New Build Idea.

[Bobbydigital22]

Basically I enjoyed building the machine I'm on at the moment and as a first attempt with no PC build history or knowledge I some how managed to build the following

CPU - Intel Core 2 CPU 6600 (2.40GHz) Clocked to (3.1Ghz).
Mother Board - ASUSTeK Comp INC. P5W64 WS Pro Mainboard.
RAM - 2GB Corsair i think.. (Not opening case to look now anyways ).
GFX - NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS (320mb).
OS - XP Home Ed.
Case - Antec 900.
PSU - OCZ Gamer's 1000w Supply
Sound Card - Creative Fatal1ty

Now some how i managed to buy & put this together and only have 3 Cables that was wrongly placed (Needlyless to say before i turned it on i had a techy come check it out to make sure it'd work lol) I did my research on parts and hey I'm on it now..

So this is where the new build idea comes in, Im looking at spending about 1,000 on whole tower unit including all parts.. Keyboard Mouse Monitor comes at an extra price later on.. Any ways I have the following in mind and wanted some form of advice on better parts or any other ideas that you may have towards it..

Case - Antec 1200
Mother Board - Asus P6T Intel X58 (Socket 1366) PCI-Express DDR3
GFX - EVGA GeForce 9800 GTX+ 1024MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express)
CPU - Intel Core i7 920 2.66Ghz (Nehalem) (Socket LGA1366)
CPU Cooler - Noctua NH-U12P SE1366 CPU Cooler (Socket LGA1366)
PSU - OCZ Fatal1ty 700w Silent SLI Ready ATX2
Sound Card - Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium - Fatal1ty Professional Series 7.1

What you think, Might obviously push over 1K, but thats what im looking at roughly.. Not sure about DDR3 Ram or Operating system but need a highest HZ Monitor too i believe .. hence it'll be purely a Gaming rig.

Also not sure about SLi if its worth going for or not? Any help would be appreciated thanks.

 

[Microwave]

I'd go for a GTX 260 over the 9800. The 260 would be a bottleneck to that CPU anyway, the 9800 would be even more.

But if you're looking into SLI later the 260 would be brilliant for that.

 

[Bobbydigital22]

I was also keeping that in mind, but i dont know anything about this SLi stuff not bothered to read it up yet.. you got any idea of how it works and if it is a noticeable difference? What do you by the bottleneck comment? (Sorry as i explained really am quite new to this lol)

 

[D D Danneh]

I was also keeping that in mind, but i dont know anything about this SLi stuff not bothered to read it up yet.. you got any idea of how it works and if it is a noticeable difference? What do you by the bottleneck comment? (Sorry as i explained really am quite new to this lol)

SLI is basically 2 or more graphics cards in the same system, working together. SLI is nVidias name for it, Crossfire is ATI's name for it. It's definitely a noticeable difference, 2 GT260's will give you much more performance than 1. Maybe not quite twice as much, but pretty close.

By bottleneck, he means that the CPU is more powerful than your graphics card. This means if you want to run a game that is too much for the graphics card to handle, it doesn't matter how good your CPU is, it still won't work. By getting a better card, you reduce the bottleneck. I wouldn't be worried about trying to get your other components to compete with the i7, as you can't get much faster right now, as far as I know, but better stuff always helps.

As for the PSU, try a Corsair one. They are some of the best you can get, and while you will pay a little more per watt, the quality you get is better than OCZ (not speaking from experience though, more from what I've heard of others experience). For the price of the PSU you're looking at, I'd go for a Corsair 650W. It's a tenner cheaper, but that should run your rig just fine. If you do plan to SLI in the future, you may want the 750W or higher, but I don't know, it's best asking someone else there.

DDR3 RAM, you want the triple channel ones. It doesn't really matter which one you choose, but tighter and lower timings are better (7-7-7-20 is better than 9-9-9-24), and a higher MHz is better (1600MHz instead of 1333MHz). For the absolute cheapest, the Corsair 1333MHz 3GB and 6GB kits are good, and for middle range the Corsair Dominator 1600MHz 3GB and 6GB kits come recommended. It depends on your leftover budget really. Note that you'll see less performance boost from spending £300 on RAM (as opposed to £100), than you would from spending £300 on a GPU, so don't spend too much.

Operating system depends what you need it for. Now, I'd recommend Vista as it's not as bad as it used to be, and for 32-bit or 64-bit, it mostly depends on how much RAM you want. 32-bit supports up to about 4.1GB of RAM, but this includes your GPU RAM, so with a 1GB graphics card (or two in the future), this means you will only be able to use 3.1GB (or 2.1GB) of RAM total. 64-bit supports an essentially infinite amount. 32-bit is slightly more compatible with drivers and such, but I personally would still recommend 64-bit, just for the RAM.

Also, buy OEM, instead of Retail OS. The only difference is that Retail can be reinstalled if you change the motherboard, and OEM can only be reinstalled if you don't change the motherboard (you can change other stuff though). Since you're buying an i7, I highly doubt you'll be changing the motherboard in a long time. And OEM is about £30-40 cheaper than retail.

 

[Bobbydigital22]

See i didnt even know difference between OEM & Retail bit lol, thanks for advice guys il be putting the plan into action soon. Unsure if to keep rig im on now and make new one an keep both or sell one i on now to fund my new one :-/