Building a gaming system. Any ideas appreciated.

[Spartan]

All rite, guys. Have a crappy old-ass dell rite now. Thinking about building my own rig. Here are the parts? Any ideas or suggestions?

Thermaltake Armor VA8000BWS Full Tower
Silverstone Zeus SST-ST65ZS 650 Watt PSU
Thermaltake Venus 12 Cooling Fan
XFX GeForce 7800GTX 256MB Video Card
2 * Seagate Barracuda 250GB Hard Drives
OCZ Gold Series 2 GB DDR2 667 Dual Channel Memory
ASUS A8N-SLI Premium Motherboard
AMD Athlon FX-57 Processor
Windows XP Professional with SP2
Sony DVD+R Burner
LITE-ON DVD-ROM Drive
CREATIVE Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS

already have 20" LCD and Klipsch speakers

 

[Elbatrop1]

A couple things:

Do you really need 500GB of HD space? Thats a lot!! Unless you put that in RAID 0 or 1, anyways. Or, unless you download a lot of things.

That mobo doesnt support DDR2, only DDR. If you have plans on Overclocking, get fancy RAM. Let us/me know if you are, because that determines your RAM. If not overclocking, just get generic/value RAM, because it performs no less than fancy RAM unless overclocking.

Speaking of RAM, 2GB is excessive and you wont notice a difference in performance to go from 1GB to 2GB.

In stead of the A8N-SLI, get an MSI, Gigabyte of DFI. THe ASUS boards are still ok, but have had a plague of problems with chipset fans.

Also, do you really need an SLI mobo, especially when you are only getting one video card?

Unless you are setting this computer up in a corporate network situation, just get WinXP Home, instead of Pro.

 

[timmer]

well this guy is loaded obviuosly soo just go with the 2 gigs if u can the more the better but with all those bucks get 2gig (1gbx2) in dual channel so u can upgrade some more man. but yea it is excessive but u know u are at the top of line if i could have 2 gigs ohhhh i would. well the sli dfi is only 20$ or soo more than the non sli one so i would saty with sli incase u wanna upgrade
for someone with a budget i would not suggest this stuff but it looks like u dont have a budget so go for it

 

[Counter-Strike]

Couple things:

XFX sucks, go w/ eVGA, or Leadtek

And...

How many times did you play the lottery before you won?

 

[vaderpro]

Do as Elbatrop said.

 

[Calzinger]

XFX sucks, go w/ eVGA, or Leadtek

Where in the world did you hear this from? The XFX has the highest clock of all the 7800 GTX.

 

[Counter-Strike]

They have horrible tech support, and some cards are buggy. And finally, clock speed isn't what makes a video card.

 

[Calzinger]

They have horrible tech support, and some cards are buggy. And finally, clock speed isn't what makes a video card.

I recall reading elsewhere that XFX produced a batch of warg'ed cards, but that was now corrected. Read any reviews on the XFX model itself and you will find that you are very wrong.

Clock speed isn't what makes a video card? What do you think "overclocking" is? If you don't care about clock speed, then why do you even OC? Raise the clock speed (aka overclocking), get better performance. Having a higher starting clock speed just makes things easier assuming the card is reliable, which it is in this case.

Leadtek has provided the worst tech support I have ever seen, and I know from my own personal experience. Perhaps I just got unlucky, but what kind of company provides tech support that is just one page to email them? They didn't get back to me and it's been around 3 weeks. They don't even have a toll free number.

I'm not here to argue about Leadtek or XFX. The point is, XFX now produces a reliable card. Their 7800 GTX is much better than most immediately assume, and I initially thought they were garbage until I did more research. I think it's a good choice.

 

[Him]

XFX is an EXTREMELY good crd! They have a very ruined rep because of the batch of DOA cards they let out, but now their cards are absolutely killer.

Dont get XP Home. NEVER get XP HOME! XP Home is horrible! Get Pro, Home lacks so many features that unless you are the n00biest of n00bs you will end up using them once day.

 

[mak01]

That mobo doesnt support DDR2, only DDR.

That's the only problem I think would make a difference.