New PC need advices please

[Maculosa]

Hi, First i'm from Canada and i'm going to buy a new PC, I must say i'm not up to date about hardware, i currently own and use a P2 450 !!! (i never got a better PC) so now it's time to get something better!!
I have a budget of around 1300$ (Case only, without monitor) i will mainly use the PC for Games, 3D render and video editing and Dvd authoring.

Here is the part i selected based on some review and spec... (the price a taken from NCIX.COM)

CASE : Antec Nine Hundred Mid Tower (116$)
POWER SUPPLY : Corsair VX550W 550W ATX (90$)
MOTHERBOARD : Abit IP35 Pro ATX LGA775 P35 DDR2 2PCI-E16 2PCI-E1 3PCI SATA2 RAID Sound GBLAN 1394 (190$)
CPU : Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Quad Core Processor (310$)
MEMORY : G.SKILL F2-6400CL4D-4GBPK PC2-6400 4GB 2X2GB DDR2-800 CL4-4-4-12 (130$) (the cheapest 4gig kit with this latency found on the site) is it good ram ??
VIDEO : EVGA E-GEFORCE 8800GT 512MB Ssc Edition 512MB DDR3 (330$)
HARD DISK : Western Digital SE16 500GB SATA2 7200RPM 16MB (125$)
DVD BURNER : Samsung SH-S203N Black SATA (41$)

Is it worth to buy a separate sound card for games ?? or the integrated audio on motherboard is ok ? (i curently own an old Sound blaster X-gamer 5.1, is this card better than the onbord audio of newer MB?)

Don't hesitate to give me others / better idea.
Thanks
PS: sorry for my bad english!

 

[cozumel]

Motherboard:
Get an Abit, Asus or Gigabyte P35 with an ICH9R southbridge and you won't go far wrong

RAM:
The Gskill is decent RAM at a very good price.

 

[Maculosa]

This board have some nice review and it's cheap : Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L but the southbride ICH9 (no R)... what is for the ICH9R southbridge ?

 

[cozumel]

It allows you, if you wish, to set up a SATA RAID array for either increasing speed or for data security (ie like a backup)

 

[DSF]

Cozumel and I will disagree about this in every new thread, but I'm going to say RAID is unnecessary. RAID 0 will give almost no real-world performance benefit to a desktop user, and RAID 1 isn't a substitute for a backup. It's designed to reduce downtime if one hard drive fails, but if you have a lightning storm, flood, PSU mishap, or anything else that knocks out both drives, RAID won't save you. The GA-P35-DS3L is fine.

The G.Skill RAM should be good. Their RAM is getting good reviews lately.

I've read at least one review which said the cables on that PSU are rather short. I don't know whether that will be a problem for you or not, but the review said not to be surprised if you have to buy some cable extenders.

My advice on the sound card would be to wait. If the onboard audio doesn't sound good enough for you, then buy a new card. Otherwise, save yourself the $80.

 

[jdkick]

The redundancy afforded by a desktop RAID controller is certainly no replacement for an appropriate backup regimen, but mirroring can come in handy if you happen to work frequently with transient data that's not necessarily captured in the backups.

Abit, Asus and Gigabyte seem to be the top picks these days for motherboards. For Intel, i'd suggest a P35 chipset. Beyond that, it's up to you to figure what meets your needs in terms of the feature set of a given board.

I would also suggest that you wait until you've tried the integrated audio on whatever board you go for spending $$$ on a new sound card. Integrated solutions do a pretty good job these days.

 

[Maculosa]

I changed some stuffs based on advices and review

POWER SUPPLY : Corsair VX550W 550W ATX (90$)
MOTHERBOARD : Abit IP35 Pro ATX LGA775 P35 DDR2 2PCI-E16 2PCI-E1 3PCI SATA2 RAID Sound GBLAN 1394 (190$)

 

[Maculosa]

I just noticed a new quad is going out in january, the Q9450 do you think it is worth the wait over the Q6600 ? anyway i was going to wait after christmas to buy my new computer.
(getting boxing day deals) but i can wait few weeks to get a better cpu for just a little more expensive...

And is the Abit IP35 Pro will hander this cpu ? + OC ?

 

[arnav]

From what i've read so far on other sites and here, the Q9450 will almost be the same as the Q6600.
So it is really up to you if u want spend a lot of money on brand new technology and find out it performs the same as the previous.

I don't know maybe it turns out, that it is far greater than anything, anyone has ever seen. (lol...doubt that!).

 

[arnav]

Oh yeah! you might also be interested in getting a TV tuner card. It is really fun. You can use Nero to watch TV on your desktop.
I don't know what TV tuner cards are the best because I got mine preexisting on my computer.
its just a thought, think about it.
I really enjoy it, especially since I can pause and record live TV. (Good Stuff)