Building a new pc

I have that motherboard on my new pc... it was "noisy" (inductor noise?) so I am currently RMAing it awaiting new one to see if it too is noisy or if i just was misfortunate. Other than that, it's a decent board - was quite stable when stress testing RAM and CPU

Whoa there, go easy on the money! Is a 9800GX2 really necessary? I'd say go for something a little less requiring. Heck, 9600GT is very powerful itself, too, and costs only a fraction.
That motherboard costs an arm and leg. Is it necessary?
The PSU costs an arm too. You'll probably find a good one much cheaper.
Are you sure it's worth it for that Quad cpu? I'd go AMD instead. They need the support and their quad core is really cheap.
And that hard drive is overpriced. I have found a similar one for much less (maybe $120).

The motherboard is nice but to be honest I'd go with a dual core (E8400 @ 3.00ghz are nice...) and for a video card an 8800 (gt,gs,gts) is better than the 9600 series and far cheaper than a 9800 but if that is what he wants... as for the hard drive I bought a 320gb western digital for $70 so 1TB for $200 sounds about right.

That PSU is trash. Rosewill PSUs are notorious for failing and taking things with it. Here are three very good PSUs. Any of the three will serve you well: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139004
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817371015
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151028

The CPU cooler is Ok, but you can do better. Here's a damn good one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835233003

The hard drive is good, but awful expensive. here's a damn good HD: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136218

Not as much space, but a fair bit faster and much cheaper. I'd get two of those instead of one 1TB drive.

smcd said:

...and for a video card an 8800 (gt,gs,gts) is better than the 9600 series

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Not necessarily. They're about equal, but the 9600 may be a little weaker.

as for the hard drive I bought a 320gb western digital for $70 so 1TB for $200 sounds about right.

Click to expand...

I.S.T. said:

The hard drive is good, but awful expensive. here's a damn good HD: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136218

Click to expand...

It's funny, but I can't seem to find a cheap 1 TB drive for the price of the drive I found locally... considering it is usually cheaper in US.

I can't believe I forgot to address the video cards. -_-

The 9600 GT is basically a 9800 GTX with half of the SPs and lower clock speeds. It performs surprisingly close to an 8800 GT, but there's still a difference.

The 8800GS is another story. It's a 9800 GTX with one forth of the SPs disabled(Thus giving it a more powerful chip than the 9600 GT), but the memory speeds are cut by quite a bit(They partially disabled the memory bus.), and there's not as much ram. It performs very much like the 9600 GT. Hell, even nVidia recognizes this. they renamed it to the 9600 GSO a few weeks ago.

As for which one is better between the two, it depends. If you're going to be using a lot of AA, I'd go with the 9600 GT. If you are going to be playing a lot of shader intensive games(BioShock/Gears of War/Crysis/etc), the 9600 GSO/8800 GS might be a better choice. It's easier to find the 9600 GT for a good price, however, and the 9600 GSO/8800 GS isn't that much faster in shader intensive stuff.

The 8800 GT is better than those two, but not by a huge ZOMG difference. If you run stuff at high resolutions(1650x1050 and higher), then you'll want the 8800GT or higher.

Now, if you really want a mega card, just wait until next month. nVidia is going to release a new Mega fast card then. It'll be a one card solution as well, which means you won't run into the problems that SLI can have(some games have problems, or won't get much faster with it on, or will get slower, yes, SLOWER, with it on, some games will need updated drivers in order for SLI to work with it, etc).

Here are some good review sites.

www.techreport.com

www.xbitlabs.com

www.silentpcreview.com They generally focus on which components are best from a making the PC quiet point of view, but they do the best power supply reviews on the web period.

What are you gonna do with the old videocard?

CHECK YOUR OPTIONS! Very important people. Check every computer store available, compare prices and find out what´s best. There´s a store nearby where they sell an extremely cheap 9800 card. Costs triple the amount elsewhere. Oh, and btw, buying it from online store is not always a good option.

Buying from online stores is usually a very good option, since they are almost always lower prices.

NOT ALWAYS! Usually yes, but not always. Sometimes you will get screwed, assraped, and tied up to hang under a Christmas tree. I have checked prizes on graphics card on the web, and i must say, disappointing results. Much cheaper in the store i checked. Seriously, omg, cannot believe how cheap it is.

There are two big problems with SLI(One of them applies to ATI's version, Crossfire as well.). the first, and frankly the biggest, is that most of the nVidia chipsets out right now are crap. Data corruption, poor multi-threading performance on Core 2 duos, etc etc. I don't know too much about the 790i, but I believe it doesn't have those problems. It costs an arm and a leg, however.

The other problem is SLI(And crossfire) tends to introduce stuttering, and a lot of games don't get along too well with it. It's not too hard to find a game that actually runs slower than if you had only one card!

One thing to look at is what games you are gonna play with the rig, and how well they cooperate with SLI/Crossfire.

The 9800 GX2 and 3870X2 have the same problems as they are crossfire/SLI in one package.

Also, right now Core 2 CPUs outperform both Athlon 64 X2s and Phantom, the athlon's more than the Phantoms.

I.S.T. said:

Also, right now Core 2 CPUs outperform both Athlon 64 X2s and Phantom, the athlon's more than the Phantoms.

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Phenom*
But AMD is cheaper, and will scale better with clock frequency.
Plus AMD could use your support right now, since they're in bad shape due to Intel anti-competitive measures.