My new Rig...

[jdport]

Hi everybody...
I'm buying my new parts very soon (sometime this week hopefully) and this is what I'm looking at:

Motherboard: MSI K89 Neo4 Platinum SLI

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3500+ Socket 939 Winchester Core

Video: MSI nVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT
(only one for now with plans to upgrade to 2nd board for later upgrade)

RAM: OCZ Value Series Dual Channel Kit 184-Pin 2GB(1GBx2) DDR PC-3200 - Retail

PSU: OCZ PowerStream 520W Power Supply Model "OCZ520ADJ" -RETAIL

Case: Thermaltake SHARK Silver ATX Full Tower Case, Model "VA7000SWA" -RETAIL

Harddrive: Maxtor DiamondMax 10 200GB 7200RPM P-ATA/133 Hard Drive, Model 6B200P0


The Newegg quote for all of this is $1680.55... I will likely shop around a bit to see if I can save a few $ here and there on various parts. Some things I'd appreciate opinions on (well opinions on anything are welcome but especially) should I instead go with two 6600GT video boards right now, or stick with my original plan of buying one 6800GT now and later on when I was ready for another upgrade and the price on 6800GT's was much lower add a 2nd one? I could probably get 2 6600GT's for the same price as the single 6800GT so I'm not sure it's worth waiting to use the SLI ability of the motherboard. As for the hard drive, I really wanted to get an SATA drive but this drive was so cheap for 200GB so I decided just to go with that... if anybody has any better suggestions please let me know. Finally I really didn't know which PSU to buy, so I just went with the one that Anandtech used in all of it's reviews. I know better than to go cheap on a power supply, but cost IS an issue on this system. I was really hoping to keep the whole thing at or below the $1500 mark but I let it go up a bit higher because I didn't want to sacrafice quality... Any suggestions on how to get the same quality Rig for just a bit less money would be great.

Oh, and while I may OC a little bit, I don't intend to put a lot of time into tweaking it to maximize overclocking... that's why I didn't go with the DFI motherboard, I did read the reviews about the great overclocking ability of that board.
Thanks everybody! Comments and suggestions are really appreciated.

-Jeff

edit: one question I forgot to get opinions on: Will the retail fan/heatsink be adequate for this system? In the past I've always bought my own cooling components, but I'm hoping that the retail cooling will be enough. I'm concerned running in SLI might create more heat that the retail fan can't handle... but then I'm buying a pretty "cool" case so it may all be good. Thoughts?

 

[UsandThem]

To reduce the price:

You don't need two gigs of ram. One gig is more than enough right now.

Go down from the 3500+ to a 3200+

The case is a little pricey, look at this one.

Stick with one 6800Gt. You get the same performance as two 6600Gt's/

 

[gunshy]

I would price everything thru pricegrabber first...
I ended getting everything from zipzoomfly... had no problems
no tax, and free 2nd day shipping. Saved a bunch.
Your ram does seem over the top, this is what I got:

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=80097-17&ps=ho3

Here is your mobo on price grabber:


http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_getp...d=6417699&search=K8N+Neo4+Platinum+SLI

 

[gunshy]

btw that case is sweet, I have already been looking at the black one

 

[jdport]

The main reason I chose 2GB of RAM was that I want to play EverQuest II and that is a major hog. I'm currently playing World of Warcraft but not EQII because my system can play WoW ok but it is terrible in EQ II. It seems like 1GB will get you by with just about any game now , but it's getting closer to the edge where you actually need more RAM than that.... and you have to go with matched pairs of course to benefit from dual channel.

That being said, I could probably go with two 1GB pairs (4x512MB) instead of 2x1GB but since this is a new system I thought it would be nice to leave a couple of open slots for future expansion if the day comes that i need more than 2GB (hopefully that won't be too soon though!)

Or.. like you said I could just go with 1GB that will still be decent for everything, and more than enough for most things and save that money for now.

Thanks for the input.

 

[gunshy]

Jdport
One more thing, as soon as you are sure what case you want, go ahead and order it. I got the free 2 day shipping on everything
but it wasn't offered on the case, I have had the rest of my stuff since last Wednesday and I'm still waiting on my case

 

[nick1985]

meh...i would get a gig of ram and the 3200, and used the saved cash for another 6800GT