Advice for parts in Christmas Gaming PC build

[ReinhardHeydrich]

Hi guys. I'm building my brother a PC for Christmas. It will be used primarily for gaming, so I am going with SLI and an Intel processor. I already have some AquaComputer watercooling stuff, so I will water cool the CPU and videocards.

Can anyone recommend what the optimum setup would be? I think doing 8800 GTXs instead of Ultras makes sense since they are basically the same, right? The Asus Striker Extreme looks like the best mobo, but I can't decide the CPU...should I spend more and get a QX9650 (or QX6850), or should I just get a Q6700 for half the money and OC it?

I'd appreciate any advice for this setup. Below is what I have in mind, and I already have some of the parts.



Asus Striker Extreme mobo
what Intel Q procesor?
2 8800 GTX cards in SLI (what brand is best?)

don't know what mem for this mobo, would optimum be 4x1GB sticks Crucial Ballistix DDR2 1066 (or CORSAIR Dominator 4x1GB DDR2 1066?)

PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750W Quad power supply
2 Raptor X WD1500AHFD 150GB HDs in RAID0
1 Barracuda ES.2 1TB HD for storage
Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer Professional
Plextor Slot load DVD burner - PATA
Plextor Tray DVD burner - SATA
Sony 4x Blu-ray burner - SATA
Soldam Spirits of Japan case (from Japan
Aquaero, Aquastream, radiators, flow and temp sensors, dual floppy bay res, etc.



Tell me if I should change anything. Thanks for any help guys!

 

[jkresh]

680i boards have had issues with overclocking quad cores and I don't know how well they work with penryn chips.
Buy evga cards as its possible that either a g92 gtx or a new real next gen card will be out within 3 months and evga has their "step up program".
Instead of the Sony blue ray burner try to find the LG GGW-H20l, it can read both blue-ray and hd-dvd and write blueray at 6x, it should be $400-$500 street but its availability is very low right now.

 

[trOver]

8800gt sli? much cheaper? near same performance?

budget?

 

[Slugbait]

Originally posted by: trOver
budget?

According to the specs, there isn't one.

I doubt there will be a discernable difference between GTX SLI and Ultra SLI. A single Ultra is about 15% faster than a single GTX, so you might see about a 10% increase in performance comparing SLI. Take the massive amount of money you save by going GTX and get the fastest proc...and take the wife out to dinner.

I've read about issues of all four RAM banks being occupied. Can't remember which mobos, tho. If going with 4Gs, naturally you will be installing 64-bit Windows. However, you didn't say which version...

 

[AVP]

Yeah go 8800gt sli, your wallet will thank you and your brother will be pleased that with the money you saved you can get him two new graphics cards in 2009. Also yeah, I would not bother with the QXs. The extra money is not scaling with the performance gains.

Especially since you can OC with the water.

 

[ReinhardHeydrich]

Thanks for the input guys! I ended up going with CORSAIR Dominator 4x1GB DDR2 1066, a pair of 8800 GTX OC cards (come stock clocked higher than Ultras, cost a lot less), and a QX6850 since after doing some more reading on forums, I don't think the QX9650 will work well with the 680i chipset.

I'm holding off on the Blu-ray burner until I can find that LG in stock, otherwise I'll get the Sony.

I haven't decided on installing Windows XP Pro, or Vista yet. Probably go with XP Pro to be safe.