Help BHC flesh out his new build!

[BabyHeadCrab]

Here's the skeleton of my WIP.

CM Stacker 830 Case (already have it, won at a LAN event, plenty of cooling and HUGE)
8800GT (No idea what brand to chose, but all the stock coolers look absolutely shite), heard good things about this
Q6600 <-- possibility of replacement for stock cooler
~700gb HDD(s) need lots of multi-media storage
DVD-RW Drive
Creative X-Fi
Asus LGA775 mobo or any easy to use / tweak (Should I not go with Asus?)
2 to 4gb of DDR2 (thinking Corsair / G.Skill or Mushkin) <-- is it really worth going for 4gigs? I'd like this but 2x2gb configs are rare for LGA775.
600+ watt power supply (reliable name brands only, OCZ / coolermaster or something similar)
Windows Vista: Home Premium 64-bit

mouse - keyboard - mousepad

A minor overclock would be nice, though I never plan on anything too serious. If anyone has recommendations on specific brands or a cooler for the 8800GT, as I absolutely abhor the stock ones, It would be greatly appreciated.

Goal for the build: Multi-tasking (photoshop + CS + Messaging + WoW + multiple instances of firefox + MS Office apps + whatever else), reliably to play games of today at high settings, and games of tomorrow at medium.

 

[TechnoHippyChic]

Looks pretty darn good so far.

Might as well go for 4GB since you're planning on 64-bit. I'm a fan of PC Power & Cooling power supplies, and have had good luck with Zalman CPU and VGA coolers...

 

[Nemesis6]

For the goal you set, that processor is perfect. By the way, I don't see Half Life 2 on that list...? (Insert an angry smiley with a torch here)

 

[staticprimer]

Can't disagree with anything you've chosen there. A recommendation for you 8800GT, my 8800GTS and motherboard from eVGA and they are a superb company. Great one year warranty that covers overclocking out of the box, and if you register, it is extended to two years. Plus the parts perform excellently too.

 

[BabyHeadCrab]

Anyone have a recommended mobo + memory (keeping in mind that I want 4gb of DDR2, preferably with good timings / low latency). Newegg links are a plus.

Appreciate the recommendation statprimer, looks like I'll be going with eVGA for the vid card.

 

[Pesmerga]

Omfg, don't put in points into energy. Put them into vit or dex. Duh.

 

[BabyHeadCrab]

Omfg, don't put in points into energy. Put them into vit or dex. Duh.

I c whut u did thar, Pesh.

 

[2real]

anything by MSI or ASUS

 

[bigburpco]

Personally, I would go 32 bit and get 2GB DDR2 of quality overclockable memory like Crucial Ballistix or something.

If you want to overclock a quad, get a P35 or X38 chipset mobo. X38 is a slight notch above P35, with better CrossFire as well as support for PCI Express 2.0. It's also quite a lot more expensive. A mainstream X38 ASUS board (P5E) is more expensive than the highest class non-ROG ASUS board (P5K Deluxe). I would go P35; multi-GPU, PCI Express 2.0 and slight overclocking doesn't warrant the price jump for it IMO. Go with the P5K if you don't need major overclocking; otherwise go with the P5K Deluxe. The P5K Premium has SATA issues, so I would stay away from it. You might also want to consider other boards. The DFI top-end boards I've heard are good, and Gigabyte is a good budget brand.

Oh and if you want to overclock your graphics card and CPU, you should get HSFs for them. The HR03 GT and Ultra 120 eXtreme are excellent, but you'll also need an extra fan for the Ultra 120.

On power supplies; Cooler Master isn't a good brand for PSUs. Also have a look at this before making a decision.

 

[BabyHeadCrab]

Personally, I would go 32 bit and get 2GB DDR2 of quality overclockable memory like Crucial Ballistix or something.

If you want to overclock a quad, get a P35 or X38 chipset mobo. X38 is a slight notch above P35, with better CrossFire as well as support for PCI Express 2.0. It's also quite a lot more expensive. A mainstream X38 ASUS board (P5E) is more expensive than the highest class non-ROG ASUS board (P5K Deluxe). I would go P35; multi-GPU, PCI Express 2.0 and slight overclocking doesn't warrant the price jump for it IMO. Go with the P5K if you don't need major overclocking; otherwise go with the P5K Deluxe. The P5K Premium has SATA issues, so I would stay away from it. You might also want to consider other boards. The DFI top-end boards I've heard are good, and Gigabyte is a good budget brand.

Oh and if you want to overclock your graphics card and CPU, you should get HSFs for them. The HR03 GT and Ultra 120 eXtreme are excellent, but you'll also need an extra fan for the Ultra 120.

On power supplies; Cooler Master isn't a good brand for PSUs. Also have a look at this before making a decision.

OC'ing isn't a priority by any means, just something I'd plan to do to increase the usefulness of my components as they age.

Really what I want is a mobo and memory that last me for many, many years and allow for an insane level of multi-tasking and future upgrade-ability. I know I want 4gb of memory, but an enthusiast / tweaking board is not needed at all. I really can't stand spending more than a few minutes tweaking a bios before I want to pull my hair out.

 

[Fliko]

Just shooting at the dark; but if you wanted a mobo that's gonna last you many years PCI Express 2.0 would be a good idea, eh?

 

[Pesmerga]

There aren't PCI-E 2.0 mobos... there's only PCI-E x 16

PCI-E 2.0 describes the GPU itself, not any requirement of the mobo.