Hi All, I've been thinking about getting a new machine for a while now and was looking at getting a Dell XPS 710. I think I've come to my senses now and have decided to do my own build again. It would be great to know what you guys think of it. I'm usually working on server side stuff and its been a while since I built my current machine. Here's what I'm thinking of getting ... Intel Core 2 Duo Q6600 2048Mb DDR2 800MHz Asus P5N32-E SLI nVidia 680I EVGA GeForce 8800GTX 768MB Black Pearl Water Cooled (626MHz Core Clock) (2000MHz Memory Clock) Western Digital Raptor 150Gb 16Mb Cache Hard Disk Drive Serial ATA Western Digital Caviar SE16 500Gb 16Mb Cache Hard Disk Drive SATAII 300MB/s ThermalTake Toughpower Series Cable Management 750W Antec P182 Super Midi Tower Case The rest of the money will be spent on a decent Dell Widescreen Monitor. Thanks for reading Peter
Do you really need water cooling? If so, you should post what pump, radiator, etc... you are getting so people who know a lot about that can review it. If you don't need water cooling, then just get the normal 8800GTX from EVGA(I assume you might want the step-up program and life time warranty, just nice to have imho). All the components look good, just get some decent low latency DDR2-800.
I might swap out the Raptor and Caviar drives for two midsized drives in RAID 0. The raptor doesn't offer significant speed gains for the price IMHO. Some obviously will differ from me, but I'll stand by that. RAID 0 offers good speed, and with two midsized drives (300ish), you'll come away with about the same amount of storage for a MUCH lower price. Other than that, looks like a good (but expensive) build.
My suggestion would be to dump the 8800gtx and pick up an 8800gts 640mb or 2900xt instead. Of course, this depends on what resolutions you're playing at, but either one of these graphics cards will give you nearly the same preformance for quite a lot less. (Myself, I can't tell the difference between 25fps and 105fps) Also, get three decently sized drives in RAID 5 instead of two separate or in RAID 0. Which exact type of RAM were you looking at? Corsair XMS and Crucial Ballistix seem to be the favorites, even though I have had a Corsair die on me...
Corsair ram is almost always not the Micron D9 chips considered to be the nicest overclockers on the market. Crucial Ballistix always are as they are owned by Micron. Other companies have varying types of using those chips, most popular being the G-Skill PC2-6400 HZ. The Ballistix are extremely cheap now, and are usually some of the best deals for getting some good Micron D9 chips.
Just remember: ALL micron ddr2 chips of the type and style are D9. Even if they're absolutely terrible, they're still D9. They're brilliant, they're still D9. D9 != good. Look for specifics; D9GMH and GKX, to be specific.
Just to say a quick thanks to everyone that has posted, its all gonna help when I finaly get to upgrade (not long now I hope! :O) Also, looks like quite a nice set up peterh, good luck hope it goes well for you.
Thanks for the advice everyone. It was very helpful. I think I was getting a bit carried away with some of the stuff I wanted to get and have decided to scale a few things back. I've just brough a EVGA 8800GTS 640mb instead of the GTX which I wouldn't of used to its full potential. This has also saved me some money. http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?EVG-GTS6KO I've also changed my mind about the disks. A couple of decent 500gb drives configured in Raid 0 makes more sense as I'm beginning to fill up space quicker. You were right tsen I cam away with even more storage for a lower price. I still have a few more things to buy. One of which will definitely be a Q6600. I'll post back once its all up and running.
I know Bbq, I just don't like writing out D9GMH and D9GKX when I don't have do. I think D9GCT chips are also supposed to have decent overclockability. Pretty much anything D9G** is supposed to be good for overclocking, except for D9GSV, which is for 2x2GB configurations from what I can tell.
