Piecing together a computer - Comments/Advise?

[Jiran]

Asus Xonar D2X 7.1 PCI-Express Sound Card?

Works out slightly cheaper than the X-Fi. 'bout £15 or so cheaper.

I don't need the sound card for any pro work. It'll just be for gaming, movies, music and the like. I just want to get something nice after having been stuck with a PoS computer for an overly long time. ;p

Any recommendations on the CPU? I'd looked at the new Hex Core CPUs, I could just about squeeze one of those in to my budget, but from what I've heard there's really not much point at this moment in time. I'd likely be better off waiting a year or so to step down that line.

Had a look at the Intel Core i7 960 3.2GHz, sucky thing is the place I'm ordering from is sold out right now. =/

The Asus Xonar D2X PCIe is one helluva sound card for gaming. You will have zero regrets. just pair it up with some good speakers.

If you're doing any overclocking the i7 930 and 960 show no difference, theyre the same chip, just on different clocks

[Jiran]

Ah-ha! Cheers.

Wouldn't that require a different motherboard? The SSD and HDD I have selected run off of SATA III 6GB/s ports. The motherboard has 2 of those ports. I'd need to be looking at using SATA II HDD's to set up a RAID configuration, no? If it's for additional space, I really can't see me needing it at all. If it's for data-loss prevention, I've already got a suitable back-up system in place that I do regular back-ups with. If you've got decent reasons to why it'd be beneficial that I'm overlooking (I've not really run with a RAID config before) then by all means enlighten and I'll consider it.

Thanks for the help so far though. I've done a bit of reading on the Xonar cards and will swap that one in to the spec instead of the X-Fi card. Does anyone have any advice on the cooling question? My biggest frustration has been sifting through page after page of aircooling vs watercooling arguements. I know a well-built custom watercooling config will obliterate aircooling configs, but at the same time they can be very pricey. The Corsair H50-1 is a product name I've seen crop up all over the place in these arguements, as a cheap and effective all-in-one watercooling solution for the CPU. So do I get the H50-1 (Along with 2x fans to attach to the rad - apparently with this setup it's superior to most aircoolers?) or will the currently selected aircooler be more than sufficient? My main worry is that I'm obviously spending a fair bit of money here, I just want to make sure it's well taken care of.

The Corsair H50 with 2 120mm fans in a push pull config is certainly/proven to be superior to about 99% of the air coolers on the market. It is probably the better performing solution next to going into a more robust water cooling setup. My wife just switched to an i7 930 overclocked to 4.2ghz, and she runs a corsair h50 with that fan config, and her load temps never go above 63C. (the i7's tend to run hotter than most architectures). Most aircooled i7's tend to get into the 70s-80s at a lower clock speed.

[pansertjald]

with the amount of money you have to use on the new system, i would had gotten a ASUS Rampage III Extreme, X58...... i can`t find any mobo`s that are better then that one for the 1356/x58 platform http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=jy0uafxYBCrJwksC

along with the asus maxumus formula 3 its the first mobo`s that can auto clock your cpu nerly as good as if you do it yourself and you can real time tweak you system on a labtop, just like they do with cars, without going into the bios all the time

i use it on my system, and it works perfecly in real time without any needs to reboot after any settings you have done

about the soundcard..... i still say that you can hear a BIG defrense on the onboard and the x-fi card...... nothing beets the crystalizer on the x-fi card....... everything just sounds soooooo much better with it on
and you have to remember that all the on-board sound cards that comes with x-fi and crystalizer is only software based, and thats a big defrense from the pci-e cards where its all hardware based. i have on with my formula card, and it just dosn`t sound as good as the pci-e x-fi card

edit:
dind`t see that you had all ready gotten your new system

[vesseblah]

about the soundcard..... i still say that you can hear a BIG defrense on the onboard and the x-fi card...... nothing beets the crystalizer on the x-fi card....... everything just sounds soooooo much better with it on

Crystallizer in X-Fi works by pulling stuff out of it's arse. It's meant to 'improve' the quality of low bitrate mp3's by various psychoacoustics tricks. If you're interested in accurate reproduction of audio you turn crap like that off and leave it off permanently. And yes, I dont' deny it can make shit quality mp3's sound better subjectively speaking, but it can't reverse the damage lossy compression has made and it will make high quality recordings sound unnatural.

[nwo]

An i7 960 is identical in architecture to a 930. It's only running at a higher clock speed. If you're going to overclock it manually, getting a 960 is only a waste of money. You can't beat a 930 clocked at 4GHz right now.

Exactly.

No need to waste your money on a higher base clock CPU when you're going to be overclocking it anyway : Why waste $$$ for a higher base clock speed when the overclock results are likely to be very similar, if not identical?

[Kwafee]

Wheeeeeeeeeee!

Computer has been here just under a week now, it arrived on Wednesday. Have to say, it's simply awesome. You'd hope so for the price, right?

Just a thanks to all those that gave their comments/opinions/advice and steered me towards the right build. I never thought I'd see the day where I could walk through Dalaran without a single bit of jitter.