Advise on a gaming computer.... Good deal?

[stack1]

I'm looking at getting a decent gaming computer, it comes with alot of software so I want to see what any experts out there think this setup is worth. Thanks for any input.



Case - Cooler Master 590 Centurion (Black) - 5 months

Motherboard - MSI P7N SLI Platinum (3-way SLI) - 1 month

CPU - Intel Q9550 Core 2 Quad OC'd @ 3.4GHz - 1 month

CPU Heatsink - Arctic Cooling Freezer Pro 7 - 1 month

Memory - 8 GB OCZ Gold XTC OCZ2G8002G (4 - 2Gig sticks) @800 for a 1:1 ratio - 4 months

Graphics Cards - 2 x BFG Tech nVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 Maxcore 55 in SLI for
graphics rendering - 1 month
Here are some specs for these two cards
-896 MB GDDR3 per card
-999 MHz Memory Clock
-448-bit Memory Bus Width
-590 MHz GPU Clock
-1296 MHz Shader Clock
-216 Core Processors per GPU
-DirectX v10 of course

- 1 x PNY nVIDIA GeForce XLR8 9800GT for physics processing - 4 months
Here are some specs for this card
-1024 MB GDDR3
-900 MHz Memory Clock
-256-bit Memory Bus Width
-600 MHz GPU Clock
-1500 MHz Shader Clock
-112 Core Processors
-DirectX v10

Power Supply - Xion Power Real 1000w (This is a modular PSU w/6 12v rails. It has 35 amps on each of the 2 PCI-E rails and 20 amps each on the other 4. More than enough to run a 3-way SLI setup, OC, and as many accessories as your case can hold. Plus it has blue LEDs inside) - 1 month

Hard Drive - 500 Gigabyte Western Digital Caviar SATA - 5 months

TV Tuner card (record video input, use computer as a DVR) - 5 months

Optical Drive- DVD Multi Recorder (DL, RW, CD, your basic stuff) - 5 months

Multi Card Reader in front

7 Case Fans - 2 120mm blue LED on top (exhaust), 1 120mm blue LED on back (exhaust), 2 120mm blue LED on side (intake), 1 120mm black on front (intake), 1 80mm blue LED on side behind CPU

Operating System - Windows Vista Ultimate SP1

 

[GSTOY]

Looking at the specs, Wow, are you going to launch a space shuttle? Just kidding. Anyhow, kinda surprised it's not running a WD Sata Raptor HD. Seems they went kinda cheap on the hard drive. I'd also hold out for Win 7. IMO, Vista is much like Windows Millenium, what a piece of junk of a OS. Also make sure your tuner card is able to receive DTV signals, since analog over the air is dead.

 

[WeAreVenom]

That's a bit overkill if you're looking for a decent gaming computer.

 

[stack1]

I know it's a little overkill, but it's better to overboard than left with something that's outdated within a couple months. He's asking $900. He's including a couple hundred dollars worth of games....


Age Of Empires (all expansions), Armed Forces Corp, Battle Stations Pacific, Battlefield 2, Bioshock, Burnout Paradise, Call Of Duty Modern Warfare, Call Of Duty World At War, Crashday, Counterstrike 1.6, Crysis, Crysis Warhead, Deer Hunter Tournament, Drakensang The Dark Eye, Fallout 3, Far Cry 2, Flatout Ultimate Carnage, Fuel, Gears of War, Grid, Grand Theft Auto IV, Halo 2, Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X., Helldorado, Left 4 Dead, Mass Effect, Mechwarrior 4 Mercenaries, Microsoft Flight Simulator X, Mirror's Edge, Monster Jam Maximum Destruction, Monsters Vs. Aliens, Need For Speed Most Wanted, Need For Speed Undercover, The Elder Scrolls III Morrowind, Sim City 3000, The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion, Prototype, Rainbow 6 Vegas 2, Rainbow 6 Lockdown, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Serious Sam, Shellshock 2 Blood Trails, Sniper Path of Vengence, SpecNaz 2, Soldier of Fortune 3 Payback, Spore, The Sims 3, Tom Clancy's EndWar, Trine, Unreal Gold, Virtual Pool 3, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 2, X-Men Origins Wolverine, Zeno Clash, Zuma Deluxe

 

[klrv6]

Seems it's OK. A few things to think about.

- get two 500gb or 250 units and stripe them together. RAID0, the single drive will be the bottle neck. sata raid cards are cheap now and can even do more than two disks in basic home computers.

- Save for this as long as you can and then pull the trigger. Most of those parts listed are dropping in price everyday.

- Windows 7 or XP only. Why waste that hardware on vista?

 

[By-Tor]

Three graphics cards!? I understand the use of 9800gt for PhysX processing, but really?

Never heard of Xion PSUs.
I hear Corsair has nice ones, but I went with a PC power and cooling for my PC.(410W I didn't need much)

If you drop Vista, I would lose 5Gigs of memory. Memory is so cheap and easy to install, you can buy it when DDR3 gets to be cheaper and better.

No sound card?!?!?

Is the software new or used? There is a only a couple of games that could push this computer. I doubt there is any game that will come out that could. Unless you are one of those gamers that HAS to have every setting to the MAX!!

I'm partial to AMD processors........:tongue:

 

[klrv6]

Three graphics cards!? I understand the use of 9800gt for PhysX processing, but really?

Never heard of Xion PSUs.
I hear Corsair has nice ones, but I went with a PC power and cooling for my PC.(410W I didn't need much)

If you drop Vista, I would lose 5Gigs of memory. Memory is so cheap and easy to install, you can buy it when DDR3 gets to be cheaper and better.

No sound card?!?!?

Is the software new or used? There is a only a couple of games that could push this computer. I doubt there is any game that will come out that could. Unless you are one of those gamers that HAS to have every setting to the MAX!!

I'm partial to AMD processors........:tongue:

Yea, I wasn't going to bring up the whole AMD thing, seeing as the proc has already been speced. I have quad core opterons running in some of my VM machines at home and love them, really have since the athlon xp units came out.

I am used to people wanting the absolute latest and greatest system out there. My old boss and fellow admin were that way. One of them dropped $5100 this past spring on his new machine. I told him I could pick the same thing up in a year for around a grand. Of course his response is that he doesn't spend money on his car like I do the GN.

If it were me, I would opt for phenom II quad core proc. Newegg.com - AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Deneb 3.2GHz 4 x 512KB L2 Cache 6MB L3 Cache Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core Processor - Processors - Desktops and, you get incredible energy savings when it's not getting taxed from games.

Sometimes it's easier and cheaper to just buy an off the shelf performer, add a great video caard and tweak a few things on it.

 

[WeAreVenom]

You'll need a bigger HD and a SC unless that MB has built-in sound. How big of a monitor do you have?