System advice, Specifically Mobo Choice.

[kensai13]

I'm putting a new system together. Thus far I have the following parts; some recycled from my previous system, some newly ordered.

E8400 CPU
Strider ST60F 600 Watt PSU 42A on the 12Vs
2x 8800 GTS 320 MB
Seagate Barracuda 250GB
WD Raptor 150GB
X-Fi Xtremegamer
Vista Home Premium

I'm keeping the GTS 320MBs till the "real" 9 series Nvidia cards come out this fall/winter

I'm sticking to 1x Raptor 150 since it seems like there is little real world benefit to Raid. http://www.anandtech.com/stora...howdoc.aspx?i=2101&p=1
(I know this is an old article, but I've yet to find anything to really refute the conclusion.)

If you see any problems with the above logic or configuration, please say so.


The meat of my question is what Mobo / Ram to go with. I know that I have to go with an Nforce chipset since I'm going to SLI, but which one?

The 790I with 4gb of ddr3 will be almost double the cost of a 780I with 4gb of ddr2. That being said, do I even need a 780I if I'm not going to Tri-Sli?

So, I guess the question is what Nforce board to go with.


.Thanks for any advice you can give.

 

[LOUISSSSS]

why don't u just ditch your old g90 video cards and get a single card + a p35 board. thats probably a better/cheaper idea. u can get a single 8800gts as a small upgrade and a cheap p35 board that OC's much better and is more stable than nvidia chipsets

 

[lopri]

That RAID article is now almost 4 years old.. Today's HDDs and RAID controllers are much more performant..

 

[shamans]

Also don't forget that the article only uses 2 drives in Raid 0. What happens when you have 4 to 8 cost-effective drives in Raid 0?

 

[lopri]

If your budget allows, 780i works very well with E8400. Speaking from experience that'll be similar to yours (see sig). If not, check out 750i variants. They offer just about the same thing and it probably runs cooler.