I'm not a fan of SLI at all. I think it more marketing glimick. If you think about it, the 2nd card never gives you twice the performance of a single card...yet double the price (2 cards). I rather buy one nice card and save $ and electricity and heat issues.
I also wouldn't buy a low end quad-core, I rather go with a faster duo core. Sins and 95% of programs/games don't use quadcores. Reviews have shown that a Duo e8400 beats Quad6600 hands down. Duo core will also have less heat issues. (I'm pretty sure sins can run smooth on max with a E7200)
Definitely like the nvidia9800gt or 9800gtx or the new ATIs 4850s or 4830s with aftermarket fans not stock fans(they run too hot). I sure you'll be fine with 9600gt or equvalent with sins on max settings.
Unless you don't store music and vids on the harddrive and don't mind upgrading to a bigger one in the future, I would go with a harddrive bigger than 80gigs. Samsung Spin point F series is good.
I make sure whatever heatstink you use fits into the case and fits into the motherboard. Some heat stinks have low appendages. My system has the
Sunbeam CR-CCTF 120mm "Core Contact Freezer" CPU Cooler - Retail but i learn that the cheap fan is a little loud for my taste. By any brandheat stink with core contact...(where heat pipes directly touch CPU)
with http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131299
I had to bend the lower portion heatstink fin up a 2mm to fit. My only complaint about this motherboard...is the audio jack with vista is sensitive, keep saying jack plug in and not in, but the sound is not interruppted.
Hum this ia large and long post. SLI is not a marketing gimmic. It does work it seems to work better with every generation of new Nvidia cards. It worked with a scaling of 1.3X performance on the 8000 series and 1.8X perforamnce on the 9000 series cards.
Thanks for the advice on the CPU. But I'm going to be using this computer for the next 3-4 years at least while I;m paying of loans so I will be able to make minimal upgrades at best so the more future proof I am the better. I will decide what CPU to get at the time I buy my computer.
I hope the 9600GT will be sufficiant. But I hope to be able to go SLI in the future but I will be paying off loans so I don't really know. Although I might go with an EVGA 9800GT because after the rebate, it's the same price as as the 9600 and it's single slot. But that also means more heat build up. But I'm going to be using the antec 900 so not a big deal really.
And about the Hard drives, this is complicated. I have decided to go with an 80GB drive for my OS and basic windows programs like IE Explorer, Media Players, Office Programs, and Adobe. I will end up using 2 Samsung 320GB hard drives later on. I'm going to RAID 0 on the 2 Samsung Drives. The samsungs are going to be for things like games and other programs that don't need to slow the OS drive down. Then I'm going to eventually add in later on a 640GB storage drive for things like Install files, internet videos, web docs and EVERYTHING else.
An dI ckeck that my aftermarket heatsink will clear my case (antec 900) and it will. Thanks for the advice though.
