I'm going to build a custom computer and I'm trying to make sure that all of these things are compatible. I'm fairly sure they are. I'll probably be ugrading to 2GB of DDR2 800 memory, if there are any suggestions I'd appreciate it. ASUS P5N32-SLI SE Deluxe Socket T (LGA 775) NVIDIA nForce4 SLI X16 ATX Intel Motherboard Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 Conroe 2.4GHz LGA 775 Processor eVGA 01G-P2-N592-AX Geforce 7950GX2 1GB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Dual GPU Video Card Broadway Com Corp Okia-black-650 ATX 650W Power Supply OCZ Gold Series 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 (PC2 5400) Unbuffered Dual Channel Kit System Memory Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD3200KS 320GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
it's all 'compatable' but that power supply is a joke. It won't run reliably under full load. RAM is OK, at thew price range, I'd get some teem xtreme DDR 667 ram with 3-3-3 timings, those are hitting around 1100mhz, they have good micron d9 ICs in them, great stuff. Either that or G. SKill HZ, but newegg is charging a fortune for them now and well few others carry it. also, ditch the baord. nVidia chipsets blwo on the intel platform. Either wait for DFI's RD600 board or get a baord with either a 965 or 975X chipset. on the 'cheap' gigabytes DS3 is a tremendous overclocker. 7950GX2 is an insane card. it has a ton of power. It won't play future games though as it is not DX10 complaint. you can get it if you want, though if nyou don't plan on getting a new card in a few months I'd advise against it. a single 7950GTX or x1900XTX will obliterate anything just fine unless you plan on running at above 1600*1200 resolutions.
What power supply do you suggest then? Also, I did not know about the no direct x 10 support on the 7950's, thanks. Merged Post: I switched out the motherboard and graphics cards to these: ASUS P5W DH DELUXE/WIFI-AP Socket T (LGA 775) Intel 975X ATX Intel Motherboard ATI 100-435805 Radeon X1900XTX 512MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card
again, nothign has DX10 at this time, i'm just saying that it is a waste... atleast in my opinion. your choice of replacement board is rpetty much the highest you can go at this moment, it is an excellent board. more than I'de ever get myself. if you want to shave 110$ off the price go for a gigabyte DS3 or ASUS P5b 965 or an MSI and newegg no longer carries the 150$ rebate on MSI x1900XTXs, so just get an XT it's liek 100$ cheaper and they can be OCed to about the same levels. I've seen them for around 300$ also consider the x1900GT,those go for liek 200 and as far as I know they max out pretty much everything at 1280*1024. I dunno I've been driven crazy by the DX10 frenzy/the thought of price cuts after G80(geforce 8800) is released. I assume youdesire to overclock correct? there is no point to an expensive board if you dont have adequate cooling, and again, that PSU is quite cheap. for what you're likely to be doing the bare minimum would be enhance's 500W PSU for 65$ http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=PS-E5150GH decent PSU for the cost, same base unit as used in sivlerstones 110$ model, would be abel to power a single CPU with a single highend GFX card fine. if your'e wondering why na 500W psu is 'better' thana 650W ne, it has to do with quality and sustainability. the 650W cheepo can only do 650W MAX and that might even be overrated(ATX allows for 5% deviations) and 400-450W sustained. the 500W system does maybe 490 sustained and would peak at about 650W. Also the load distribution is diferent. you want most of your power to come from the 12V rail(s) the oen you choseis onyl rated to deal 24Amps to the 12V rail, the one I am suggesting(again bare minimum, you wouldn't want to put THAT much on it) can put out 35A on the 12V rail. it 'skimps' on the 3.3 and 5V rails. most computers don't have highly demanding floppy drives nowadays so it shoudln't matter anyway.
Don't worry about cooling, I'm getting and Xclio case with a 250mm side fan that blows directly on everything and I'm installing 1 front 80mm to pull in and 2 front 80mm fans to pull out. Also, the only thing I'll probably overclock is the Conroe CPU.
If I were you I'd just get a holdover card until dx10 is released with vista, a good hold over would be the x850xt for only 120-120, last I looked. Oh, so it doesn't support sm 3.0, big deal b/c think about it. Your going to buy a new card when dx10 comes out and between that time no games will come out that will require sm 4.0. x850xt is quite a powerful card actually...
i wouldn't suggest going past say 3.2GHz ish on the stock cooler. if you INSIST on using the stock CPU cooler, drop to a lower model CPU because there is no point in getting the higher models just for the higher multi or 1/10th a second shaved off superpi a relatively cheap cooler which performs well given the cost is the scythe mine. if you want to go insane on air, try the titan amanda, it has built in TEC.
Well I have an ATI x1300 PRO AGP in my current dell pentium 4 2.8GHz. So I'm sitting pretty in a holdover card.
Yeah, for DX-10 you got a few choices, the RD600's (new Radeon Cores) or the new GeForce 8' Series (first on release is expected to be the GeForce 8800, I'll probably be getting that.) I'll post more later, i g2g.
