SLI system

[pbmthomas]

Right, I'm fairly out of touch with new mobos/cpus having not built a computer (or followed new hardware much) since 2001. I'm wanting to build a pc for gaming with a budget of about £900 (UK), equivalent to 1100-1200 dollars given the current terrible exchange rate and more expensive hardware in the UK. I decided on something like this:

Antec P182 Advanced PERFORMANCE ONE SERIES Case
1TB Western Digital WD10EACS Caviar
750W TX Corsair PSU
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550, Yorkfield Core, Socket 775, 2.83 GHz,
4GB (2x2GB) Corsair Dominator DDR2 8500
Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P mobo
ATI HD 4870 (one for the mo, will probably get a second in a year)

Monitor is not included in the above budget - haven't decided on it yet.
Optical drive to be recycled, might get a blu ray one in a year or two.
Was just gonna go with the heatsink/fan that comes with the retail cpu - is this a terrible idea?

Case and PSU - have gone quite expensive since I expect to rebuild in a couple of years and recycle them.

Anyway, I'm looking at the benchmarks on Tom's hardware, and considering a GTX 260 instead. Can anyone suggest a good alternative motherboard for SLI purposes? Same plan - to get one now, maybe a second in a year.

If the above looks total rubbish, can you suggest alternatives (esp cpu/mobo)?

Wanting to order middle of next week.

 

[DSF]

The "add another card" down the line approach is the worst way to use SLI. You pay additional costs up front in the motherboard and PSU that are doing nothing to improve the power of your PC until at least a year down the line, plus the cost of a second card. Rarely does that provide the price/performance of a single new card, without even mentioning the heat/noise of two high end graphics cards.

If you haven't decided on a specific monitor, do you at least have an idea what size?

 

[pbmthomas]

yeah, 24 inch. had ordered a 23 inch samsung, (native 1080p for films), but order fell through so decided on 24 when I choose a new one.

to be honest, I'm not bothered about getting sli. my bro is really pushing it though, and I'm losing the will to resist.

what would you recommend as a single graphics card that is less than 30%more expensive than the gtx 260?