870 512MB GDDR5 CrossFire ocd 780MHz Videocard
$110 Patriot Extreme Performance 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500)5-5-5-15 CAS5 Memory
$110 NZXT TEMPEST Crafted Series CS-NT-TEM-B Black Steel / Plastic ATX Mid Tower Case
$110 FSP Group FX600-GLN V2.2/EPS12V 600W Power Supply
$290 WD VelociRaptor WD3000GLFS 300GB 10k RPM 16MB Cache Primary Hard Drive
$175 Samsung HD103UJ Terabyte Secondary Hard Drive
$27 Samsung SH-S203N Black 20X DVD Burner with LightScribe Optical Drive
$140 Microsoft Windows XP Professional 64Bit SP2C Operating System
$6 Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound Thermal paste
$1,768