$1500 budget, been out of the loop for 5 years

's ok. I like this sort of thing. $1500...

Just the tower, no display? I'll assume as much.

$275 - Q6600 G0 stepping CPU
$75 - Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme + Scythe S-Flex fan
$250 - eVGA 780i 132-CK-NF78-A1 motherboard (PCIe 2.0, SLI)
$225 - 2x Seagate 500GB SATA 7200.11 HDDs (for RAID 0)
$30 - Samsung SATA 20x DVDRW
$120 AR ($30 MIR) - Corsair TX 750watt
$70 AR ($20 MIR) - 4GB DDR2-800 CAS5
$600 - 2x8800 GTS 512MB GPUs in SLI
$50 AR ($40 MIR -- wait for a deal, they come around often) - Antec P180/P180B/P182

So, that's $1695 AR, + shipping... a little over budget.

Swap out the 780i for the Abit IX38 Quad GT at $200 AR ($30 MIR), swap the 8800 GTS 512MBs for 2 Radeon HD 3870's for $500 ($250 each), drop to 1 hard drive (saves $115) and you get...

$1430 AR + shipping. Shipping should be under $50.

Rebates total to $140, so you'll be slightly over budget until they come back in. You might consider waiting for the 3870X2. It should be around $450 and won't require a CrossfireX capable board, so that'll save you about $100 on the motherboard and $50 on the GPUs, while giving you comparable speed. Should be available in the next couple of weeks.

If you're willing to wait about a month you could consider the Nvidia 9 series cards -- Nvidia has their own GX2 dual GPU card in the works, which should save you some cash over current cards.

If you do need a display, drop one of the GPUs and use the $300 or so toward a 22" LCD
 
the motherboard board will depend on the type of video card you plan on using:

SLI (Nv) or Crossfire (Intel chipset)
 
Depending on what you're use is I don;t think you should figure out what you are planning to do with the system before you start purchasing.

within the past 5 years i would say the computer industry has changed quite a bit. any system that you build will probably knock your socks off. especially if you go with todays core2duo or quad series processors.

you may not one to get into SLi just yet if you dont play too much games.

so tell us what your plans and uses are (or going to be).
 
Ok then :)

I need everything but a keyboard, my old 20" Trinitron is on it's last legs. I'm a big gamer when the wife, kids, work, and school leave me some spare time but I don't know if I'm ready to drop the funds for an SLI setup. I'd been considering going ahead and getting an SLI board so that I can add another vid card later, but I couldn't find one I liked in the <$200 price range. I'll also be doing CAD/CAE with AutoCAD / SolidWorks part time. I was planning on dualbooting XP32 and Vista64.

Here's what I was originally working on using the Ars "Hot Rod" build as a starting point:

Original Build: $1318 + $50 shipping
GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3R
Intel Core 2 Duo E6750
GIGABYTE GV-NX88T512HP8 GeForce 8800GT 512MB
mushkin 4GB(2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 800
Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD7500AAKS 750GB 7200 RPM SATA HDD
CORSAIR CMPSU-450VX ATX12V V2.2 450W PSU
Pioneer 18X DVD±R DVD Burner SATA Model DVR-212DBK
LIAN LI PC-A59B Case
SAMSUNG 2220WM Black 22" 5ms DVI Widescreen LCD Monitor

I also had a new mouse in there, but decided I could probably squeeze some more life out of my old MX1000.

After going through the forums and reading several of the discussions, I started a new build based on [H] feedback. Not quite finished because I'm trying to decide on a storage setup, whether to go with a single drive or go RAID. I've replaced the E6750 with an E8400 for about $30 more, and I'm still on the fence about the mobo because I need something that works out of the box so the recommendations seem to be toward the DS3L as far as Gigabyte boards go and I've been reading about some issues with the DS3R. So far I have:

[H] Build: $1306 + $50 shipping
GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3L
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400
Same video card as above
Same RAM as above
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3500320AS 500GB 7200 RPM SATA
CORSAIR CMPSU-550VX ATX12V V2.2 550W PSU
Same case as above
Same monitor as above

Any input is always appreciated.

Cheers,
- D
 
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