[tj138waterboy]

I am a first time builder long time enthusiast looking for advice on any compatability issues that may arise from the system that I am about to build also I am stumped about the case and video card selection. My system consists of these items....


Apevia X-Jupiter Jr.Case G Type ATX Mid-Tower Case - Black, Clear Side
Form Factor: ATX Mid-Tower
Compatible Motherboards: ATX, Micro ATX
Bezel Type: Swing Out
Side Panel Type: Clear, Vented
Power Supply: Not Included
Material: Steel
Special Features: Tool-Free Drive Bays
External 5.25" Drive Bays: 5
External 3.5" Drive Bays: 2
Internal 3.5" Drive Bays: 3
Expansion Slots: 7
Front USB Ports: 2
Front FireWire Ports: 1
Front Audio Ports: 2
120mm Fan Ports: 3
120mm Fans Included: 2
Depth: 20"
Width: 7.75"
Height: 16.75"


Apevia Iceberg 680W SLI-ready aluminum power supply
uv reactive cable sleeves
2 built-in fans w/ speed adjuster to reduce the noise level while maximizing its cooling capacity
change its color tone to be red or green or blue by switching the LED light from the bulit-in fans
20+4 pin x 1
P4 MB x 1
SATA x 4
Peripheral x 8
FDD x 2
PCI-E x 2

Crosshair II MOBO
- AMD® Socket AM2+ for AMD Phenom™ FX / Phenom / Athlon™ / Sempron™
- HyperTransport™ 3.0
- Dual-channel DDR2 1066 / 800 / 667
- CPU Level Up
- Voltiminder LED
- SupremeFX II
- LCD Poster
- Hybrid SLI / 3-Way SLI Support
- HDMI/DVI Support


AMD Phenom X4 9750 Quad Core Processor
Processor Speed: 9750 / 2.40GHz
Processor Interface: Socket AM2+
Processor Class: Phenom X4
Processor Core: Agena
Cache Size: 4MB L2 + L3
Bus Speed: 1800MHz (3600 MT/s)
Additional Technologies: MMX
Enhanced Virus Protection
SSE
SSE2
SSE3
Quad-Core
AMD64
AMD Virtualization
Cool'n'Quiet 2.0
HyperTransport 3.0
SSE4a


Corsair Dual Channel XMS2 4096MB PC8500 DDR2 1066MHz Memory
Memory Size: 2 x 2048MB
Memory Speed: 1066MHz PC8500
Memory CAS Latency: 5-5-5-15
Memory Type: Dual Channel DDR2
Pins: 240


Corsair Dominator Memory Airflow Fan
Fan Type: Memory Cooler
Fan Speed Control: Tachometer Controlled
Fan Dimensions: 40 x 40 x 20 mm


XFX GeForce 8800 GT Alpha Dog Edition
Specifications
GPU/VPU: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT
RAMDAC: Dual 400 MHz
Additional Features: Vista Ready
RoHS Compliant
HDCP Enabled
HDTV Ready
SLI Ready
OpenGL 2.0
DirectX 10
PCI Express 2.0
Maximum Resolution: 2560 x 1600 (Digital)
Video Memory: 512MB
Memory Type: DDR3
Core Clock: 600 MHz
Memory Interface: 256-bit
Memory Clock: 1800 MHz
Shader Clock: 1188 MHz
Stream Processors: 112
Interface Type: PCI Express 2.0
Interface Speed: x16
Connector(s): Dual DVI (Dual Link)
HDTV/S-Video
Multiple Monitors Support: Yes




ok thats about it, one thing that may be an exception is whether or not i should get a sound card such as soundblaster titanium, or X-FI gamer.
Mostly the computer is being buit to occasionaly play games like WOW, Medieval, and other games that are pretty highly dependant on graphics, but mostly im trying to set up a media center type computer in which im not sure on the hard drive requirements just yet but my idea was to have the main hard drive with OS which will most likely be Windows Vista 64 Bit Edition, maybe Ubuntu as secondary OS. Also im not familiar with RAID configurations so the idea was to have 2 other hard drives w/ the 2nd hard drive dedicated to gaming so it dont have to be that big maybe around an 8 GB Solid State drive unless that would be too small, and the 3rd hard drive dedicated to movie and music storage so it would be 500GB or greater. My friend says that going with a RAID 0 configuration would be the best bet for performance with my OS and Games so any reccomendations would be great on that part. Umm the problem im having with choice of video cards isn't really performance because I have read benchmarks and what not and I dont really plan on playing F.E.A.R. or CRYSIS so the debate is with the 3 way SLI on my MOBO would I be better off with the 8800GT with possibility of heaven forbid if I start getting into more graphic intense games adding in a second 8800GT or would I be better off with either a 9800 Series or another brand. I have my own 19'' monitor and dvd-r-rw drive already as well as floppy. Would anyone also reccomend an extra fan in the front of the case or possibly an extra fan controller seeing how this is my first build and im not sure about all the overclocking andcooling requirements if I even go that route.....anything I have left out of my build, please feel free to let me know...thank you

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Hi there,

Welcome to Geeks to Go!

For the money you seem to be allocating for this build, I believe you'd get a much better system by building an Intel rig. Currently, Intel processors are ahead of AMD's offerings, so that's where I'd be putting my money.

RAID is not recommended here, unless you really know what you're doing. For best performance, you'd want a discrete hardware RAID controller (expensive). And RAID 0 is not recommended at all, because if one of the two drives fails, you will completely lose all data.

If you are playing WOW, then the graphical requirements are not very high. Crysis, and other games, have much higher requirements, but seeing as you don't plan on playing these, I would suggest you don't need as high a performing graphics card. For the money, the new 9600GT is a real screamer. And you certainly shouldn't be worrying about SLI.

I am not a fan of Apevia at all, I find them to be rather "average" quality - and their PSU's are very poor.

What is your total budget for this build, and we can throw together an option for you to see what you think?

Cheers

Troy

[Troy]

Hi there,

Welcome to Geeks to Go!

For the money you seem to be allocating for this build, I believe you'd get a much better system by building an Intel rig. Currently, Intel processors are ahead of AMD's offerings, so that's where I'd be putting my money.

RAID is not recommended here, unless you really know what you're doing. For best performance, you'd want a discrete hardware RAID controller (expensive). And RAID 0 is not recommended at all, because if one of the two drives fails, you will completely lose all data.

If you are playing WOW, then the graphical requirements are not very high. Crysis, and other games, have much higher requirements, but seeing as you don't plan on playing these, I would suggest you don't need as high a performing graphics card. For the money, the new 9600GT is a real screamer. And you certainly shouldn't be worrying about SLI.

I am not a fan of Apevia at all, I find them to be rather "average" quality - and their PSU's are very poor.

What is your total budget for this build, and we can throw together an option for you to see what you think?

Cheers

Troy

[tj138waterboy]

thanks for the reply, umm you mentioned an intel rig for the build which my friend also reccomended but nothing against intel but i've gotten a bad taste from intel from the onboard gpu from most of the factory built and walmart brand computers in the past like not being able to play hardly any newer game titles but then again those are factory build computers so my options are open for that. As far as budget I am looking to save as much as possible but around $1000 would be the most I want to spend if possibly and I am willing to wait for deals or price drops added that im in the military and currently deployed so im giving myself around 3 months before I start ordering parts just in case something better or cheaper comes out. Also you mentioned the RAID configuration which as I said before im too familiar with so I would be willing to sacrafice to an external hard drive SATA of course with plenty of storage for movies and music. but by doing that would the best option be a striped array in which partial data is written to both drives so it is faster or would it be better just to do a RAID configuration in which it is redundant "same info on both drives". Another option I was looking into is the mobo. I was checking out some SCSI hard drives which didnt hold much data but are super fast and my friend tells me that I would probably need a server mobo for that option but the question with that is could I get that option with a mobo and PCI Xpress in the same board. Lastly the Apevia case and PSU was not a first choice just a budget option, I am worried more about space for possibly future graphics card upgrade and possibly sound card upgrade so the main choice was a CoolerMaster Cosmos 1000 ATX Full-Tower Case which has superb ratings and has the main feature i want wich is a carrying handle. Thet PSU is open for whatever gets good reviews and good performance record. Im looking to bulid a cpu that will easily go at least 5 years as far as keeping up with upcomming games and just pretty much not be obselete. thank you again.

[09mlb86]

im in the military as well im an 11Bravo US Army!

any how

i just built and AMD rig about 3 months ago....(i get deployed in 8 days) and my south bridge was fried.....its not like i don't have enough cooling....I have a CoolerMaster case; http://www.newegg.co...N82E16811119137

and i have added 3 more 120MM fans to the three that werwe already there!. I am curently rebuilding this case with the intel platform....im not sure what proc i wants as of yet....i know i want a 45nm but i don't know if i want the core 2 quad or core 2 duo

also....i wouldn't recomend the new ATI cards...i bought a 9600GT for one of my customes and it beat my ATI HD3870 :-{ for call of duty 4

so i would go with the 9600GT from XFX due to its lifetime warenty

[tj138waterboy]

thanks alot for the input guys i have been shopping around and come up with an alternate solution which is a cooler master case, the 9600gt video card, IntelCore 2 duo E8400 whic has great reviews for OC'ing up to 4Ghz, and I am stumped on picking between Asus P5K3 Deluxe WiFi-AP Motherboard and the ASUS P5K PRO, also I have to note that the Corsair Dual Channel XMS2 4096MB PC8500 DDR2 1066MHz Memory (2 x 2048MB) that I was going to get had a few reviews that I read that says that the reason it is 1066MHz is that it is overclocked already and that is its max...so that would lead me to believe that I should go with some type of OCZ memory seeing that most overclockers use that, which now leaves me wondering if I should get ddr2 or ddr3 and what MHz should I be looking for...and any other thoughts on if any of the ASUS P5 series boards would be better for this system for under $300 noting that I plan to OC to at least 3.5Ghz and it be stable...thanks

[Troy]

Hi again,

If you're looking for good overclocking RAM, Corsair are well known for it. You could try their Dominator series. Also look out for Mushkin, another well-known high performance manufacturer.

I suggest getting a good set of DDR2 at this time. DDR3 is too expensive and we are not seeing the full performance benefits from it as yet.

It looks like the list of parts you have mentioned has been carefully chosen! Nice choices. Just make sure that your motherboard supports everything you're throwing at it (i.e. RAM compatibility, for example).

Cheers

Troy