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Well after driving myself nuts over hardware and compatability issues here is what I will be ordering Friday.....

ASUS CROSSHAIR Socket AM2 NVIDIA nForce 590 SLI MCP ATX AMD Motherboard
Western Digital Caviar SE WD2500JSRTL 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
SONY 16X DVD±R DVD Burner With 5X DVD-RAM
SONY Black IDE DVD-ROM Drive
CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ Windsor 2.6GHz Socket AM2 Processor
ZALMAN 9700 LED 110mm 2 Ball CPU Cooler
SONY Black 1.44MB 3.5" Internal Floppy Drive
ZALMAN ZM-MFC1 Fan Controller Panel
Microsoft Windows XP Professional With SP2B
APEVIA ICEBERG ATX-IB680W-BL ATX12V / EPS12V 680W Power Supply
eVGA 512-P2-N637-AR GeForce 7950GT 512MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP KO Superclocked Video Card
ASUS 90-C1CHFA-HUAY1 PhysX Processing Unit 128MB GDDR3 PCI PhysX
OKGEAR 18" floppy round cable
Thermaltake 24" Blue IDE(ATA66/100/133) Round Cable

Total = $1793.03 shipped

I already ordered the Antec 900 case and 2 extra 120mm fans last week when NewEgg ran out of stock and it looked like Antec removed the "Buy" links from their web page....then 2 days later NewEgg had them in stock again...oh well.

I am going with a 7950gts card. After taking hard looks at the 8800 cards, and the power requirements and the overall costs, a 8800 series card and PSU would run $500 for the card, and $300 for the PSU, and $800 bones for 2 pieces of hardware is a bit much for now. Besides, I wont be going to Vista anytime soon so I really dont need DX10 right now.

Veg pointed out the new 65nm chips from AMD are out in 2 flavors. I looked at them and well was underwelmed. I'll wait prolly 6 months to see the mainstream 65nm CPUs and the cost/power/goodness comparasions.

One question I do have is....at this point....do I even need a floppy drive?

Shout out if you see any glaring errors.

you'll need the floppy drive for the sata drives (I Think).
Not sure where you'll put all those fans.
I have that same RAM. I like it.

Looks like a good system overall.

1 120mm fan goes in the side door over the graphics cards, one is for just in case

ya, i have the same case. I suppose you might need the fans with that hot amd proc. My build is cool enough without the hoover action.

get a usb floppy and never have to worry about it again... i have two, one stays at home and the other travels with me/my laptop. i still have legacy floppys, but as they die they don't get replaced.

Steel, you mean a USB flash drive right?

no, most bios now support usb floppy drives - you don't need to be in an OS to read files from the disks which allows you to do bios flashes, etc without a "legacy" floppy.

Um MOST if not all drivers come on CD's now. I have not had to use a floppy drive in years, even when dealing with my sata drivers. Ya at most I would get a USB floppy or hell for the purposes of the initial install, just grab the floppy drive from your old system, install drivers then just take it out again. The system I am on now is almost 4 years old now JUST when SATA came out, and it enver had to deal with floppy drives. I bought the system with a black flopy drive, and I think its been used maybe 3 times MOST, usualy to make a boot disk for dealing with a 98 machine.

it's not where the driver comes from, but in XP, if you needed a driver during installation, it wouldn't let you get it off a cd - it was floppy only. Steel's USB floppy is a better proposition than running ribbon cables to the mobo in a cramped case full of delicate and electrically sensitive components.

Thing is once installed you just disconect from the floppy drive and you are done with it. Most times tho I get my install of windows in first, then just install any required drivers form windows. Never needed a floppy disk for any installs any time recently. BUT there may be something required in you install buff. But wither USB or using a drive you have arund the house just as good in the end. The drive around the house is cheaper BUT you remove it afterworlds and you have to deal with cables on the MB. USB just plug it in and go, but it will cost you a few $ for it. You could also just buy a drive and toss it in as they are cheep. And in all honesty, how often would you even need a USB floppy drive after the install if you need it at all. I would not mind getting one, BUt I do lots of installs and everything, as I am a computer geek like Steel and Gator.


To be honest that last time I handled flopy disks that I can think of was when my brother any myself cleared out crap form the computer room and used the stack of OLD disks we had to toss at each other. no need for 98 Driver disks for a old fax modem thats long gone

only time i needed a floppy in the last few years, was to install raid drivers when i raided my 2 SATA drives. other then that i do use my floppy off and on to store things like a boot disk with bios updates. other then that, im thinking 'hmm free hard drive bay!'

rgr all, I'll get a usb floppy....just in case I need it.

Still vascillating back and forth on either a 7950, or 2 7950's in sli or a 7950X2 card...decisions.....decisions

links to the one you are looking at please.

eVGA 512-P2-N637-AR GeForce 7950GT 512MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP KO Superclocked Video Card......either a single or 2 in SLI or an eVGA 7950GTX2 card which is 2 512mb cards on one slot

Well how much of a advantage dose each give over the other vs there price. If its 30$ more for a few more FPs go for it. if its another 100$ for a few FPS, eh not worth it.

also think about it, if you are spending 500$ on these dual cards, maybe its not worth it as you can get into the 8000 series. I know I know power, but I am sure there well be new cards with resalable power requirements out soon enough. So maybe best to get say the 200-300$ card and say in a year or 2 upgrade then to a new toy.

ok with EVGA 01G-P2-N592-AX GeForce 7950GX2 1GB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Dual GPU Video Card, it pushed the build price up to $2k, but

Anyone have thoughts on the Ageia Phsyx cards? I'm wondering if i need it at this point.

Ok from what I read the games NEED to use the Phsyx SDK (Service development kit) ot the card dose nothing. We know GRAW uses this, but not many games take advantage of this. From what I understand ATI and Nvidia are putting more physics crap built into there video cards to combat this card anyway.


Now do note the unreal 3 engine uses it, as well as some others, so it is likely that there will be more games based on these engines so expect to see more for it in the future. As for do you need it, I would say no but its a nice toy when it gets used by the games. But again the 8000 series nvidia now have a physics engine as well (check wiki link for info on that)
Info I pulled

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PhysX

List of games

http://www.ageia.com/physx/titles.html

CoX uses them, which is what I play all the time now so.....

True BUT how much of a difference will it make. I would love to find pic's with and without it for comparisons.

oh well....its ordered and whatnot....$2k whooooooosh.....out of my CC lol