System building - comments appriciated

[GunniH_]

Hey there,

I'm building a gaming system, price limit is ~1200$ or so. Not looking for monitor, sound system nor mouse/keyboard.

What I have in mind:

Motherboard:
EVGA 123-YW-E175-A1 [link]
or
ASUS P5Q-E [link]
or
ASUS P5Q [link]
CPU/Processor:
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450 2.66 GHz 1333 MHz Socket 775 12MB cache [link]
or
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4 GHz 1066 MHz Socket 775 8MB cache [link]
Video Card:
EVGA 01G-P3-1282-AR Geforce GTX 280 1GB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 [link]
Sound card:
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer Fatality Pro [link]
Memory:
Patriot 4GB PC2-8500 (DDR2-1066) DDR2 [link]

And a Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme cpu cooler + some fans.

Any comments ? Should I change something, should it stay this way, whats your oppinion =) ?

thanks,
~Gunni

 

[GunniH_]

bump

 

[engiNURD]

What size monitor do you have? What else do you do besides game? What games do you play and at what resolution/settings? Other questions you could answer to help us help you are listed in the GenHard FAQ: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1289005

 

[JRS]

I'm kinda one of those folks that although it is unlikely I'd ever do SLI/x-fire, I tend to keep my options open, so if your going NVidia for your GPU, I'd go with the sli motherboard.

Comparing the P5Q boards - I like the P5Q Pro for its features/price compared to the P5Q or P5Q-E. (But zzf doesn't seem to carry the pro - odd). The base P5Q motherboard has the main motherboard power connector in an odd spot if you ever put it in a case with the PSU on the bottom, and even if the PSU is on the top, you have route the cable around the cpu HSF.


The Q9550 appears to only be a couple dollars more than the Q9450 at zzf.

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=10007855&prodlist=celebros

 

[Shawnasee]

The Q9550 appears to only be a couple dollars more than the Q9450 at zzf.

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=10007855&prodlist=celebros

This.

Might as well get 2.83GHz for a couple dollars more than what it costs you to get 2.66GHz.

 

[engiNURD]

At $190, the Q6600 is better bang for buck... but it all depends on what you'll be doing with this system aside from gaming. For pure gaming, the E8400 would be better bang for buck, esp with the newegg combo together with the P5Q Pro. The HD4870 is also better bang for buck than the GTX280.