First build in over two decades.  Looking to keep cost down and replace failed prefab.  General purpose rig (internet, office stuff, some programming, some non-extreme gaming interests.  Want good supply and case for now and future.  Any comments or substitute suggestions?  Doubt I will ever use dual gpus.  Will SLI work in any dual pcie mobo?

Planning to buy from Newegg:

SAMSUNG 20X DVD±R DVD Burner Black SATA Model SH-S203B - OEM

COOLER MASTER COSMOS 1000 RC-1000-KSN1-GP Black/ Silver Steel ATX Full Tower Computer Case – Retail

XFX PVT88PYDF4 GeForce 8800 GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Retail

PC Power & Cooling S75QB 750W ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply - Retail

Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound - OEM

G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F2-8500CL5D-4GBPK - Retail

GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3L LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX All Solid Capacitor Intel Motherboard - Retail

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz LGA 775 Quad-Core Processor Model BX80562Q6600 – Retail

ZALMAN CNPS9700 LED 110mm 2 Ball CPU Cooler - Retail

Solid build and welcome to the forums!

narf999:

GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3L LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX All Solid Capacitor Intel Motherboard - Retail

ZALMAN CNPS9700 LED 110mm 2 Ball CPU Cooler - Retail

I built one system using that same Gigabyte motherboard and I like it a lot.  It's a good value for the price. However, I have a second system with the Abit IP-35 PRO motherboard and I like it even better. The price is a little higher for the Abit board, but it overclocks a lot better and in my opinion, is simply designed with a nicer layout.

The Zalman LED cooler you mentioned is excellent and one of my favorites! It has great cooling capability and looks really nice when installed. Also, it is fairly easy to install but make sure you put on the back plate before installing the motherboard. In fact, I recommend installing the CPU and Zalman cooler before installing the motherboard in the case.

I don't think you can go wrong with the list of components you provided. I was really glad to see you chose a nice power supply with plenty of wattage. It might be a little more than you need right now, but it's a good brand and should serve you well into the future should you upgrade to more power-hungry components later.

Best of luck with the new rig!!  Looks good!

Thanks.  I still don't understand the dual pci-e issues.  There seems to be quite a few dual slot pci-e x 16 boards.  If they don't say Crossfire or SLI support or compliant, what are they really good for?... do they still work together, or are they just good for two seperate cards for two monitors?  I don't forsee 2 cards, but I am willing to bump up the total to something like this for the option:

GIGABYTE GA-EP35-DS4 LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Dynamic Energy Saver Ultra Durable II Intel Motherboard - Retail

Also, I was thinking of two of these for a RAID 1 setup: SAMSUNG SpinPoint T Series HD501LJ 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM

 Thanks.  I read up on the Abit mobo.  Seems to be quite a few good comments.  My local shop had me convinced on Gigabyte and I haven't shaken that off yet as I got to see the boards up close.  I am still teatering on the dual card issues and questions.  How does the raid support compare between the Abit and the Gigabyte boards?

Indeed its a solid build. As for the dual PCI-E slots its more of looks then versitility. Yes you can run two vid cards but with the P35 Chipset you cant run SLI like you said. Really I think there there for the posibility to add a second card and other cards that use the PCI-e interface such as some high end Sound cards. but other than that they have no funcitonality on the P35 boards.

narf999:

Thanks.  I still don't understand the dual pci-e issues.  There seems to be quite a few dual slot pci-e x 16 boards.  If they don't say Crossfire or SLI support or compliant, what are they really good for?... do they still work together, or are they just good for two seperate cards for two monitors?  I don't forsee 2 cards, but I am willing to bump up the total to something like this for the option:

GIGABYTE GA-EP35-DS4 LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Dynamic Energy Saver Ultra Durable II Intel Motherboard - Retail

Also, I was thinking of two of these for a RAID 1 setup: SAMSUNG SpinPoint T Series HD501LJ 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM

The Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS4 looks like a really nice board.  I saw this review on it and thought you might find it helpful: http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=1255

To answer your question about not saying Crossfire or SLI compliant, here's essentially what that means:  The Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS4 does indeed have 2 x pci-e slots; however, only one of them runs at x16. The second slot runs at x4. This means that when you have two cards set up together, they default to the speed of the lower slot - which in this case is x4. A Crossfire "compliant" motherboard would run both pci-e slots at the x16 speed, avoiding any bottlenecks which might restrict the full potential of the 2 cards running together. You'll find that "compliant" motherboards cost a bit more for this feature, so keep that in mind and decide if you'll ever take advantage of the feature before laying out the extra cash.

By the way, CrossFire is a brand name for ATI Technologies' multi-GPU solution, which competes with Scalable Link Interface (SLI) from NVIDIA. This is an important distinction when matching up motherboards with dual video cards. If you purchase the Gigabyte board mentioned above, remember that it has an Intel chipset and is capable of running ATI Crossfire (at x4, not true Crossfire at x16 as explained above). It will NOT support Nvidia SLI, so if you have an Nvidia-based video card and plan to buy a second to connect together, this board will not work.

For in-depth information on the differences between Crossfire and SLI, check out these articles: http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2006/07/12/multi_gpu_world_tour_gpus/  and http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=938&pageID=2402

The Samsung drives are fine, although I'm still a fan of Seagate (5 year warranty). If you have the budget, check out WD's line of Raptor or VelociRaptor drives which run at 10,000 RPMs. These also come with 5 year warranties and are some of the best drives available, especially if you're focused on building a fast system.  I'm not sure of the reliability of the Samsung drives and don't have much experience myself, so go with what you're comfortable with. Just remember to back up important data and/or add a 3rd larger drive to the system to be used as a data drive.

Redine,

Thanks.  I read the Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS4 review.  I haven't gotten through the Crossfire/SLI stuff (yet).  Buddy at work told me it is game dependant and he thought the programmers were coding more for the SLI now.  That would seem to render the Crossfire concerns maybe not so big for me.  I may go for the board for the 45 nm technology option though.  Maybe the gpu makers will standardize on dual gpus on one card...  can't keep up with my wallet.  I tend to invest and then milk until a failure forces me to make a major upgrade.  At that point, the history has been just about all the hardware is pathetically out of date.  The plot thickens.

I see what you mean with the hard drives.  Perhaps I rethink the Samsung and go for a pair of smaller Seagates or WDs.  I was thinking of the Raid 1 (redundancy) benefit when choosing the big Samsungs (since I may have lost some data on the latest failure due to slacking on backup).  Buddy also told me (generally) motherboard Raid funtionality is usually weak and he has a seperate raid controller.  If I went with a small fast boot drive with pair of slower bigger raid 1 configured units what do you think the smallest boot drive could/should be.  I am going to restore XP from a failed prefab.  I don't want to put out for Vista at this time, but I would have to consider the inevitability.  Also though a dual or multiboot with linux.  Mission creep...

Thanks again.  I will read up on the sli/xfire stuff.  Sure is a lotta reading and straterizing.

Hey narf999,

What your buddy at work said is fairly accurate. Games can be optimized to work better with SLI or Crossfire, and in my opinion, Nvidia is leading the video card market these days. As a result, game developers are tending to optimize games in favor of the more "popular" SLI over Crossfire. However, having said that, most games will still take advantage of dual graphics cards regardless of whether it's SLI or Crossfire.

To keep it simple - Decide which video card you plan to buy first.

If you really like ATI-based video cards, then make sure you get a motheboard that will support Crossfire. This means that it will most likely come with an Intel chipset (like the P35 on the Gigabyte boards).

If you like Nvidia-based video cards, then get a motherboard that will support SLI. This means that you need to look for one with an Nvidia chipset on it.

Now if you decide to only use a single video card or spend the money for a newer one with 2 GPUs onboard, then the motherboard chipset is much less of an issue. Personally, I went the most budget-friendly way I could.  I bought a nice motherboard with an Intel P35 chipset and paired it with an Nvidia 8800 GT video card (512MB). This means I can't ever add a second 8800 GT into my existing motherboard in Crossfire configuration, but I decided I probably wouldn't ever end up adding a second card anyway.

Regarding the hard drives: RAID 1 is great for mission-critical redundancy, but it's not very fast. Not the type of setup you want for a boot drive. Redundancy is great if you're running a server for a business, but otherwise opt for storing your critical data in another way. Here's my suggestion:

For the boot/system drive, get 2 fast drives and set them up in RAID 0 configuration. Size isn't critical since these will be primarily used for running the operating system, and you could get by with anything above 150GB on each drive (especially if you go with the WD Raptors). RAID 0 splits data between the 2 drives and writes to each almost simultaneously. The down side is that if you lose 1 drive, you lose all your data because it's split between the 2. However, if the only thing on the 2 drives is your operating system, that can be restored and nothing critical is lost. The major benefits of RAID 0 is SPEED!

Now, the key here is that you have the 2 drives in RAID 0 configuration, and the only thing you load onto these drives is the operating system. You add a third drive as your data drive and keep all of your important information there. Get a larger drive (500GB or bigger) and pick something reliable (Seagate with 5 year warranty is my preference). Remember to back up your important data from this drive on a regular basis!

Onboard RAID controllers are pretty good these days and in my opinion much better than a separate RAID controller. One major advantage is that an onboard controller doesn't have to deal with limitations of a PCI bus. It's integrated into the motherboard so typically compatability and speed are better than an add-in controller. Onboard RAID controllers are also easier to set up using settings in the system BIOS rather than trying to configure an add-in card.

Hope this helps. Your original configuration was fine and you really can't go wrong with it. Just decide if you ever really will put 2 video cards together and how far down the road that might be. Odds are you'll upgrade your motherboard and video card long before you ever put in a second video card! If budget is an issue, save your money and don't worry about SLI or Crossfire.  Get a good motherboard and video card combination and have fun!

 Thank you for the straight talk.  I read your comments after I had kept poking around ratcheting up costs to keep the dual gpu and ddr 3 option alive.  I had also stumbled on the 700 series corruption stuff, which I don't know if it is accurate or real, but that at least gave me pause on the search.  Ultimately, I was having a difficult time finding future proof for my design budget.  So, I have come nearly full circle, save the shift in Raid and hd brands I am looking into based on your comments.  I do already have an external USB hd that could be my isolatable large backup to a new int. data sata.  I am getting close.  Forums are great for feedback!  I do personally believe in the value point approach since every extra future proofing feature in the past has always been (for me) performance obsoleted by a new processor family or leaps by the time the old family incremental upgrade was cheap enough to consider.  Nature of the technology I guess, and I don't have the discretionary funds to be an early adopter.

Decided to skip the raid boot with seperate backup and go with one Velociraptor 300 GB for now.  Will use mybook ext usb hd for backup.  Also, original board looks to be out of stock.  Believe I will be moving up to following (versus the EP35 replacement for the original board pick).  Needed to stick with 1 slot mobo to make budget reach for vraptor.  Going to think on it all for a hair more and then push the button.  Thought about going up to 8800 gts but $ cap came in again.

Newegg extended warranties:  Do people normally get them on major components?  Any opinions on whether it is worth it.

 I try to look for products that have newegg's standard warranty, which is replacable/RMA up to 1 year. After 1 year most good mfrs. should still be willing to RMA(always save invoices_they ask for it). Paying for an extd. warranty is probably only worth it on more expensive individual items like big TVs, consoles, ultra high-end GFX cards., cameras, etc.

 Call me Mr.  Flippy Floppy.  I changed my mind to two 250 barracuda seagates for Raid 0 system/boot and two 500 barracuda seagates for Raid 1 system.

 Changed it to four 500s to keep RAID options open.