Building great gaming rig

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But you pay a much higher premium for them which really isnt worth it, and the rate at which they are improving doesnt make the purchase justified either, just stick with a nice big 1.5TB hard drive unless you really need to room or your securing really important data.

get the intel i7 920, as none of the other versions are much faster despite the price difference. 2xgtx 285's would be nice but also 2x4890's would be good. You dont really need extra fans any decent case will come with plently of far pushing power, the HAF is a very good case for cooling.
 
I have the NZXT tempest. Great case. Stock fans are quiet enough and strong enough to keep my stuff cool. I would definately recommend it!:D
 
Keep in mind your motherboard's abilities when choosing your graphics cards. I've only seen one or two i7 boards that support Crossfire (ATI). Most of them are SLI (NVidia).

As far as cases go, I have the Antec 1200 and I like it quite a bit. Roomy, lots of circulation, and space behind the motherboard tray to run wiring. Only thing I don't like is you can't remove the motherboard tray, only the panel behind it. But this isn't deal breaking for me. The case is also very quiet with the fans on the low setting, and I rarely need to turn any of them up.

As previously stated, if you're getting an i7 go for the 920. You'll be able to overclock it near the performance of it's older siblings.

For GPU's, the prices just recently dropped a good $40ish on newegg for the mid-high range cards, so I'd say for a middle road budget I'd go for either 2xGTX260 or 2xHD4870's depending on motherboard spec.

For your HDD, I would personally avoid Seagate. I've had two of them die on me in the last year. Seems the quality went down after the Maxtor buyout thing. I have been using WD Caviar Blacks for general purposes. 32mb cache, and fairly inexpensive (60 bucks for 640gb). If you want a faster boot drive get a raptor or SSD. I don't personally run RAID so I can't comment on that.

If you are thinking about expanding your cooling, but are perhaps afraid of trying water cooling due to the relative hassle vs air cooling, you should look at the CoolIt Domino ALC. It's an all-included self-enclosed liquid cooler for your CPU. Gets some great reviews, plus I like it too. Has a handy LCD display to monitor coolant temps (keep in mind this is NOT your cpu temp, only the COOLANT temp). Only issue with this is that it takes up a rear 120mm fan slot, so only consider this cooler if you have sufficient air flow even without one of your rear 120mm's.
 
Almost all x58 chipset boards support both sli and xfire. Especially the high end boards. That is the beauty of the x58 chipset.

But, there are a few boards that only support SLI while many of these have added support for xfire via a bios update definitely something to make sure of when purchasing an 1336 motherboard.

For the record the Rampage II you are looking at supports both. I do feel this board, while great, is too much money for what you get.
 
If money is not that much of an issue I would go with two 285. The cosmos is a nice big case however the airflow will need a little work. As for the Rampage great board, yeah bit steep on the price but to me worth every penny.
 
yer i seen the antec 1200 the other day in a store, it is roomy as you say and should be good on cooling.
not too sure about using water cooling, im not that great on knowledge when it comes to installing them and wouldnt want too screw the rest of the parts up if it sprung a leak on me.

I know the rampage 2 is a bot steep on the price but ive got family who've got the rampage 1, bit of a hassle to get that working but werent sure on what was wrong. so hopefully it works better that the one i seen on there computer.

i was rethinking about my choice on HDD and was thinking of just buying two big HDD and using one for my games and the other for my OS and general data.

with the i7 i had thought of just stepping back and using a quad core but not real sure at the moment.
 
I see you live in Australia, what store are you buying from? MSY is good but i feel that they often dont have all the parts i want, pccase gear is nice for cooling/cases, they have all the good coolers you hear about on TF, also Umart is good who have good prices. Its smart to step back and just have a big drive or two smaller ones, but i would stick with the i7 if you really want it to last a while.

Gigabyte @ ITSDirect - Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P Intel X58 Chipset Socket 1366 Motherboard (Suits Core i7): More Coming - Preorder

this is a very nice board and will get you a very nice overclock with a good cooelr like the one below, forget the rampage its way to overpriced, $700 for a board, common! this ud4p will probably get you the same overclock on air.

CoolerMaster V8 CPU Cooler CoolerMaster V8 CPU Cooler [RR-UV8-XBU1] - $89.00 : PC Case Gear, Quality case accessories and components
 
ok well i havent chosen i site yet i was gonna get my parts from.

what to say if i dont overclock the pc would it change your view on the parts you chose??
 
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