Workin on a new set up.

[otterman]

VGA: EVGA GeForce 8800GTS 320MB

Mobo: GIGABYTE GA-965P-DS3

Mem: OCZ ATI CrossFire 2GB (Zomg Ati certified mem with a NVidia VGA?!?! Blasphemy! Rebates pwn me and the heatspreader looks sweet lol)

CPJew: Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 2.4GHz (I plan on ocing this biatch to 2.8 - 3, depending on what i can keep the temps at)

PSU: HIPER 730W

And for some VGA and CPU cooling I'm looking at the Cooler Master Viva Duo .

Any suggestions on this set up?

[teddy]

Not a bad setup at all. Most of the components are proven to be pretty solid. But those Nvidia DX10 cards can really pump out some serious heat.

I might look around into different power supplies. I have heard mixed reviews about the Hiper brand in general. The thermaltake toughpower PSU is very good and well reviewed for something around the 700-800watt mark.

Also, there's a Core2 6750 CPU for the same price as the 6600, but rated at 2.66ghz. That might interest you.

[otterman]

Yeah I've had some people on other forums say that the Hiper might not be the best idea for a power supply. So I'm probably going to change that.

Thanks for the tip on the 6750, I'll check it out.

EDIT: After looking at it, why is the 6750 only $3 more? There's no reviews of it on Newegg or anything. It seems like it would cost a bit more then the 6600. Kinda makes me a little cautious.

[otterman]

I found a pretty favorable review for the 6750. They show to have made 3.92GHz when overclocking. That's a bit much for me and I don't want to push it THAT hard but the fact they made it to that using the stock cpu cooling... it's nice to know the potential even if I'll never want to push it to those speeds.

http://www.hothardware.com/Art...eview/

[teddy]

Right. I doubt anyone would want to OC to that much for a practical, day to day computer, but just knowing it can throw out that much game is crazy. The CPU is actually fairly new, just being released recently I believe. I'm not sure why the price is so close, but I found some benchmarks placing it ahead of the 6600 by a noticeable amount.

[krazydriver]

+1 for the thermaltake PSU

i have one of thesehttp://www.newegg.com/Product/...53038

the voltages with my old antec supply used to wander all over the place. This thing is ROCK SOLID. Plus the thermaltake has modular cables, so you only plug in the ones you need. Really helps reduce case clutter.

I personally prefer XFX vid cards. So i found an xfx with a good price.http://www.newegg.com/Product/...5017380mhz faster core + 200mhz faster mem. for the same price.... if your willing to wait for a rebate.

your setup sounds fine so just take these as my personal recommendations.

[otterman]

Ugh... I hate how expensive PSU's are now.

Thanks for the tip on the card.

[krazydriver]

yeah prices for everything are nuts.

when i got mine though newegg had a rebate, AND thermal take had a rebate on it. I ended up waiting like 2 months to get the money, but it was only like $120 in the end. even that is alot though.

just think though you can buy quality and have it work.

or a cheapo $30 PSU that explodes as soon as you put it in.

[otterman]

Anyone have any suggestions on how to figure the size of PSU you need?

I found this Thermaltake on sale at Xoxide. http://www.xoxide.com/thermalt....html

It's 600W. But I heard these new video cards and the duel core cpus eat up the power. I also have a few fans... 4 80mm (two on back, two on side) and 1 120mm (front) fans lol.

[krazydriver]

i always use this to calculate wattage.http://www.extreme.outervision.com/powercalc.jsp

As it says though remember this is continuous draw not peak. So you'll want a bit more then this for peak draw, like during start-up.

[otterman]

ooooooo, thanks! Thats a cool site.

[teddy]

What did you get for your power needs? Xoxide is having a sale on a few of the toughpower psu's, but if it's under 700 watts, the Ultra X2/XVS psu's perform pretty well. I have an XVS 600watt and no complaints yet about it.

[otterman]

I havn't even started ordering yet. I want to be 100% sure of everything before I order.

I saw the Xoxide sale. I'm planning on getting that ToughPower 600W.

I'm also thinking about going AMD because of price even though they use more power and run pretty hot.AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ 3.0GHzECS KN3 SLI2 I've read some pretty good reviews of this board.

[teddy]

I really am an AMD fan at heart, but the problem I'm finding with buying one, even with the stellar price cut, is the scalability. With the Core2 platform, they just keep releasing more and more on the 775 socket, so I can just keep upgrading without changing boards. And with Intel releasing the 45nm cpu's down the road, power consumption should go down.

With the AM2, the 6000+ is about the end of the line.

[otterman]

That's what I really liked about all my computers prior to this one I'm making.

I made sure all my parts can be swapped with all my other computers (for the most part). It really saved my *** a couple times during school when something went wrong in my computer, I could just grab memory or CPU from another one I had sitting so I could finish papers and crap.

Not too long ago I shocked my cousins mobo on a computer I built for him while working on it. You know how PSU's (or maybe its the mobo it's self) still hold a bit of a charge after the computer is off? If not, just unplug your psu and press the power button on your case, the computer will power up the fans, hdd etc for like .1 seconds. I was putting a peice of ram back into the mobo and some how that charge went off and fried the mobo. Scared the **** outta me lol But I just grabbed a mobo from an old computer I had and blam, problem fixed!

I also never had to worry about if I did have to buy a new cpu/mobo/etc I could just buy that once peice and not buy anything else with it to make it compatable.

[Uberck]

otterman good looking setup, glad to see another nvidia fan just make sure your case has decent ventalation and pretty wide b/c 8800's produce a $hitload of heat and are friggin huge, and screw vista just stick to xp man until vista comes out w/ a service pack