How's this core i7 budget gaming build?

[hikaricloud]

Hey, make sure to edit your posts instead of posting again right after the last post, alright? Edit button is at the bottom right.

At the moment, the i7 really has no equal in performance. Where AMD really shines is on a budget. If you want to keep costs low, AMD is the way to go, but if you have the cash and you're willing to spend it, i7 is the way to go.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

Those SSD's are really expensive, lol. I think I'll just stick with 2 regular HDD's for now and maybe upgrade once the SSD prices come down a bit. Would my idea of a fairly small drive just for the OS be a good one, or should I just get that 640GB + the 1TB one?

SSDs are considerably faster than conventional hard drives which is why they are more expensive. The Intel X25-M actually has better price/performance than a normal hard drive drive when you look at 4kb random write speeds. The only area where SSDs are lacking in is price/capacity.

 

[Atashinchi]

I have two OCZ Vertex SSD's in Raid 0. They are amazingly fast! I strongly recommend considering getting either the Intel or OCZ Vertex/Agility SSDs.

Good luck with your build and have fun!

 

[scottay]

Wow, 2 SSD's in Raid 0?! I bet they're a force to be reckoned with! What size are they? I see the Vertex go anywhere from 30GB to 250GB, and $130 to $745 respectively... So, if I wanted a descent amount of hard drive space, say 500GB, I would need 2 250GB in raid 0 which would total $1500 just for hard drives... That versus a 1 TB conventional drive for $95. That's a little tough to swallow unless I'm looking at spending 5K-6K for an extreme build. Granted there's a massive performance difference, but worth a $1400 price increase for half the drive space? For the type of gaming I do (mainly WoW and Flight Sim) and maybe a little video rendering here and there I doubt I'd be stressing the drives TOO much.

 

[baron5]

Well they are generally used around here for the OS install and for programs and some games, storage and all the other stuff that is not essential to be loading really fast can go on a cheaper 640gb black.