[GalasaKoll]

Ok, I've been looking into building a new computer for about 2 weeks now, and have pretty much all my hardware pegged out. But I am having a hard time deciding between mobos and procs.

I have the mobos narrowed down to:

EVGA nVIDIA nForce 780i SLi

or

eVGA nVIDIA nForce 680i SLi

Initially, I am only gonna run one 8800GT, but I like haveing the option of running 3way SLi with 9800GTX's in the future. On the other hand, thats $1800+ worth of video cards which will be out of my price range in the forseeable future. But I still like having the option. The 780i will also handle 1200MHz ram, where the 680i will only handle 800. The ram I am putting in right now is only 800MHz, but could be upgraded later for a few hundred bucks.

As far as the procs go, its either

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale

or


Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield

Now the E8400 is a really nice piece of tech. It may only have 2 cores, but is manufactured at 45 nm, has 6M L2 cache, and can be overclocked to 4GHz pretty easily (as far as I have heard). The biggest problem is availability. They are extremely hard to find. Newegg is sold out. Mwave is sold out. Tigerdirect is sold out. Buy.com is sold out. Even local boys, CPU (I was desperate) said they couldn't get any. I have managed to find one, for a bit more then Newegg (still cheaper than the Q6600), but I could get it in 3 days if I was ready.

The other option is the Q6600. Quadcore. Makes me giggle just saying it. This one clocks at around 2.4GHz. It has 8M L2 cache, which is more then the E8400 overall, but less per core. It is also manufactured at the old 65 nm, which means more heat. With that being said, I have read that this one isn't nearly as overclockable, but with 4 cores, do you really need it? I know most games don't handle 4 cores, but my other 3 big proggies, 3dsmax, photoshop, and mudbox, do.

I've done a fair bit of research over the last couple weeks, and this is what I've come to: I can't afford the system I want, but I can build something that is a LOT nicer then what I have right now. So, with all that being said, anyone have any experience with any of this hardware? Or do you have anything else you can recommend?

[sttrqiss]

But, I have always got solid info from here. I would suggest before you buy, to spend an hour or so at this website.

Papa Ray

[masterso]

Thanks for the link. I did some reading and I'm still leaning towards the E8400 Wolfdale with the EVGA 780i. Seems like a nice combo that will allow me to upgrade in the future fairly easily. It will, however, be at least a week before I can start ordering parts, so if anyone else feels the desire to chime in, feel free.

[freddyujnf]

I would go with the 780i just for the increased memory bandwidth/speed. Slap that quad core in their and 4 gigs of RAM and you should have a solid rig.

What are you going to use for HD's?

As far as running the 3 VCs, while its expensive now, those prices will drop. You should be able to snatch 2 more 8800gts once the 9xxx's come out for a decent price. I am assuming that 8800 can be run in 3X SLI right?

I have been prowling newegg lately myself. I currently have a nforce4 based board, an Athlon 64 3800+ overclocked a little and a BFG 9600 GT OC 512 MB VC that I got suckered into buying from Best Buy. Im able to run Crysis on Medium with no noticeable lag, COD4 on mostly high settings.

I have checked CPU's prices a few times and found them way too high.

[Buincchotourb]

The simple solution is...always go with the futureproof tech. The price of video cards, as with all things pc-centric, will inevitably go down.

[mussmicky]

Just call Dell and let them build you something that has a warrantee. Much less effort, cheaper machine, and similar level of medium term reliability.

[Smabeabumjess]

Just call Dell and let them build you something that has a warrantee. Much less effort, cheaper machine, and similar level of medium term reliability.

You will get about half the machine for the same amount of money. Especially when you consider that you are paying for components from Dell that he may already have in his current rig (case, power supply, video card, operating system, optical drives, hard drives).

[huntbytnkbel]

ok, ive decided what im getting, and have already started ordering.

I decided to go with a Xeon E3110. It is exactly the same chip as the Core 2 Duo E8400, but with a slightly different voltage setting. I did my research, and confirmed on several sites that any board that will take the C2D Wolfdale will also take the Xeon Wolfdale. I'm definetly commited on this one, since it is already sitting on my desk.

4G DDR2 G.Skill memory, PC2 6400 800 MHz. The board supports 8G at 1200MHz, and the G.Skill is relativly cheap, (under $100 with shipping) so I will upgrade that at a later time.

Mother Board is going to be the 780i. As stated before, its more future-proof.

And of course the single 8800GT OC. Its cheap, small, and (from what I have read on several sites) will out perform all others, with the exception of the GTX and ULTRA. For the price, I may just do a 3 way SLI setup with 8800s before too long.

As far as the hard drive goes, I'm really cutting a corner here. only gonna run a single 250G 7200rpm drive for now. It gives me plenty of space for dual booting XP 64 (for daily running) and Vista 64 (for DX10 games). I don't need any storage space, as I have a TB of desktop storage I use for all my backups/videos/anime.

As far as calling Dell, the only systems they have that will compare with mine are the XPSs... The "cheapest" one they have is XPS 630. I just specked one out as closely to mine as I could, and it was almost $500 more then my machine, with only a year warrenty. Go to the good warrenty, you talking $750 more then mine. That is also with the Q6600 clocked at 2.4GHz. Quad core sounds nice on paper, and it certainly is a popular buzz word, but I haven't seen a single game yet that is coded to take advantage of all 4 cores. Basically, if you slap a Q6600 into one system, and an E8400/E3110 into another, with identical hardware, the E8400/E3110 will outperform the other because of the clock speed. To get 3GHz out of that dell, you have to upgrade to the Extreme QX6850, (quad core/3GHz) and tack $970 bucks onto the price. By building my own system, I have maximum upgradeability options, and can pick exactly what I want right now.

Dont get me wrong. I reccomend Dell to all my clients. For the average user, they are awesome. And if I was getting a laptop, I would save up 7Gs, and get a top of the line XPS. But since I consider myself a "power user" and this is a budget gaming rig that will upgraded for years to come, I couldn't justify doing anything besides building a cusom rig.

EDIT: I forgot to mention, my laptop, with a 1.73 GHz Centrino Duo, 2G 667MHz memory, and a Geforce GO 7600 256M dedicated, can run Crysis. I only get 15-20 FPS at 800x600 with everything set to low, but it can run it. ^_^

[Aceroassert]

Will this motherboard support RAID 0 or 1? I'm running RAID in striping mode, 2 250GB HDs, plenty of room for storing live television and video... also quite speedy as well.

I own an XPS 600. About to upgrade to 4 GB of DDR2 RAM. Currently I'm running 2 GB which is fine... but why not have a little more kick.

[CymnMaync]

Supports Raid 0/1/0+1/5/JBOD (copied and pasted from the "specifications" tab on newegg).

[occurrini]

I'm not familiar with RAID 5 or JBOD

[Herimoisige]

I am also running 2 WD 250GB SATAII's striped and I notice the difference compared to when I had just one.

Without bothering to look this up, I think RAID 5 is just another mashup of speed and data backup, I dont know the particulars though.

[Abnorttrano]

I've been really pleased with my RAID setup. Originally, I ordered the computer with only one drive. Before I really began piling on the apps, I went ahead and bought another HD and enabled RAID. I was very impressed with the performance, as this is the first CPU I've owned that supported RAID SATA2. Since I'm not too worried about data loss (It's personal, not business), I went with RAID 0. In conjunction with the 1 gig network setup, I've been very satisfied with everything I throw at it.

[Shiplyopidomi]

JBOD = Just a Bunch Of Disks.. According to Wikipedia, it isn't considered true raid, but rather a way to make a bunch of smaller, random sized disks appear as one large one. Personally, I don't really see the point, but to each his own.

[valiumnopresc]

JBOD - I've done that!!

I built a franensteins monster of a PVR out of an old PC & tuner card.
I had a bunch of misc. Hard Drives & an IDE card.
So I booted on the IDE card & Striped the 4 HD's.

Raiding them suckers together let me actually timeshift at 320x480 resolution.
It looked crisp on the 20" TV I had it hooked up to.

[ringsarcle]

Well, i got all the parts, and got it put together last night. Hit the power button, and everything worked on the first try. Got XP Pro x64 installed, and ran 3Dmark06. Scored a 10666. The thing runs Timeshift at max res, with all settings maxed out at around 60 FPS. Gonna try Crysis tonight, but I'm expecting it to run pretty awesome at medium settings, and if I get brave, I will max everything out there, and see what happens.

Here is a pic of my setup in the dark. Blue keyboard, red mouse, green case. So pretty in person. The pic is horrible, and doesn't do it justice.