Building a Completely New Computer

I'd go with what Route44 said, VISTA is going to be replaced by a new operating system coming out in 2009 ( I don't remember the name, but you can look it up ). Vista wasn't that great either, sure it has Aero but everyone could get that on Windows XP with msstyles mods or the Vista transformation pack. Also, many games that support DX10 such as Crysis and Bioshock could have .ini / .cfg modifications that will allow a DX10 mock to run, in Crysis you can't play Very High without DX10, but with the mod you could. And similar to Bioshock as well.

Look at post #7. I have posted links that show the performance of the Radeon HD 4850s in Crossfire. They're pretty impressive numbers IMO, so I think you'll be more than happy with the performance.

Rage, you said a new motherboard and two 4870's would be a pretty big difference in performance. What other motherboard would you recommend to go with two 4870's?

And is two 4870's going to be better than anything in its price range?

With the memory you recommended why did you list the price so high? At newegg it's $70.99 and the $40.99 after rebate. Almost $100 left than what you have listed. And you only need to buy one because they come with 2x2GB right?

That was the kit's price at that particular time. It has dropped a lot since, and you can also get a DDR2 1000 kit like this one and easily OC it to 1066MHz.

As for a motherboard, I'd still recommend the P5Q Pro as the best choice for its price. As for performance vs price, an HD 4870 can be had for as low as $175 after rebates and two of them will cost you less than a single HD 4870X2. So yes, I think it's the best card in its price bracket. But two of them need a lot of power, so make sure you have a good-quality 600W PSU as a minimum. I'd recommend the Corsair 750TX and the PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750 as great choices.

The money's here and I'm finally ready to buy this computer. Here is what the final list is looking like. What do you guys think?

Case
Antec Three Hundred Black ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - $69.95
Case Fans
Scythe SlipStream "Kaze-Jyuni" 120mm Fan 1900RPM 110.31CFM 37dBa - $8.99 (x5 for Case)
Processor
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale 3.0GHz 6MB L2 Cache LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor $189.99
Hard Drive
Seagate Barracuda ES.2 250GB 7200RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0GB $79.99
Monitor
Samsung 2253BW Black 22" 2ms(GTG) DVI Widescreen $249.99 / $229.99 after Mail-In Rebate
Motherboard
Intel ASUS P5Q Pro LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard $149.99
Power Supply Unit (PSU)
CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX 750W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Power Supply - $119.99 / $99.99 after Mail-In-Rebate
Memory
OCZ Reaper HPC 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Chanel Kit Desktop Memory $70.99 ($40.99 after rebate)
Video Card
SAPPHIRE 100259L Radeon HD 4870 512MB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x 16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supproted Video Card - $194.99 / $174.99 after $20 Mail-In Rebate x2
Sound Card
HT OMEGA STRIKER 7.1 Channels PCI Interface Sound Card $79.99
Speakers
Logitech X-540 70 Watts 5.1 Speakers $76.99
CD-ROM/DVD
ASUS Black 20X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 8X DVD+R DL 20X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 14X DVD-RAM 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM 2MB Cache SATA 20X DVD+-R DVD Burner with LightScribe $34.99
Mouse
Logitech MX518 (Already have)
Keyboard
Saitek PZ30AU Black 104 Normal Keys 4 Function Keys USB Wired Standard Eclipse Keyboard $34.99
OS
Windows XP Professional (Already have; may upgrade in later future)

I think that about covers it. Any improvements that you guys can think of?

Total Cost: around $1662.78 not counting rebates. Upgrade any parts you think will be beneficial and explain why. I'm willing to overclock as well but only enough enough as to overclock it and be able to basically forget about it.

I'm not really set on the speakers or the sound card at the moment.

Rage what would you improve on that setup?

And what speakers/sound card would you recommend?

Go with the Antec Nine Hundred if you can. The extra $30 or so brings a very large improvement in cooling performance. Otherwise, everything looks fantastic.

I'd need only three of the 120mm fans for this case though right?

so you live in us?

Yes, I do. Also, what's the next best motherboard to the one posted above Rage? If it's not too much more $ I may go with that.

Anything better than that you're building a x58 setup, which cost more all together.

Anything above the P5Q Pro is a waste of money TBH. It has all the features you'd need, and more expensive motherboards will only have other "luxury features" such as a CMOS reset button and backup BIOS chips, among others.

PM sent Rage.

yeah anything other than p5q i'd say is a waste too, p5q is already considered really good and for the price

just stick with it

Rage I see your running 2 hard drives. What's the advantage to this? I am going to get more space on my HD than I previously stated but should I go w/the one listed x2 or should I get just one larger HD?

What brands/models do you guys recommend to get for the hard drive?

Previously you said in order to run 2 4780's I would need an X48 based motherboard to get the best results yet you suggest to stick with the P5Q?

How does the P45 chip in the P5Q compare to the X48 and X58? (The P5Q is just the model name the the P45 is the chip type correct?)

Can someone explain why you have to buy higher end parts with a higher end motherboard? Do they not support the lower parts? (talking about the X58 chips, etc...)

Any recommendations and explanations would be helpful.

At the time, I believed the HD 4870 required a lot of bandwidth. But obviously, that has now turned out to be untrue. There still is no card that can max out the bandwidth of PCI-E. The P45 chipset is missing some features compared to the more expensive chipsets, but these are non-essential features like Wi-Fi.

As for higher-end parts, it's basically a perception that higher prices mean better goods, and while that may be true in most cases, it isn't in the case of motherboards, where above a certain price point, there are no other necessary features required to build a decent PC. The X58 is a different story altogether, since it has a completely new architecture and CPU socket type.

For the HDDs, I run them in RAID 0, which is a striped array. It basically allows me to store data across both drives, so when data is needed from them, it is drawn in parallel, with some of it from one drive and some of it from the other. This obviously increases performance, but the downside is that you have only the space of one HDD, since the other one is used as the mirror. Also, if one of the drive fails, all your data is lost, so regular backups become a necessity.

You can either do that, or go for RAID 1, which basically mirrors one drive to the other, and constantly updates this "image" as the data on the source drive changes. This arrangement gives a speed boost, although not quite as significant as that in RAID 0. But in case of one disk failing, you can recover all the data from the other one.

As for brands, WD's Caviar Black and RE3 series are the best in the market right now.

raids are a nice way to go. i built a system 3 years ago i still use today. i used 2*200Gb Maxtor drives in raid 0 and its never let me down. also used a WD Raptor 36.5Gb 10,000rpm drive as my master OS, and works a treat. system still boots up in about 40 secs. (i do love my machine, i even named it with affection)

to me, building a new machine i would use raid 5, which to my limited knowledge involves using 3 Hdd's but sacrificing one of them to backup. essentially, if you use 3 500Gb drives, you will only have approx 1Tb of storage, but if one drive fails you can replace it and restore full data integrity from the remaining two drives. (although, i've never had the need for such redundancy, as i mentioned above). better safe than sorry...?

Can any two HDDs be set up in RAID 0?

Do they have to be the same? (not a problem but just curious)

Can they ever be changed to RAID 1 or 3 in the future?

lawl quit thinking so big

i agree with this state as I just recented put a new pc together with a core i7 and all the bells. I do have a very noticeable increase in performance. But I run plenty of bench/stability programs.

Dont spend the money if you can think of something else you could buy for an additional 500 bucks that you may want. Like a downpayment on a car to walk away from the computer or something!