Crysis is a great game. Liquid cooling is great, quiet, gives lower temps
than air cooling. Intel Quad Cores are great, much better than the Phenom's.
Raptors are good, but some 7200 RPM drives can out perform them easily. 2 x
2 GB of RAM leaves two slots open for expansion.
--
Dustin Harper
(e-mail address removed)
http://www.vistarip.com | Vista Resource & Information Page
Tom said:
Here's what I am thinking on getting:
CoolerMaster Cosmos Silent Gaming Tower Case w/ 420 Watts Power Supply
EVGA nForce 780i SLI Mainboard FSB1333 DDR2 3 x PCIe x16 SATA RAID w/
USB2.0,IEEE1394,&7.1Audio
CPU: (Quad-Core 2 Extreme QX9650 @ 3.8GHz 1333FSB 12MB L2 Cache 64-
bit (overclocked)
150GB Gaming Western Digital Rapter 10,000RPM SATA
HDD2: 250GB SATA-II
Asetek Liquid CPU Cooling System
(2x2GB) PC6400 DDR2/800 DC Memory
Vista Ultimate 64bit
800 Watt Power Supply
Everything else is extreme candy (sound card, speakers, gaming
devices, etc)
Price: about $3500
Now, the reason I want to get 64bit, is that there are some game that
are already made to run on the 64 bit systems (Crysis is one I am
really wanting right now), but I like some 32 bit games as well. Since
the majority of those games are still in the 32 bit range, I don't
want to get a 64 bit if they don't run on the system. This system will
easily be upgradeable too, so this is a plus.
Thanks for the reply
I hated Crysis. Once you get done shooting trees the rest of the game is
crap, but all the kids want to play it because it taxes the crap out of your
system for no good reason (read, unoptimized).
Liquid cooling = lame/overpriced, but I'm just jelious, never had the
opportunity to play with liquid cooling. Keep in mind though, it's pretty
overkill for most applications now a days unless you plan to seriously push
the limits of your system. Don't forget the water block for your video card
and chipset. Makes no sense to me to do all that work installing a water
cooler only to leave fans on the video/mobochipset.
Intel Quad Cores suck, but unless the Phenom B3 step is out, you might as
well go for it.
Raptors suck, get 2 cheaper 500gb drives and raid them together. More
storage, comparable speed.
4x1GB ram is cheaper, runs the same. If you buy 1gb sticks you can get the
1066mhz stuff. Even if your motherboard doesn't support it (but I think it
does) you can use the overhead for overclocking if you feel like it.
Don't skimp on the PSU, get a good brand like Antec, Enermax, Silverstone,
etc.
Get an X-Fi card! Any model, doesn't matter, games sound SOOOO much better
with one. Drivers are still a little iffy, but they got most of the bugs out
now, just get the latest drivers online when you install it.
Vista, well whatever. I got my copy of Ultimate from a MS employee, I don't
think there's anything on it I really use that's not in Home Premium.
Don't buy OEM, get Retail.
Good luck,
-A.