The ultimate in PC entertainment?

[trashedteen]

Hello all, last week I decided that I was going to build the ultimate in PC gaming machines, considering my budget and my appreciation for games with next generation graphics such as Crysis I set to work on drawing up a list of specs and scouting the web to find the cheapest prices.
I would appreciate all like-minded people to take a look at my list and see if there are any improvements to be made, prices I have wrong or anything else for that matter, the list is as follows:

Intel quad core QX6700 - 607.90
2 x XFX 8800GTX (SLi) - £801.96
NForce 680i SLI DDR2-1200 motherboard - £231.95
Xcilo 750W Power Supply - £82.94
OCZ 2gb DDR2 1066 Platinum - £320.45
NEC 7170 18X DUAL LAYER DVD +/- RW - £25.90
2 Hard drives
1 - Maxtor DiamondMax 80Gb SATAII - £29.49
2 - Samsung 400GB SATA II 16MB - £92.90
Eureka water cool ready aliminum case - £99.90
AGEIA PhysX Card - £110
ThermalTake CL-W0040 Syphony water cooler - £161.94

TOTAL - £2565.33

All the prices you see here are the cheapest I could find from two price comparison sites and ebay.
I also have a couple of questions, I am going to be running this on an LG 42" HDTV, does the 8800GTX support HD? Will I be able to run HD-DVDs? Also I have two hard drives on the list becasue I heard that running windows on a seperate drive to your games ect speeds up the PC, is this true?
I would really appreicate any criticism as long as its constructive, I think this may well be the ultimate in PC entertainment.
Thanks,
Jon

 

[Oreo]

You will need a HD-DVD Player in your PC. Yes it should have support for your Screen. Except 1080P HD Is still a low resolotuin around 1024x768. Them Graohics cards arnt needed for that kind of resolution. But Still That Will be an excellent pc. You must have an excellent wallet by the way !. Try posting this in the high end pc's section.

The Conroe 6800EXTREME is a good CPU as well.

Weres the sound card ! . Get an XF-I one. The cheepest website for all PC Parts is SCAN.CO.UK. and newegg in USA.


Thanks

 

[trashedteen]

Thanks, so I'd just need to run my games in 1024X768 and they'd be HD?
Unfortunately, my wallets not huge, this is going to take 3 months saving but I have no other outgoing finances so I think this will be well worth it.
I haven't put a sound card on there because I already have a 900W 5.1 system rigged up so I'll just connect it to that, its less wires.
Do think the Conroe 6800EXTREME is better than the Quad core then? Cheers.

 

[Trifid]

Except 1080P HD Is still a low resolotuin around 1024x768. T

Thanks

What, 1080P is 1920 by 1080 pixels.

Nice system.

About the 2 hard drives. Not really tbh. Windows load times are greatly improved by a Raptor due to the fast seek times for finding loads of small files.

I would leave the water cooling. It will be a lot of hassle for a new PC builder. I am not saying don't water cool, but save it for the summer or sometime later when you have the PC running. I enjoyed setting mine up, but I was bored and PCless at the time.

 

[Yek]

Im very jelous of that mate , you enjoy it !

 

[trashedteen]

I have no dought I will. Through a bit of research I've found that the 8800GTX can be connected directly to a HDTV via a HDMI cable so that answers that one.
You think buying say a 500GB raptor would be more benficial than two hard drives? Bearing in mind I will be running vista. Is an internal or external HDD better?
Also, what do you recommend I do for cooling other than a water-cooler? This applies to the GPU as well seeing seeing as they like to get quite hot. Cheers

 

[Nukem]

usually doing a RAID on hard drives gives better performance, so maybe you can get 2 500GB and call it a day! I would say to hold off on H2O for the time being... I would let the companies mature with the prospect of cooling the GTS/GTX. Danger Den has the only ones right now (unless you go with BFG... They have a water colled version already) and it's still expensive as h3ll... 134.00 USD

http://www.dangerdenstore.com/product.php?productid=257&cat=3&bestseller

So I would have to suggest at this point, since your not going to be buying anytime soon as you said... wait in H2O until you get closer to purchase and see what is going by then...

 

[trashedteen]

Thanks for the help, thats one expensive cooler for 8800, do I have any other options in the way of cooling both GPUs thats not so, costly?
Are two HDDs in raid faster than a single raptor 10000rpm?

 

[Trifid]

there isn't a 500GB raptor. The largest is 150. It depends how you arrange the 2 hard drives. In RAID0 than you will get very fast read times but the seek will not be as fast as the raptor. Raptor good for loading windows and games slightly faster.

 

[trashedteen]

Can I run two 74Gb Raptors in RAID0?