Gaming Rig Advice - Also First Time Build

[smarteyeball]

Don't skimp on the mother board. That's your lynch pin for adding better components later.

 

[brayway]

Yea lol my MB i am very happy with cause it has DDR2 (my old MB was ddr1 ) and it has 2 PCIe
BTW it says Crossfire on the Box, could it support SLI??

-Braydon

 

[samstar1412]

Don't skimp on the mother board. That's your lynch pin for adding better components later.

Thats a very last resort thing, im sticking with the P5Q-PRO unless i really have to cheap out.

Yea lol my MB i am very happy with cause it has DDR2 (my old MB was ddr1 ) and it has 2 PCIe
BTW it says Crossfire on the Box, could it support SLI??

-Braydon

That board im not to sure on even if it could the second card would be a bottleneck because the second PCIe is only 4x not 16x so there wouldn't be much point with SLI or Crossfire on that board. On the board im getting it has different modes so you can run both PCIe's at 8x instead of 1 16x and 1 4x

 

[brayway]

Hmmm....then why would they put this on the box?

 

[samstar1412]

They have that on the box because it can run crossfire but the second card will be limited, it will still work but it would be better off getting a better single card so it can run at full speed

 

[smarteyeball]

Hmmm....then why would they put this on the box?

Marketing.

The performance hit of x8/x8 is only noticeable at resolutions like 2560x1600. However the performance hit of x16/x4 is huge at any resolution, rendering crossfire useless.

And any board that is crossfire certified only, will not support SLI and vice versa.

 

[samstar1412]

Thank you for verifying that i was just taking an educated guess from what i have been learning

 

[smarteyeball]

No worries mate. I looked into it around the time I went crossfire.

 

[brayway]

hmm....okay....so would the seond slot be good for a high peed SSD or Sound card, or wifi?? lolz

 

[samstar1412]

hmm....okay....so would the seond slot be good for a high peed SSD or Sound card, or wifi?? lolz

Yeah im not sure but it might be good for either..

Anyone know anything about Zalman PSU's particularly the ZM850HP, Or what about an Antec TP QUATTRO 1000W?

 

[brayway]

kk lolz

all i know is that those PSUs are alot better than mine! LOLz

 

[samstar1412]

Lol fair enough, at least you have plenty of room for improvement just keep saving your money and add bits and pieces over time and you will have yourself a kickass rig

 

[brayway]

yea lol

 

[samstar1412]

Anybody got any knowledge on the COOLERMASTER UCP 1100w PSU or any of the other PSUs i mentioned in the earlier posts? because i went ahead and emailed the store i will most likely buy the parts from and asked what kind of deals they would do if i ordered this list of parts:

-THERMALTAKING V9 Case
-ASUS P5Q-PRO MotherBoard
-Core2QUAD Q9550 CPU
-ATI Radeon 2gb HD4870x2 Graphics Card
-WD 1TB Hard drive Caviar HDD
-ASUS DRW-1814BL DVD Drive
-Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Sound Card
-COOLERMASTER UCP 1100w PSU
-Thermaltake BigWater 745 Liquid Cooler
-BenQ FP222W 22 inch widescreen LCD Monitor

 

[smarteyeball]

You're honestly better off with the HX1000 or Quattro.

That Zalman only has 18A on the 12v rail, the Quattro 25A and the HX 40A.

 

[brayway]

What store would you be getting it from??

 

[samstar1412]

You're honestly better off with the HX1000 or Quattro.

That Zalman only has 18A on the 12v rail, the Quattro 25A and the HX 40A.

Thanks I was just exploring other options and thought I would ask here first before I made anymore decisions

What store would you be getting it from??

Most likely Super Billing PC ::SUPER BILLING - I-L@VE-PC:: they have a retail store in my region and their prices are pretty decent

 

[screwballl]

Just to chime in, I have a GA-EP35-DS3P and it is a great board but any of those you mentioned in the GA- series will work very well.

 

[samstar1412]

Just to chime in, I have a GA-EP35-DS3P and it is a great board but any of those you mentioned in the GA- series will work very well.

With those boards though, don't they run one PCIe x16 but the other PCIe runs at x4? That would be a huge bottleneck if i were to run crossfire, the Asus P5Q-PRO run PCIe at x16 with one card but with two it runs each card at x8 so that they are even.