Sigracer10: Yeah, the 780i makes overclocking EASY as hell for me.. I don't even gotta change the voltages, it does it for me. And yeah, if you checked my list, I have an aftermarket HS/F and thermal paste. The Antec 900 is great for cooling and has good looks, I love it.

AgentofDarkness: Eh, Quad cores are for video editing, and high end stuff like that, photoshop, ect. Core 2 Duo's are best for gaming, which is what i'm doing. And my Core 2 Duo is stock 3.0ghz, but I got it running at 4.0ghz, so I don't have a problem with it. Not to bash you or anything, I know the Q6600 is great because my friend's dad has one, but he designs guns and **** for a living so its great for what he wants to use it for. Mine is perfect for what i'm using it for :P. Eh, I honestly see no point in running 4GB of RAM... 2GB is more than plenty currently for me.

 

i agree about the memory. while reading that list i was like "wow this sounds pretty nice" and then i saw the 2gb of RAM and i was like "hardcore gaming... why not more RAM?"
but yea if you're only running XP then nevermind, lol. xp surely doesn't need more than 2gb.

but i'm on Mac OSX so what do i know? lol

 

BUT, you can call 4 gb of memory a future investment in hardware.

 

2GB of RAM is kind of low. I've been running 2GB of RAM for 5 years on my desktop and my computer is slow as hell. I also have to disagree with the Core 2 Duo comment. Look at AlienWare, they make the most high end gaming machines you will find. What kind of processor do they run? Quad Cores. Check out their website. All the desktops that Alienware sells run some sort of Quad core processor (AMD or Intel). Intel's Extreme Edition line of processors are specially made consumer processor that are built specifically for gaming. The Core 2 Extreme is a 3.0GHz Quad core processor which AlienWare over clocks. I know that Alienware is overpriced and what not, but their computer are still very fast and some of the best gaming rigs out. You can probably build it cheaper, but regardless of the price they are some of the best gaming computers. The guys at Alienware might know if Quad Cores are better than Dual Cores. I'm not sure if you know this or not, but gaming is considered a high end application. The processor needs to do alot of calculations to render the images, do the AI and all kinds of other stuff.

 

Computer looks pretty good but your cable fu is on the low side.

I would def consider re wiring that tihng to get the bast air flow possible.

Also as already stated i would change your CPU cooler to something that a bit bigger and better like a tuniq tower or something with a 120mm fan on it.

 

Trustdestruction: Yeah. Haha.. I'm happy with my 2GBs I think.

ej6buddy: True.. I'd also love to put two more 9800GTX's and SLI them.. My god, that would be amazing! But I don't really need to, since one handles Crysis like a dream as it is. I'm just gonna wait and see if there is any promising graphic whoring games that come out in the future before I make the decision.. I still havn't even overclocked my card, haha. It has a 675mhz core clock now, I was thinking about hitting 700mhz just for ****s and giggles :P.

AgentofDarkness: Touche, but the Core 2 Extreme's are on a whole new level of themselfs.. And very expensive. I just went with what I could, while maintaining a budget. Sure, there might be little things I could beef up, but I went with the best and current high-end stuff on the market. Well, i'm still not sure. I saw some benchmarking on the E8400 3.0ghz Wolfdale with 45nm technology(What I have) against a Q6600, and the C2D performed slightly better. I've done alot of research, but.. I wasn't too worried about getting a quad or C2D, I know either one would preform better than my old P4 I had :P.

BX_Civic: yeah, that picture was before I did my cable management. Cable management is kind of tricky and hard with the Antec 900, but I did manage to improve it a little so I could get more airflow from the HD fans. And if you read my post from the beginning, I did put a aftermarket Freezer Pro 7(CPU Cooler/Heatsink Fan), with Artic Silver 5 thermal paste on, its now running 49c at 4.0ghz and like.. 56/57c on max load. On the last picture in the album, you can see the new heatsink/fan and thermal paste.

 

plus, if you decide that 2GB is not enough once you get it all running, it's not like it takes more than just a few minutes to open the case and put more RAM in.

 

Exactly. But, I do think things will suffice fine with 2GB of RAM. The timings were 5-5-5-15, and now I got them overclocked to 4-4-4-12. I've noticed a little difference, but not too much. Since I can't find anything that really lags my computer lol. I'm burning music videos to a DVD-R for my car now, playing Crysis, listening to music, and some other stuff and it still won't lag. I guess its a good thing, but damn lol.

SpeedFan says... I'm at 60c for my CPU temperature, and using up 71% CPU usage, I guess thats not too bad.

 

Alienware makes computers for people with more money than sense.

I used to manage a tech department in a computer shop (P4 days) - people would come in wanting a new computer, and the conversation would go something like this:

Stupid consumer: "I want a new computer"
Me: "Okay, what would you like"
Them: "Hyperthreading!"
Me: "...Why?"
Them: "........ it sounds fast?!"

Alienware's marketing works very much the same way. They don't care if the cost/performance of the quad cores is better; they just know that it's easier for them to sell "OMG 4 CORES" to consumers who are (for all intents and purposes) sheep. It's all about marketing hype.

 

You are correct that Alienware makes computers for people who have more monies than brains BUT that doesn't change the fact that they are fast even if they are over priced and bought by sheep. Alienware is out to make money. Anyone with sense will buy the same parts from New Egg and throw it together themselves and save a boat load of money. I was commenting on the parts. The quad cores will work better than the dual cores in a gaming application. On the C2D vs Quad front, the Q6600 is like $20 more than the E8400 and the 4 cores will help with multitasking and virtualization as well as gaming. I've read online that you don't need a physics co processor if you run a quad core processor as the quad core packs enough power to do the physics calculations. I suspect that one of the reasons why the E8400 might have done slightly better in bench marks has to do with the fact that operating systems and software/games are still not able to use the full power of multi-core processors. It is something that will be taken advantage of as time goes on.