This seems like a pretty decent build, the only suggestions I'd like to make is to drop the WD Black and go with this
F3 Spinpoint, Samsung produces durable HDs and this one is cheaper and has a better benchmark. I'd also probably drop the DVD drive and scrap one form an old computer, and try to upgrade your Phenom II 955 to a
Phenom II 1055T with the money you save since there is a big gap between their performance. The CPU cooler you have looks a bit meh, if I were you I'd push for a
Corsair H50 since you'd probably want to do some overclocking in the future.
I saw that hd, but then noticed that the WD Black was 7200rpm, had a 64mb cache, and was 6.0gb/s for only $20 more. And
that in my eyes is a worthy splurge.
My current computer doesn't even have a DVD drive
The Phenom II 1055T isn't Black Edition and is only 2.8ghz, so I'm guessing it's not good for overclocking. And it's $30 more. The X4 955 can be overclocked easily without messing in BIOS to 3.8ghz
The cooler unfortunately isn't detailed well on Amazon sans the reviews, but Hardware Revolution described it as the best cooler at that price. "NPS10X keeps the CPU at 49C at idle and at 53.7C at load." The Corsair H50 is twice the cost of a Zalman!
GundamXXX said:
I have the same CPU and its a dream. If possible get more RAM, you have a 64 bit system and they can handle more then 4GB so might aswell stick in another 2GB or a 4GB+2GB you will notice the difference considering that will be the bottleneck of your proposed system (because God knows it wont be the CPU or GPU lol)
Also get a 800W PSU. Why? Because you have a system thats worth about 700W and if you ever want to upgrade the GPU's CPU then you will need that 50 extra, just an idea
And HDD go for Samsung F3 Spinpoint like hullo said, its so damn sexy and good ;x
Otherwise it looks like a pretty awesome system, maybe get an ASUS motherboard because they have an awesome program installed that allows you to turn down the fans of the CPU, HDD and main fans, and if you have an ASUS GPU that aswell. It works brilliantly, when your just on the internet or something simple have it on powersave mode and when playing a game or using any other intensive program put it on Max Performance. Not only will you save alot of power but the noise will be reduced immensely. My pc sounds like an aeroplane when on Performance mode but is as quiet as a laptop on Energy Saver mode
I have 2gb of DDR2 RAM in my current computer. Does my mobo support both DDR2 and DDR3 RAM? If I scavenge the old RAM from my computer, can I put all the RAM together and it will show up as 6gb on my new computer?
The ASUS mobo program sounds awesome but I can't find any Crossfire ASUS motherboards that are as cheap as the ASROCK
QUOTE(Originality @ Nov 21 2010, 06:58 AM)
How a game performs in a dual-GPU setup often depends heavily on the SLI/CrossFire drivers and how the game is coded. Most games will use the primary GPU only and pretend the second doesn't exist, because even today most systems only have 1 graphics card in them. The only games that will use the second GPU are the games that try to push their 3D performance like Crysis. In most cases, it's simply better to buy a powerful high-end single-GPU graphics card than 2 mid-ranged graphics card and stick them in SLI/CrossFire.
To this end, I do suggest waiting a month for the HD6970 and GTX 580 to come out before making your decision.
The obvious exceptions are games coded for multi-GPU systems, folding systems and GPU heavy applications like modelling, animation and rendering (the kind of programs where speed/workforce is measured in FLOPS).