OT: New Computer in the making!Follow

Hey man. I'm a custom system builder, and the specs you outlined look good. I do have a few comments:

1) With the Raid 0 configuration, you need to use two identical drives. If you try to set up a WD Raptor 150g drive with a 74gb drive, you will only be able to use 74gb on the 150g drive, making a ~148gb virutal raid 0 drive and 74gb unpartitioned left on the RaptorX. I would just recommend using 2x74gb drives in a raid 0, and then add a secondary SATA2 drive for extra storage if you need it. The performance is good with these drive as you will notice faster windows boot time and WoW loading times.

2) Two video cards do make a difference but it depends on what games you are playing. Currently, if I am correct, WoW does not support SLI so I doubt you would see any performance gain in WoW. However, if you were playing games like Oblivion also, it makes a big difference.

3) Your parts are compatible except for that minor raid 0 thing I pointed out above. You didnt state the brand of your power supply. If you are reusing one you have, just make sure its using 24pin power cord for your motherboard. Older ones use 20 pin, but you said its 550w which is decent and sounds recent enough that it should be using 24 pins. Not a big deal as you can just buy a cheap 20-24 pin adapter anyway. For SLI setup, 550w is about the minimom you should run. I'm running the same on 3xhard drives and 2x7800gtxs with no problem on power so you should be good to go.

4) Using toms hardware guide as a reference, the SLI setup for the two video cards you want on max settings on oblivion were only beat out by the following setup: 2x7800GTX SLI, 2x7900GTX SLI, 1x8800GTS, 1x8800GTX. I checked prices on the 7900gt via zipzoomfly.com vs the 8800gtx. 7900gt ran approximatly $300, 8800gtx ran approximately $650. I would recommend you go with 1 8800gtx, which allows you room in the future to expand to a second one for killer performance.

As for as floppy which you didnt mention, you could pick up a Mitsumi 7-in-1 Floppy/Flash Card Reader USB 2.0 drive for like $30 bucks which is neat since it adds all those flash readers along with the floppy 3.5. If you are big on sound and have a big sound setup, you will want to get a Creative X-Fi sound card and not the embedded 7.1 on the motherboard. If you dont have a 5.1/7.1 setup or are just using headphones, then it wont matter. But if you got the extra cash I recommend the creative X-Fi with Klipsch Promedia 5.1 speakers. Its a killer sound system.

Other than that, the system you are building should be a killer. If you really get into it, then the next steps for you would be to replace all the stock cooling with high performance cooling or liquid cooling and then start overclocking. :)

Hope that helps!!

My 2 cents...

1) I know first hand that WoW does support SLI though I am not very impressed with the performance gains. I get about 60-70 fps with 1 vid card and about 80-90 fps with 2 vid cards.

2) Raid configs require 2 identical hard drives, you need 3 hard drives if you want to do raid config and a storage drive.

3) Don't forget about the software you need (Windows). Also, you might want to keep in mind that Microsoft is putting out a new operating system in February called Windows Vista (upgrade to XP I believe).

4) Gratz on the new system!

Thanks for the help guys. Now I'm debating between using a RAID setup or just the 150gb 10,000rpm hd. If I did the raid setup would it make a noticeable difference?
I'm leaning towards the single hd to save money.

I'm also purchasing Windows XP and it comes with a huge discount on Vista.

Sound Card I'm looking at: (I have an old card from '97 if worst comes to worst)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16829102188

I don't play WoW anymore. I'm looking to play BF2, Rainbow Six: Vegas, Source Engine games and others (Yes, BF2 is quite old now).

EDIT: God damnit, the mobo is now sold out. /sigh. /wait.

Edited, Dec 5th 2006 5:31pm by LordOfTheTarus