Windows 7: Upcoming computer build

Hey guys, I've got an upcoming computer build (I plan on doing it in early december) and I've been doing some research and I think I've got a solid build list ( some changes may be made due to the chance of price drops and therefore being able to get better parts, but the list is semi-final). Im going to list the parts I'm looking at, and I'd just like some feedback, such as making sure its all good to go together, and that it would give me a pretty good system over all.

Case- Thermaltake Armor+ VH6001BWS Full-Tower ATX Case



PSU-Ultra X3 1600W psu - I know this is a little much as for wattage, but I'm opening myself to the possibilty of a future SLI, possibly 3 way. The case and PSU are in a combo.

Thermaltake Armor+ ESA & Ultra X3 1600W PSU - VH6001BWS Full-Tower ATX Case, ATX Modular Power Supply at TigerDirect.com

MoBo- EVGA X58 SLI LE Motherboard

Processor- Intel Core i7 920 2.66 - Mobo and Processor are also in a bundle

EVGA X58 SLI LE Motherboard w/ Intel Core i7 920 Processor BX80601920 Bundle at TigerDirect.com

Ram - 12gb of OCZ Gold Tri-Channel DDR3 1333Mhz

OCZ Gold Tri Channel 12GB PC10666 DDR3 Memory - 1333MHz, 12288MB (6 x 2048MB), CL9 at TigerDirect.com

GFX Card - EVGA GeForce GTX 295 Co-Op edition 1792 MB DDR3

EVGA GeForce GTX 295 CO-OP Edition Video Card - 1792MB DDR3, PCI-Express 2.0, 480 Cores, PCI-Express 2.0, (2) Dual Link DVI, Quad SLI at TigerDirect.com

HDD- 1 Terabyte Hitachi 7200 RPM

Hitachi 7K1000.B Hard Drive - 1TB, 7200RPM, 16MB, SATA-300, OEM at TigerDirect.com

DVD Drive- Not that it matters much, but Samsung DVD Drive

Samsung SH-S223B/BEBE DVDRW Drive - SATA, DVD+R 22X, DVD+RW 8X, DVD-RW 6X, DVD-RAM 12X, CD-R 48X (OEM) at TigerDirect.com

Monitor- 22inch Hyundai LCD 1680x1050

Hyundai X224W 22" Widescreen LCD Monitor - 5ms, 1680x1050 (WSXGA+), 1000:1, DVI-D, VGA, Internal Speakers at TigerDirect.com

Thats pretty much the what I've decided on (Unless there are some price drops allowing better hardware arise, or price drops plus new better hardware) The Budget for this build is $2500, and all this brings me to about $2300 at tigerdirect. any thoughts or suggestions? I've had people tell me I'm going over board, and to get lower hardware and upgrade as I go, but I'm trying to do a bit a future-proofing as I do this. The only thing I expect to need to upgrade within the next year or so is the GFX card, and once the price drops on whatever card I have, and its getting dated, I'll get another identical card and SLI them. Any thoughts or suggestions?( other than telling me to tone it down and upgrade as I go). Thanks guys.

EDIT- Yeah, I think I'll just go for 1 terabyte hard drive and not worry about a raid setup at this point in time.

erm, just one thing...there's no such thing as future-proof

Decent rig ,doooood. pretty penny as well, tiger is Canadian?

No. Tiger is one-quarter Chinese, one-quarter Thai, one-quarter African American, one-eighth Native American, and one-eighth Dutch. He refers to his ethnic make-up as “Cablinasian".

Nice box. I would RAID smaller drives though. Typical SATA drives have a published bit rate error (BRE) of 10^14, or 100 terabytes.

Well yeah lol, I'm just saying, I won't need to upgrade, say my processor or ram nearly as early with this, like I would if I were getting a core2duo and ddr2 ram or something like that. Cuz since the I7 and ddr3 are newer tech, they prolly won't fade out before duo's and ddr2, which may still be the norm for a good little while.

This is also my first build. Anyone who has done builds wanna share some little-knowns? Like, for instance, should I order a few spare SATA cables in case my mobo and parts dont come with enough? I know my HDD's won't come with any, as they are OEM. Does the MOBO come with SATA HDD cables, or will I need to purchase those seperatly?

How low would you go? 2 500gb drives? 750gb drives? I guess I Could get two smaller drives for a raid and use a tera for storage. I guess I only need enough room in RAID to install games, I guess 500gb would still be pretty spacious, even with a bunch of games, So I could prolly go even lower than that, and store everything else on a tera.

My first response is that your PSU is pure overkill. I've never understood why people are so drawn to trying to supply so much power to their boxes. It's one of those things that I often see in pictures of rigs and just shake my head because based on the hardware they are running, they are often over by amount 2x-3x what they actually need.

Try this website which will explain how much power you really need: eXtreme Power Supply Calculator Lite v2.5

The motherboards generally come with lots of cables. My recent build was a Gigabyte board and it had 4 SATA cables included and 1 only needed 2 (1 for the hard drive and 1 for the DVD burner).

Next, I typically don't recommend a RAID setup. For most day to day tasks, the speed gains are really not that noticeable, while the potential for failure and data loss increases 2x..since a little bit of data is on each drive. I would recommend going with a fast performance drive for your OS (like a Western Digital velociraptor or a good Solid State disk) and get a larger capacity drive for data storage.

Next, I hate the term future-proof. No matter how much you spend on a machine today.....in 5 years time....it will be crushed by whatever is new and on the market. Instead, I usually recommend going middle of the road today and middle of the road in about 2-3 years time and by time 5 years passes, you end up with 2 decent computers and you are still up to date. However, with all that said, you aren't doing anything ridiculous and $2500 is not an overkill amount to spend on a machine....so this thought above doesn't necessarily apply to your build...just my overall perspective.

Finally, you choice of DVD ROM can make a big difference depending upon what you using your machine for. For example, i rip a lot of movies from Netflix, put them on DVD-RW's and watch them when I have time. With my newest machine, i went with a specific samsung DVD burner which had a firmware hack available which gave me the ability to remove the rip lock and increase the ripping speed. Net result....a typically DVD rip went from about 14-15 minutes down to about 8.5 minutes on that drive.

Personally, I would not RAID 2 1TB disks. What are you going to back them up to? Also the primary drive should only contain the OS and critical/frequently used apps. IMO.

If doing a new build I would get an SSD for the OS/Critical apps. Some secondary drives, Caviar Blacks, for secondary apps, games and data. And one or more external drives for offline backup. JMO.

If you wanted you could RAID0 2 Caviar Blacks (or Seagate 7200.12) for the secondary apps, games and data.

Just some thoughts.

Thanks, yeah I think I'll just go with 1 terabyte hdd. And I know the PSU is pretty outrageous, but its only on my list because its a combo, and its technically on my list, but I have seen the case by itself on the site and I can just choose a diff PSU and get them seperatly. Thanks for the site for the PSU calculator

No problem. I hope the calculator is helpful. The only reason that I was making a comment is that this case and power supply combo is very expensive....and it might not be worth it to dump so much money into those 2 components. Just trying to be helpful.