Shadowex3

You're spending $1500 on a system that, except for the "sli-on-a-card" graphics card is less powerful than the one I designed for Finzz for $500 less. To put just how bad AMD is compared to nvidia, Here is the lowest end core i7, the PhenomII you picked, and my ~3ish year old core2quad. A few random asides: An anti-static strap is literally just a piece of metal that touches you and your computer case AFTER you install the psu and plug it into the wall. That LCD screen cleaner is basically just mild soapy water. Thermalpaste is also a LOT cheaper at places like SVC than newegg, so are heatsinks which you really should buy as stock heatsinks SUCK. That said Here uss a public wishlist that is basically just a slightly altered version of the one you had. I'd do the hard drives differently too but I assume you've got your reasons. The big difference is that I'm being more realistic graphically and with the power supply. SLI/Crossfire simply is never worth the money, a 4870x2 at 1920x1200 will max out Crysis Warhead with 35fps. A gtx 260 will give you 25.7fps with all the same settings at the same resolution, 10fps just isn't worth literally double the price. Especially when a GTX 275 will give you the same performance boost (10-15 fps) for only $50 more on average. So $1400, twice as powerful processor, 6gb of ram, twice as fast SATA burner (trust me you'll have enough cords and plugs), same graphical performance, and as usual a power supply that you will probably only use half of it's rated power.

GTA runs like ass on everything because the game's coding sucks, you're on a computer in front of a bloody keyboard take the time to think about what your writing since most people dont decipher txtrd as well as I do, and Here are some benchmarks for you.

Also the problem with LN2 is that you're putting a lot of heat into something that wants to expand into a gas very much, behaves oddly in contact with heat, and is already below ambient. So you've got pressure problems, reliability problems, and since it's below ambient you need absurd insulation to stop water from condensing on anything and letting the magic smoke out. Ln2 is used on horizontal mounts with great insulation and ventilation in what's basically a giant open-topped pipe and then it's just consumed as it boils off, the boiling off is what absorbs the heat and carries it away. If you want to actually KEEP your ln2 somehow you need a way to dissipate enough heat to safely recompress it to a liquid and pipe it back in again, which is basically just using a refridgeration system on your CPU and ridiculously inefficient. The only active cooling systems that are really worth anything are peltier chips either on a regular HSF, which will basically keep you right at ambient, or a peltier chip on a water cooler radiator keeping the water right at ambient. Any cooler than ambient and again you wind up with massive condensation problems.

pretty much nothing except raytracing is Many-Core enabled atm. The thing about water cooling is that it's air cooling. No passive cooling system will ever get you below ambient. A good quality modern heatpipe-fin design heatsink with even a crappy fan will still cool just as well as any watercooling system as long as you have a way to vent the hot air out of the case. About the only advantage water used to have was in the early heatpipe days it could handle high level overclocks better on the cpu but now that we're hitting ambient with heatpipe towers it's pointless, expensive, and hazardous. So thirdparty (reusable) VGA heatsinks your best bet is (as always) the HR-03 from (of course) thermalright.

No, there are lots of lcd's now that claim a 2ms response time. There's a pretty big difference.

That's the first law of zombiemod, Haggard's Law of Procedural Misanthropy: The guy in front of you is ALWAYS an asshole.

Ignoring the low resolution that contrast ratio is probably it's "dynamic" contrast ratio, which is another way of saying "we played with the backlight using only dark or only bright screens and measured it in a pitch black room". It's nowhere near what you'll actually be getting. That combined with the usual impossibly-low 2ms response times sets off my TN panel alarm.

it better be closer to 50 considering that the infinitely better 9800's are only $100-$129

Or to put it more simply we're the people who's experiences on the server, especially the escape servers, can best be summed up by the phrase "I told you so."

etc

The easiest way to disprove this myth is to ask people if they thought old CRT monitors were "flickery". If they say yes it means they just admitted to being able to see the individual frames of something refreshing 60 times a second.

Not to mention that the gains are also non-linear. A quadcore gets a LOT more than a 4x benefit in a well-threaded game like UT4. Plus multicore processors have much more efficient individual cores so even in non-threaded apps they're still better. Plus you can run multiple non-threaded apps without nearly as much slowdown.

XP32 redone to be 64bit with decent driver support and directx10/11 support would be the perfect gamer OS.

Or we could put it this way, really simply: Valve can do whatever the hell they want with your account at any time, they dont NEED your password.

^^^ I didn't even overclock my Q9450 until after I'd been studying stuff and practiced underclocking my old pentium4 for almost a year. Core i7's benefits are it's architecture and capabilities, clock speed is becoming less and less the deciding factor in the power of a CPU as we switch over to multithreaded stuff. I've gone from about 2.6 to 3.2ish ghz with my Q9450, it gave me the most noticeable fps boost in non-threaded games like pre-orangebox HL2 mods. In UT3 it was a minor boost in physX maps because the game uses all 4 cores. On top of that are hardware considerations, Core i7 is now to the point where we're dealing with individual electrons and handfulls of atoms making up parts of the processor, overclocking that is a lot more touchy than Core 2 Duos where you just basically raised the speed and volts. We're brushing up against the limits of physics.

The power supply is the real problem. You can do fairly well with the rest if you replace the videocard but a bad PSU can and will take out everything else in the box.

doublepost

you REALLY want to do it through bios, and the overclocking features of good quality mobos from Asus and Gigabyte make it much easier. I wouldn't overclock until at least 6months in after reading up on it at OCforums though, OCing a Core i7 is a bit more touchy than previous core revisions.

Yep. The IFX-14 has a piece that goes BEHIND the motherboard. The best heatsinks are, according to anandtech, the Noctua followed by the TRUE. They're both $64 at SVC, but the trick is that noctua's fans are known for literally being so quiet you can't tell they're on. I've got a 120mm one on my TRUE and if I block the other 3 fans in the case I can BARELY hear noise caused by the air whooshing through the heatsink's fins. Plus the Noctua also comes with TWO fans so you can do push-pull with it right from the get go. A heatsink is something that once you buy it you've got it for live and just keep moving it from one comp to the next, buying a new mounting kit for $20 when you eventually need to. Since CPUs come with "stock" heatsinks that kinda suck you generally just put those on the old computers, or get a much cheaper heatsink for the old ones.

I prefer to use Anandtech's data for picking heatsinks. It's a little older but Anandtech has a good rep for solid methodology and they've been fairly accurate over the years, moreso than many other places I've been to as well. Their data shows the U12P beating the TRUE by a pretty impressive amount. Now the IFX-14 can beat them both... but it's also... Enormous. the TRUE is a very good heatsink, I have one, but it just barely didn't fit into my midtower. Here's the dimensions of the TRUE and U12P: 95(L) x 126(W) x 158(H)mm -U12P 63.44(L) x 132(W) x 160.5(H) mm -TRUE They're about the same height, but the noctua is a little longer and a little thinner. The IFX 14 on the other hand is 146.2(L) x 124(W) x 161(H) which puts it solidly into the realm of "oh hell no" for most people. The extra few MM if height difference on the U12P should have it fitting a midtower. It'll be a little tight when you try to install it but if you put the PSU in first, then mount the motherboard, and then the CPU-paste-heatsink it should be reasonably possible to get a good mount with a long screwdriver. Hell I got a Tuniq Tower (size of an IFX 14, but no spaces) mounted in a midtower so hey anything's possible.

Finding a decent prebuilt computer and then finding a decent graphics card on your own is probably going to be a lot cheaper.

That's because it's his shopping cart akaru. Not a wishlist.

Actually my preference for nvidia is only for two simple reasons: 1. ATI used to get a performance hit in opengl games like Quake Wars 2. ATI used to not have any decent manufacturers like EVGA, XFX, and BFG. The first is largely fixed due to ATIs tendency to get better and better with driver updates over time and opengl maturing a little and the second... it's an XFX card. Not only do they give a lifetime warranty to whoever you sell it to a few years down the road, they also still give you full warranty support even if you replace the heatsink with your own (not that I recommend this at your level). and just to expand on the static thing: you need to think in terms of electricity. Shuffling, rubbing, scooting around, hairdryers, fans, things with friction (even, and especially, against the air) build static. Static discharges to "ground". Your computer's power supply is grounded even when your comp is off as long as it is plugged into the wall or a grounded surge protector (even if THAT is turned off). YOU are thus grounded as long as you have a connection to anything that's grounded. Anti-static wrist straps are just a metal wire that touches your skin and clips onto the computer case to make that easier. You can actually stay grounded by touching a metal toaster that uses 3 pins on an outlet.

You should be fine with XP, it wont hurt to try it. As for your sister needing a mac... that's bullshit. Macintoshes literally are intel laptops running OSX that cost more because of the apple brand. Unless she needs a very specific mac-only absolutely cannot be run on a pc program, of which afaik there are very few thanks to macs now using PC hardware, it's an utter waste of money to buy a new one if you need one at all. However if she really does "need" a mac because of an actual legitimate reason rather than just wanting a trendy laptop go and get an older one that costs a damn sight less than the barely better newer ones and has all the same stuff on it. The older ones also use higher quality parts for the screens as opposed to the cheap dithered new ones so if she's artsy it'll be better. And for your brother totalling his car... if it wasnt his fault insurance should cover him (the other guys) if it was then there's no reason other people should be punished because of his mistakes. Rant aside, You can have the DDR3/Core i7 rig for less than $1,000. There is, on average, only 10fps difference between the Core 216 GTX 260's and the GTX 275. The GTX 260 will also run with power to spare on a 620hx power supply, which means that the non-modular and much cheaper Corsair 650tx (50amps) will EASILY power it. Ditch the soundcard while you're at it and you are now at $1,044.93. Unfortunately the only gigabyte motherboards I can find are like $9 cheaper and the ram's the same. Core 216 GTX 260 (farcry2+CoD5) $179.99 Corsair 650tx $89.99 Optional 4870 512mb from XFX $134.99 $1,044.93 new total Now if you really do need a monitor because you don't have any others you want to use, and a mouse, and a keyboard things get more complicated and back up to the $1100 range. Also dude, don't bother with the anti-static wrist strap. Assuming you dont get one with something free you can just use the power supply switched off and plugged into the wall to ground the entire computer case and render you basically bulletproof as long as some part of your skin is touching something metal that's touching the power supply. [edit] Oh and $144 is INSANE for a case. I payed that much for THIS beast. To give you an idea of it's size that motherboard tray is removeable, it's taller than a 2liter coke bottle, and each of those squares in that plastic bracket thing is the size of a CD. If you absolutely can't buy a case locally I suggest This of which I've owned 2 and still have 1. 2x120mm fans, good toolless drive bays, excellent ventilation.