It's about time I buy my new system. This 9 fps while walking and 4 fps while fighting shit is killing me. So... here are the specs on a system I'm looking to build. I would appreciate if anyone could offer suggestions on ways I can improve it, or ways I can cost cut it. I'm open to spending up to about $800-900 on it... as I can technically spread that cost out over the three or so years of service I hope to get from it.

Case: ATX Midtower
Power: 680w ATX Supply
Main Board / Processor / RAM: Combo Setup
Processor Fan: Some Killer Fan
Case Fan: 2 x 120MM w/ Control Button
Video Card: BFG GeForce 8800GT
Drive: 2 x Seagate 80GB Sata Raid 0 Performance
CD-RW: Some Standard Item
Keyboard: Something with the Function keys directly above the Number keys

Already have the Logitech G5 Gaming Mouse and a 19" LCD @ 1440x900. I may pick up this monitor so I can have the 1680x1050 I like.

So there is the system I want to build. Anyone see ways I can improve it for a comparable amount of cash... or cost reduce it at all? As it stands now, this system would be about $930 before shipping.

Also... I'll probably be putting standard 32-Bit XP on here. The cost of the OS is not part of this equation (for other reasons).

Is this box soley for WoW and is there any specific reason you want to go with RAID ?

Is this box soley for WoW and is there any specific reason you want to go with RAID ?

Well... most of what I do on my system is WoW, but I also do development work here and there. Nothing compiled, just web applications with .net.

I suppose I could go RAID 1 for data protection... but I'm not sure the processing overhead involved in that and if it would slow down drive access performance.

I will check it out when I get home but why tigerdirect? You might want to check the prices on http://newegg.com or http://zipzoomfly.com
A lot of the time zipzoomfly has free two day shipping.

I will check it out when I get home but why tigerdirect? You might want to check the prices on http://newegg.com or http://zipzoomfly.com
A lot of the time zipzoomfly has free two day shipping.

I haven't been to newegg in a while... mostly cause their layout and navigation frustrate me to no end. Never heard of zipzoomfly, but I'll look at them.

I've purchased everything from tigerdirect for the last 6+ years... so it's my default. Plus I pay for regular ground shipping and it gets to me overnight or at worst two days because their warehouse is about 15 miles from my office.

I've never figured out your fascination with Tiger Direct, but so be it. :)

A few things:

First, you say 8800GT, yet link to an 8600GT. Regardless, pick up a 9600GT instead. Blows the doors of an 8600GT and is faster and either the same, or cheaper than an 8800GT.

Skip the RAID. It won't buy you anything and RAID 0 -increases- your likelihood of loosing data over having just one disk (I'd be happy to explain if any of you cake eaters want to challenge me on this). RAID 1 isn't a backup solution. Nothing prevents you from deleting a file. Grab an external USB drive, if that's what you want.

If you buy a retail, box Intel CPU it will come with a heatsink and fan.

Oh, and that combo is for an old motherboard which they're trying to move (I'm assuming). Try and get something with an Intel P35 chipset instead.

I haven't been to newegg in a while... mostly cause their layout and navigation frustrate me to no end. Never heard of zipzoomfly, but I'll look at them.

I've purchased everything from tigerdirect for the last 6+ years... so it's my default. Plus I pay for regular ground shipping and it gets to me overnight or at worst two days because their warehouse is about 15 miles from my office.

Ah, I suppose that explains it some. I've had good experience with both newegg and zzf. Do you have to pay sales tax for your tigredirect orders?

I'll look for the 9600 instead. I do remember you mentioning that.

Is SLI that important, or can I do without it?

Also... Is finding a motherboard with PCIe-2.0 a huge increase over standard PCIe? I know it's 2x the transfer rate... but will it be that beneficial to WoW?

Yeah, I pay sales tax since it is an Illinois based company. I suppose I could get around that going somewhere else.

I was thinking Raid 1 simply in case a drive failed I'd have a hot backup to resync to. I keep all important docs and files on an 80gb external usb drive I have.

Is the quality of the heatsink and fan that would come with a retail box be enough, or are the "aftermarket" ones (like I linked) some how better?

Raps,

I dont think you will have any cooling issues unless you intend on OCing. WoW is not a resource hog or very demanding in that realm; so that eliminates that extra cost.

I am running nothing but the retail fans that came with my case and my CPU; I have been very happy with the temperatures. I have a coolermaster case (cases to me are like shews to agnes) with a 1000w power supply; 2 9600gt's; Q6600; 4 gb of patriot viper RAM; SB XFI (came bundled with MB) and as of yet have experienced no heating issues whatsoever.

I can tell you that you will notice very little difference between one 9600 and two 9600's playing WoW (you will see a green bar if you enable graphical representation of SLI); now if you play crysis or something in that genre you will notice some performance gain.

If this will be a development box, then you should have some sort of robust back up solution; an esata drive would be outstanding for that purpose (fast too). In my opinion, the days of raid arrays for gaming are finite, as games are becoming more dependent upon GPUs instead of the ability to read a HD fast. But again, this depends on the genre of gaming you particiapte in and what type of development that you are going to use the box for.

Gotta agree with Cake-boy here. As long as you don't overclock the thing, the stock heatsink and fan will be plenty, you won't notice a difference with SLI in WoW, and RAID 0 for game performance is dead.

Don't worry about the PCIe specs. It only matters with uber cards in SLI setups, which you won't be running.

You'd be better off just syncing your data to your external hard drive and then if your boot drive dies, just re-install and restore your data.

And buy out of state, it's worth it. :)

Thanks for the suggestions folks. I'll go spec out a new system tomorrow while I'm (supposed to be) working and see if it meets your approval. :D

/w00t - this is post #999 for me

Like Beam said, that 680i Motherboard is old. It is the one I bought back in April 2007.
Look for a 780i.

I will be getting this when I build my new machine. I liked the last one I had and the back lit keys are nice.

Also the quad core would be over kill for wow. If it saves some money go with the dual core.

Ok... I've gone and rebuilt using newegg. Here is as link to the list of items. Any suggestions on things to change, or would this be good to go?

Before you mention it... the review on the retail processor said the heatsink/fan was crap and should be replaced. I speced out the best reviewed one.

I put 4BG of RAM (2x2GB) in it as I see myself needing to run virtual machines for some of the dev work I'm doing. May increase this to 8GB if needed. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Windows XP (32 bit) will see all 4GB but WoW can only make use of 2GB? Seems odd.

I put 4BG of RAM (2x2GB) in it as I see myself needing to run virtual machines for some of the dev work I'm doing. May increase this to 8GB if needed. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Windows XP (32 bit) will see all 4GB but WoW can only make use of 2GB? Seems odd.

4GB is probably the limit of what you want to go to - anything more and you kinda have to move to a 64-bit OS to make good use of it. (There are other ways, but they're kludgy.) You're right though - Windows will see 4GB, but WoW will only make use of 2GB, if that. 32-bit Windows limits the addressable memory for a process to 2GB. (3GB with a boot switch, but you need to have compiled the app appropriately to see that extra gigabyte.)

Looks good. I'd still say save your $30 on the heatsink. Keep in mind that the majority of people who review CPUs are the computer equivalent of ricers. Intel would not sell -and warranty- a CPU with a faulty heatsink and fan. There's too much for them to loose.

4GB is probably the limit of what you want to go to - anything more and you kinda have to move to a 64-bit OS to make good use of it. (There are other ways, but they're kludgy.) You're right though - Windows will see 4GB, but WoW will only make use of 2GB, if that. 32-bit Windows limits the addressable memory for a process to 2GB. (3GB with a boot switch, but you need to have compiled the app appropriately to see that extra gigabyte.)

For the extra $20 the two extra gigs will come in handy for VMs. If I wasn't in need of running those, I'd stick with two gigs.

Also... I'm assuming a vid card with 512mb on it is sufficient?

Looks good. I'd still say save your $30 on the heatsink. Keep in mind that the majority of people who review CPUs are the computer equivalent of ricers. Intel would not sell -and warranty- a CPU with a faulty heatsink and fan. There's too much for them to loose.

Ricers... lol. Haven't heard that term in a while. Made me laugh!

Ok... so there's $40 knocked off. Thanks! Any other suggestions?

What's with the three different cores on the processors. Allendale, Conroe, and Wolfdale. Anything so much better about one of those to make it worth buying over any of the others.

Also... I could knock another $50 or so off if I went to a 2.4 or 2.66 over a 3.0. I'm assuming, for the sake of WoW, the difference would be minimal?

Well-rounded system, bro. Try this out also, use free shipping and rebates as search variables and see if you can find something or combination of items that are complementary to your choices. You may save at least 100 or so dollars; or order what you have chosen and it will be here monday or tuesday of next week. I ordered my dreadnought from NewEgg on a Sunday and had it on Wednesday; their eastern U.S. hub is in Memphis.

Is SLI that important, or can I do without it?



Yea SLI is over kill. By the time you need it it will probablly be time for a whole new upgrade.

If it does not hurt anything or cost anything extra to get a SLI motherboard then get it and if you ever want to pop in a 2nd card later you can.

Dual video card options have been avaliable for a long time now, I never ended up needing it or using it.

Kind of like getting a 4 Gig mother board and putting a 2.44 chip in it for future upgradability. By the time you actually look to upgrade you'll want to replace both and might not even be able to find the 4 gig chip which is now off market cuz it is 2 years later and there is a whole bunch of new , better and cheaper stuff out.

I stopped building my computers for upgradability a couple of PC's ago.

Wolfdale is Intel's latest CPU. More here:
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3251

One of the big deals is the bigger cache. There's other stuff in there that make it faster than a similarly clocked previous gen CPU. As for the speed, stick with the 3.0GHz. You may notice a difference if you've got other stuff running in the background while playing WoW. It'll also let you eek a little more life out of the tail end of the thing.

A better area to save some cash is on your motherboard. Try this one instead:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130098 (just be 100% sure it'll run the CPU you're after by visiting MSI's website)

I've done a little more cost reduction... so now it's down to $770 after mail in rebates. Here is the link again. Does this look good to go? If so, I'll order it tonight after getting the OK from Shadow. Should have everything in hand, built, installed, updated (groan), and running WoW at more then 9 fps by late next week.

Edit: I really like this case... one 120mm fan in front, one 120mm in back, and one 250mm side fan. Cooling will be a complete non-issue with this case. I'm being hyper-sensitive about cooling on this system. Considering overheating is what killed my laptop...

Yup, looks good. Push the shiny, happy 'place my order' button.

This is my current case and love it. Only problem is when the computer is in standby the blue light on the front blinks. It is a little annoying if it is in the same room as where you sleep.

That keyboard is $7.99? That is amazing

edit: Here is a review for your motherboard

Pro's
• Clean and accessible layout.
• Continued support for DDR2.
• FSB speeds up to 520mhz (and beyond?).
• Overclocking on-par, or better than the P965.

Con's
• Performance a tiny bit behind the P965 at the moment (BIOS update could easily fix this)
• Possible minor issue with SATA port placement and 8800Ultra cards.

The review if from 04/06/2007 so I'm sure there are a lot of updates since then.