Buying a New Computer.

Ok, fair enough.

What about these "cooling systems"? Water coolant or air coolant and various fans; does this really make a difference other then decreasing the amout of noise?
 
cooling systems...
those are usually meant for people who over clock their hard ware alot, but since you don't know very much about hard ware, as quoted by yourself, you probably won't be very interested in overclocking your hard ware. besides, your parts are already top of the line, further over clocking would just be over kill. also the new conroe cores run very cool so extra cooling won't be absolutely nessecary. regular air cooling should be fine, maybe buy a 5 dollar bottle of artic silver 5 as thermal compound between your heatsink and processor.
 
I think you'll need a crossfire edition board in order to run two video cards in crossfire mode(referring to the ASUS P5B-Deluxe). Though it does have 2 PCI-E slots, it says nothing about SLI nor Crossfire. I know some boards where you can at POST or something choose which card you want to run if you have 2. And from my understanding, you need one regular X1900XTX and one Crossfire Edition X1900XTX in order for them to run Crossfire, though it will probably still work with 2 Crossfire Edition cards. And you might want to at least get DDR800 (PC6400) RAM, as that's the maximum your board and most others can handle. The memory you, Daut, were wondering about was excellent memory, but it won't work with your motherboard (and I don't know any that it will work on, maybe someone else will) because it's DDR2 1066. But the Core 2 Extreme & Crossfire X1900XTX setup sounds like a great computer, I'd definitely head in that direction. But if you can wait just until the 23rd, the X1950XTX is supposed to be released. I'm not sure how much better it is than the X1900XTX, but if you want top of the line... :p according to some test site, it's supposed to be way better than the GeForce 7950GX2's. I haven't a clue how much better or even if it's definitely going to be released on the 23rd, but it sounds like a brilliant card.

This is all SUGGESTIONS and suggestions only. If you or anyone else wants or convinces you to do something else, that's completely fine.

I hope some of this helped. If any of this info is wrong, please someone let me know. I'd appreciate it.
 
I want to join in on the fun:

Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 CPU
Asus P5W DH Deluxe ATI Crossfire Ready Motherboard
Corsair XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR2-800 (3-4-3-9)
ATI 100-435800 Radeon X1900GT 256MB 256-bit GDDR3 | 2 of these.
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 500GB Ultra-ATA100 Hard Drive
OCZ GameXStream 600W Power Supply
M-Audio 9900-40901-00 7.1 Channels Sound Card

Total: 3099.94 (not including shipping)

As far as the Case... tell your son to look on a site and find one he likes, especially since hes gonna be looking at it for a long time.

And get some suggestions from the pro's about a good cooling system, Im not to into that stuff.
 
Just wondering, I thought Crossfire and SLI were completely different; respectively, one for ATI and one for nVidia. I didn't think 2 X1900XTX's could work on an SLI board. I am new to Intel stuff as well as ATI, just recently finding an interest in their Conroe line and ATI's X1900 series, so I know more about AMD & nVidia than I do Intel and ATI. If someone could clarify, that would be nice. Thanks.
 
Ok, so from what I understand so far:

CPU- Intel Conroe X6800 is a must.
Video Card(s)- ATI's Dual X1900 Series is way to go. (preferably X1900XTX)
Memory- 2GB of DDR2 memory, preferably 800MHz (or higher)
Cooling System- Nothing fancy, good parts don't overheat too much.

Correct me if I'm wrong somewhere.

I'm taking my time buying this and my son isn't coming home very soon. I would like for the computer to wait for him in his room, he's currently in Europe on a travel until the 11th.
 
Daut, its not about about preferably 800MHz, its about what the motherboard requires and the higher end motherboards usually require no less than 800MHz. Another thing with the RAM, make sure you buy RAM cards that have either a latency of 4-4-4-12 or 3-4-3-9 (the lower the latency the faster the card)

The X6800 is the best CPU on the market hands down, there is no way you can go wrong.

As far as HDD, I was going to suggest a Raptor (which is very fast), but I dont know if 150GB would be enough for the kid. I say anything 300GB or higher will be a sufficient enough hard drive. Also, you want 4.16ms speed and 16MB cache.

If you want to go with something simple for the cooling components... I say get a ThermalRight SI-128 Heatsinker and attach a Delta Triple Blade High Speed fan to it. And for general case fans, you can get 2 more Delta Triple Blades or get Sanyo Denki's. Anything with 100+ CFM @ around 3000 RPM is a solid fan that will push around tons of air.

Just remember, if youre getting an ATI video card, you MUST get a motherboard that supports Crossfire and not SLI.

With the power supply, get a 600W power supply... this computer is going to be a beast, so you need a proper power supply.
 
Thanks you made things much clearer.

My agent just talked to someone from a computer shop not to far from my home and we're negotiating a little right now.

The computer they proposed costs around 3400$ but it's just them trying to get some money out of me...
 
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