Long Overdue Computer Upgrade - EDITED

[sandiegoislandboy]

OK, holiday season is here and this is the best chance for me to build a new computer rig (having the family buy certain computer parts).

I want to build a rig that would leave me some room for upgrades but will last me at least 2 or 3 years (I know how fast technology advances).

I do not plan on overclocking anything. I want to get back into gaming... I do photo editing and a little video editing.

At the moment I am giving myself about a $1500 budget.

My current options/choices are:
CPU:E6750 or the Q6600.
MB: ???
MEMORY: either the G.Skill DDR2 800 4GB kit or the Corsair XMS2 DDR2 800 2GB kit
HDD:Hard drives, probably the WD SE16 500GB for both the OS and RAID 5 setup.
VIDEO: I can wait for the EVGA 8800GT SSC to be more readily available or even the EVGA 8800GTS SSC (the new one). Even heard there might be a 256MB of the 8800GT.
SOUND: X-Fi XtremeGamer.
CASE: Antec P182.
PSU: the new Corsair 750W.

My main questions are:

What motherboard is rich in features but in the $150 range? I am open to any brand (currently I use alot of MSI boards). 680i SLI or P35?

Video card... how long do I wait for the new version of the 8800GTS to come out or even the 256MB version of the 8800GT? Or should I just get the 512MB 8800GT?

Memory... 4GB overkill or is 2GB plenty?

To answer any remaining questions, I am probably going to stick with XP for now, will not switch to VISTA till SP1 is released.

Any comments/opinions are appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[MarcVenice]

Man, your post is annoying to read, just a headsup for next time.

Since you do video/photo editing, go with the qaudcore, and in the future more and more applications will use 4 cores, and since you want to keep the rig for 2-3 years I say it's worth it. Why do you want to go raid 5 btw? Got really important information? Oh well, I suggest you buy a raid controller though, don't use onboard raid, that's going to give gauranteed headaches. This mobo should suit your needs. 4gb of ram would be nice to have since you do some video/photo editing, you could buy 2x1gb though, and add another 2x1gb later on if you want/need more ram.

I'd go with the samsung t166 spinpoint 500gb, less noise, less heat, in raid 5, so minimum of 3 HD's, means a lot less noise/heat. Speed is pretty good. As for the videocard, so many choices hehe, but the 8800gt 512mb would probably be your best choice. The ATI HD3870 512mb isn't bad either. The new 8800GTS is coming on 3 december if you can wait till then, and that will be a very good card for probably around 350$. Your PSU is overkill though, I'm not sure if the 750w PSU is modular, but the 620hx would still be plenty of power for you, hell, the 520hx would still be plenty of power.

Vista runs fine btw, it's better then XP, even without SP1. If you are going to use 4gb of ram, you SHOULD get vista 64x.

 

[sandiegoislandboy]

The reasoning behind the RAID 5 is to store alot of pictures (both JPEG and RAW) along with video files. What RAID controller would you suggest? Something that will NOT break the bank. I know on-board raid isn't the greatest but a RAID 5 controller with onboard memory can be pretty pricey.

The Corsair 750W is not modular and has a single 12V rail. I know some prefer more than one 12V rail and others suggest otherwise. What is your preference... Multiple rails or a single rail?

Hard drives, I figure 4 hard drives (3 for the RAID 5, and 1 for the OS). I will check out the Samsung T166 drives.

Hopefully when the new 8800GTS comes out, the price of the 8800GT will fall to the price range nVidia suggested before and also be more readily available.

With 64x Vista, is it a pain to get everything up and running? What will and what will not work? I know when XP 64bit was released there was a lot of driver issues, is it the same case now?

 

[MarcVenice]

The 620hx gets advertised as multiple rails, but it's in fact a single 12v rail PSU. Same for the 520hx, which is modular, so easier with the cabling, and it's a fair bit cheaper too. I can't suggest a raid controller, I just know/heard that onboard raid controllers can get tricky. If you want to store pics, why not just use a single large backup disk instead ? Your reasoning with the 8800gts/8800gt sounds plausible, but in the end we just have to wait and see. Something that might be funny to do is crossfiring two 3870's, it's possible on p35 mobo's, can't SLI 8800gt's though.

As for Vista, well Vista 64x used to be rather annoying, but it no longer is, I've been running it happily and smooth for a few months now. Some apps don't have signed drivers, but you can disable that on startup, or in the registry, if needed of course. I only needed it for Core Temp so far, that's it. Any major, self respecting software company, or hardware company that has to supply drivers, gets them signed, so nothing to really worry about. XP64 sucked, and still sucks, can't even compare Vista 64x with it.