building a new rig- need opinons on my selection of parts

Well, i think its time i build a new rig. here are the things i was thinking of getting.

https://secure.newegg.com/WishList/P...shListTitle=my

and this heatsynk (note- the 120mm fan on the list in the link above will replace the one on here)

http://www.pcuniverse.com/Thermaltak..._source=google

so, what do you all think?

1: If you're going for an Nvidia based motherboard, you might want to get another heatsink for the northbridge chip as it tends to get fairly hot. I replaced the stock aluminium heatsink on my mobo with a propper copper one (no fan needed) and there was a huge improvement.

2: A 150GB 10000 rpm 1.5Gbps harddrive combined with 640GB 7200 rpm 3.0Gbps one... I don'r uderstand the choice really. What are you going to put on your 150GB hard drive? Personally (and I stress that this is a personal choice) I'd for for a 36GB raptor at 10000 rpm with a 3.0Gbps transfer rate and get a bigger second hard drive.

Other then that, very good choice of kit. You've obviously been studying Carbon's recommended hardware list.

Cheers:
Chris

i never read his list XD didn't know it existed until you told me. lol. but i plan to use the 10,000rpm for my main drive where my OS will be on. and my 640GB for my games. the idea is for the 10,000rpm one to boot up my computer super fast as well as the software i will use a lot, and the 640GB to hold all my games since they take up so much space. each hard drive has a specific reason to them. as i have explained. :P and what heat synk do you recommend for the north bridge?

I got a Noctura NC-U6 (http://www.specialtech.co.uk/spshop/...cat=608&page=1) but I guess anything with a copper plate tne heatpipes will do the trick. As I said, it needs to be copper and it does dissipate heat a lot more efficiently than aluminium.

Cheers:
Chris

A faster, better, higher-capacity and cheaper option for the o.s drive would be the Samsung F1 750gb. Faster than a Raptor X at seek and sustained.

or you could go for the new velociraptor which is faster in benchmarks than I have seen than any other SATA drive. but it costs probably around double your raptor X

Yes, what Alex said.

The Titanium whatever thing is a little overpriced. I heard good thing about (think it was) Asus's sound cards? There's been some competition with cards that can emulate EAX just as well in software, have better drivers, and generally aren't as bloaty as Creative's.

I don't know much about heatsinks, but what I've heard is if it's not a Tuniq or AF7, don't bother. May be a waste of money.

780is get really hot around the northbridge. The chipset isn't that mature yet..you may want to get a 750i with dual x16 lanes. If you know what you're doing, it shouldn't be a problem, just make sure to stick all the relevant driver updates on a CD as well as the newest BIOS on a flash drive before you do anything.

Why 4x1gb? If you're going to ever upgrade, you'll have to throw out your old modules. Grab 2x2gb so that you can put two more in later.

Oh, and about my list: I was surprised to note that nearly my entire recommended build was copied by Wired last month in a column they had about building a gaming PC. Great minds think alike, eh?

can i have a link to the other hard drive you guys were telling me about? And this is more of a budget build, but if there are i performance sticks of RAM out there for about the same price that are 2GB then i would be happy to use that instead. the reason i want the sound card i picket was so i could have the normal PCI slots for other things like my wireless NIC and such. i'd rather stick with the 780i motherboard. as long as there is a way to cool it to reasonable temps, it works for me.

edit- what about this cooler for the chip set?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835116018

in fact, i am using that one right now on my current rig. you think that will salve the cooling crisis?

well if it's more of a budget build you probbaly won't want the velociraptor, as it's a performace drive but here is a british link and i'll have a go at finding a link on a US site for you. And as for the momory, you will have better performance with 2*2GB rarther than 4*1GB with same memory sticks.

EDIT: Link on newegg

Do you think the Dual slot GPU will get in the way of the sound card? cuz i think that might be a problem if it does. I really want the dual slot for better cooling, cuz lets face it. 2 of these cards will make a bit of heat.

It would if you were to use the top PCI-E slot, however I don't think you have to use the top slot, so I think if you use one of the lower slots, it should be fine, however if I was you, I would wait till someone else confirms this, or not, as the case may be.

8800GTs in the top slots with the sound card in the bottom PCI slot should work fine.

I would go for the Zotac 8800GT, it's out of the box 700mhz and is on sale now..

i have read a lot of the 700MHz stock cards overheat

uh, no, it's got a custom fan and everything, that's how they can sell it out of the box like that. worst case scenario is you can take off 50mhz or so.

how much they cost and whe