$2500 Prelude Suggestions

[wobble123]

Hello All!

After much reading/reviews, I have decided to upgrade my 5 year old Sony Vaio with a Prelude system. Maingear's quality components/builds and customer service appear to be top-notch. I am hoping to keep the price sub $2500. Currently will use my 20" BenQ monitor and basic speaker system.

Here is my current configuration:

Power Supply:
MAINGEAR 750W Ultra Quiet Power Supply
Motherboard:
NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI Motherboard
$115.25
Processor:
E6600 Core 2
$71.25
CPU Cooling:
Zalman CNSP8000 Ultra Quiet Heatpipe Cooler
$65.00
Memory:
2GB Corsair XMS2 PC2 6400
$229.75
Hard Drive One:
Western Digital Caviar SE16 400GB 7200RPM 16MB Cache - SATA II
$110.36
Hard Drive Two:
Western Digital Caviar SE16 400GB 7200RPM 16MB Cache - SATA II
$174.99
RAID 0
Flash Card Reader:
All-in-One Internal USB 2.0 Flash Card Reader & Writer
$29.99
Optical Drive One:
20X Dual Layer DVD±RW Drive w/ LightScribe Technology - black
$30.75
Video Card:
NVIDIA GeForce 8800GTS 320MB PCIe
$262.50
Sound Card:
Onboard 8-channel High Definition Audio
Operating System:
Microsoft Windows XP Professional Edition
$16.81
Warranty:
1 Year Maingear Warranty

Reconfigure Prelude Core
Product Subtotal: $2,274.26

Any Thoughts/Suggestions? Should I opt for a dedicated sound card? Should I go with Vista? Both the E6600 Core 2 and 8800 GTS seem to have the best cost/benefit ratio at this time. I also like the upgrade potential and OC ablitiies of the 680i SLI mobo.

Once again, this will be my first "gaming" PC and although I am not expecting top of the line on every component I am looking at an affordable mix of performance and future ability to upgrade and overclock.

Thanks!

[theDreamer]

Overall looking good.
Some thoughts/questions:
~What games are you looking into, or building this for? Current/Future.
~Other things you are going to use this for, video/photo editing?

I always caution people when going with RAID, and making sure they are 100% sure they want/need it. The bonus is very nice, but if not backing up your data then be very cautious about it.

My only suggestions would be maybe to pick up the 8k GTS (640) card instead as it will be a better option down the road if you decide to jump to SLi. Mainly because using the 320s for SLi is not going to give much of a performance increase. Other thoughts on your sound card, are you using upper end sound equipment or just a 2.1 speaker set?

Other than that it seems like a solid system overall.

[wobble123]

Thanks for the rapid reply Dreamer!

Current games include Oblivion and HL2 (although both suffer from poor FPS due to my system), will be looking at Crysis and Spore in the future, although I hear Spore continues to be delayed.

Other than gaming, the PC will be mostly home/family centered. Photo and video storage (not high powered editing). Word processiong, etc. I will probably install my current TV tuner card into it as well.

I have read that the current "gain" from the 640mb 8800 does not justify its >$400 price above the 320mb. Also, I will be using a 20" display, so hopefully won't need to go to superhigh resolutions.

Also, I am using a 2.1 speaker set for now.

Should I avoid the RAID 0 configuration due to potential data loss? I plan to backup to an external hard drive as I do currently.

[theDreamer]

Well, the reason I would say the GTS (640) is for a bit of future proof, especially if you are thinking of doing the SLi, but overall the 320 is still a solid card and server you well.

The raid thing I just like to let people know there are dangers, but if you are planning on backing up then by all means do it.

[RottynDawg]

Dreamer's suggestions are dead on. I would add the following suggestions to that system based on your stated usage?

1. Ditch the RAID 0 to save money and complexity. You're already backing up your data and I don't personally feel that RAID is quite there at the consumer level yet (onboard controllers).
2. Ditch the PC2 6400 RAM and go with the PC5300 to save money. Unless you plan to overclock by quite a bit, you're just wasting your money.

Your sound card question is a good one, I could honestly go either way on that. While Vista is still a little rough around the edges on some fronts, I would probably go with Vista as Microsoft is already working on SP1.

My two cents...

[spincut]

I'm still iffy on the sound card thing because of Vistas vague (to me) problem with it's configuration differing where it re-allocates some system functionlity so that sound accelrator cards dont really work. I mean, i hear there are ways around it but whatever they did it sounded like they added some sort of extra processing layer so vistas software processed the sound purposefully.

I dont whether that was a stupid move or just an accident but i dont think i'd want to buy a sound card only to have to use some sort of homebrew solution just to get it to do the processing.

[CRYTEX]

Despite the fact that your older games will likely experience compatibility or performance issues, I'd recommend Vista (will be great for CRYSIS) for its improved security and functionality over XP.