The biggest question to ask you is what is your budget? And what brands do you prefer?
For me, I prefer Lian Li or Silverstone cases. It just depends on how big of one you want. You may want to check your local Best Buys if you want a full tower to see if they still have the Rocketfish case. It's a rebadged Lian Li that was clearanced out a bit ago for around $50. Closest best buy to me still had one about a week ago when I was there.
The Corsair 620HX is still a pretty kick ass power supply and easily handles my system with 2 3870s. I hear it'll handle 2 4870s with ease as well. It doesn't have native 8pin PCI-E connectors, which I think is what nVidia's high end cards use now, but there are adapters for that. Don't get a cheap one, make sure to read up on it and make sure it handles what you want. Cheap power supplies die quick.
I would take the E8400 instead as its a better "bang for the buck." Go with a quad-core if you don't plan on upgrading in many years.
Do you really need an SLI? nVidia chipsets for Intel have been buggy and continue to be so. If you only plan on having one card go with Intel. Only go with a nVidia chipset if you are die hard. Most high-end Intel boards allow you to crossfire ATi cards, and the 4870s apparently are doing extremely well against the the new nVidia cards at the price per performance.
Graphics cards depend on above choice really. If you get a nVidia board, definitely get a nVidia card so you can go SLI in the future. Otherwise its your pick but start with a single of the best you can afford. If you can afford 1 4870 or GTX 280 then get it. Add a second one of either later if you need it. The only reason I have 2 3870s is to push 1920x1200 and they were on sale and cheaper than 1 9800GTX when I got them.
Go with DDR2 right now as the price for DDR3 is absurd for its lack of performance. It may run faster but its latencies are slower, which means not that great of performance gain for the price difference.
If you can grab a cheap Raptor if you can find one as a primary drive and use a second drive for everything else. I just like to have my OS/apps on one drive and all the important stuff on a separate drive. That way if I have to reformat I don't lose all my shit again.
Once again, after a winded post, it really depends on your budget. If you want to go all out by all means spend top dollar. If you want to spend smarter and get a near-identical experience sans a couple FPS, then shop around to find some deals on quality parts that aren't top tier.
My system:
Rocketfish Full Tower
Intel Pentium E2180 2.0GHz @ 2.68GHz (stock cooling for now. might replace with an E8400 soon though)
Asus Maximus Formula SE X-38
2x1GB Buffalo Firestix PC2-6400
Corsair 620HX
2 Visiontek HD3870s in Crossfire
Windows XP SP2
Samsung 18x DVD/RW
Last edited by thegardentool; 07/27/08 04:07 AM.
