Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.
Thank you so much people for the replies. I'll definitely purchase the two 5870's then. However, I dont plan to overclock so that's why I chose the i7 960 instead of the 920/930.
That is the problem, aftermarket air cooling cools the GPU well, but the VRM's suffer 50% more than stock cooling because they give you little measly heatsinks to put on the chips instead of making the whole cooler full cover, so the temps will sky rocket.However, another problem I've kinda got worries about is the cooling part. I don't really plan on water cooling the system so will I still be able to use two 5870's?
3.5k? wow that caneasily get you an i7 980x plus a load of nice things.
Sounds good. As before, go for the newer D0 chips like the i7 920 and 930. They are relatively cheap and overclock very well. Please bear in mind that if an i7 960 and a i7 920 were both running at 3.5GHz, their performance would be identical.
If you went for that Titan Vanquish I linked to above (or a similar system built from parts), you will be well under your budget and have excellent performance. I would suggest spending some of your remaining budget on one (or more) IPS based monitor. These will look great in games, and make your editing duties easier and more enjoyable.
You don't need to water cool to run 2 5870s in crossfire, you just want some good airflow in your case. The Antec 902 case used in the Vanquish is good for this, as are cases like the Coolermaster HAF, Antec 1200 and Lancool Dragonlord to name but a few. Also, adding some additional fans to the stock case and controlling them using a fan controller is a great way to provide loads of airflow with the minimum noise.
I would aslo suggest going for a motherboard where the 2 primary PCIe slots are widely spaced apart. On the Rampage II Extreme these are close together as it needs to be able to squeeze 3 dual slot cards on a standard size board. However, a board like the ASUS P6TD is made for a dual GPU setup and has widely spaced primary PCIe slots. Therefore, 5870CF will run cooler on a P6TD board compared to on a RIIE.
I've got a budget around 3.5K to spend on it. I've had a look at the overclocked bundles, and some of them look quite good so I might just get one. I'll mainly be using the PC for gaming and video editing/picture editing. I was looking at getting something like:
Intel i7 (930 or 960)
Asus Rampage Extreme 2 Motherboard
6 or 12GB Ram
180 GB Intel SSD alongside a 1TB HD. I've already got a spare 2TB HD alongside a external 2TB HD.
5870 x2
Asus Xonar HD 1.3
However, another problem I've kinda got worries about is the cooling part. I don't really plan on water cooling the system so will I still be able to use two 5870's?