Any comments/suggestions before I order?

This is my first computer build so I'm pretty excited about it. I just wanted to get some outsider opinions on my rig before I order it. I'm going to use it to 5box Wow, I wanted something that can handle Dalaran, busy server, lag free during peak hours. I wanted 8gb of ram, the new six core amd processor, two 500gb hard drives in a raid0 configuration, a 64 GB ssd drive to put Wow on, Windows 7, a decent looking case and a nice video card that supports multiple monitors that wasn't ridiculously expensive. After hours and hours (and hours) of research I settled for the Radeon 5830, not top of the line but not horribly expensive, and if it doesn't work as well as I hope I could always add another one with crossfire and use Innerspace to utilize the second video card. I was also debating on getting two 5770s but wasn't sure how much that would improve my performance vs one 5830. Everything I've read suggested one was better because of the heat and power issues and the fact that the second video card wouldn't be fully utilized, so one good card would be better than two mediocre cards. Everything ended up being right at 1400, only wanted to spend around 1200 but oh well.

Please comment/suggest away, this will be my first time building a computer, along with setting up a raid0 and working with a SSD drive, although from the articles and videos none of it is overly complicated.


AMD Phenom II x6 Thuban 2.8GHz 6x512 L2 Cache 6mb L3 Cache Socket AM3 125W Six-Core Desktop Processor
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103851

MSI 790FX-GD70 AM3 AMD 790FX ATX AMD Motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813130223

XFX Radeon HD 5830 1gb 256-bit DDR5 PCI Express 2.1x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card w/Eyefinity
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814150497

Kingston (4x 2GB) 240 Pin DDR3 SDRAM 1600
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820104167

2xWestern Digital Caviar Black 500GB 7200 RPM 32 MB Cache SATA 3.0GB/s
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136320

Western Digital SilliconEdge Blue 64GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (250MB/s read 170MB/s write)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820250001

Thermaltak Element ATX Mid Tower Computer Gaming Case w/ 850W Modular Power Supply
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811133175

And of course Windows 7 64-bit and optical drives but I didn't see a need to link those. I'll probably go ahead and order it tomorrow. Also had a question on whether or not to put Windows 7 on the SSD drive, I read that SSD drives can wear out quickly if information is constantly being added and deleted.

the new nvidia gtx460 with 1gig ram should be better/faster/cheaper then the good old 5830.

Looks very good.

I dont think your cpu will get stressed at all since you are bottlenecked by the gpu but its good to have something to go on in case you add in a second graphics card.

In Dalaran with settings almost maxed out I get over 95% GPU usage and around 20-23% cpu usage. FPS is around 30-40.
The graphic card is pretty much already at its limit and if I add in 4x toons with 15fps background then the card will need to sacrifice performance on main toon to display the 15x4=60frames per second for the alts.

For me adding a second card to render the slaves should give a substantial performance boost, however I bought a 5970 card (2x5850 chips on one board) and Innerspace can not use both chips on this card.

And now Im debating wether to sell my 5970 and buy 2x5850 or add in a second card for a tri-crossfire solution, the latter sounds sketchy in my mind and I bet I would get lots of issues with the stability etc.

For the moment performance is OK but it really bugs me that this computer should have far better performance then just "OK/Decent".

So, expect your cpu to have very low load and your gpu to be working full time, and also expect a nice performance boost (should you need or want it) if you add in a second card.

If cutting costs:

-You don't need SSDs in raid. One SSD is more than enough throughput to run 5 WoWs. Run you OS on a normal hard-drive, and run WoW on a dedicated SSD.
-More RAM is better. I would try to go with 12GB if possible.
-I personally like the amount of VRAM my video card has, and it's debatable that with 5 WoWs you may want to look at VRAM vs processor speed.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Fuzes

the new nvidia gtx460 with 1gig ram should be better/faster/cheaper then the good old 5830.

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Man I've been looking at the 460 the last few days and I am impressed after everything the 480/470/465 had to offer. It's a close match between the 460 and the 5830 but I'd say nVidia only because I'm an nVidia fanboy. The 460 also sucks up a little less power.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...ermi,2684.html

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Owltoid

If cutting costs:
-More RAM is better. I would try to go with 12GB if possible.

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16GB is his next step up if he wants to retain his dual channel setup as he is using an AM3 chip not a sexy i7. ;)