Advice on new i7 setup planned for July.

[Mokoi]

Hi, I know there's some hardware moinsters on these forums, and I have been building my own computers for years but I wanted to see what you guys thought would be the ideal setup for my needs and price.

I don't need the best of the best of the best, I want something that's excellent but not retarded expensive. ie: there's often a processor just a small jump in price above the last chip and then the next is a leap in price for a small jump in performance etc..

Here is the basic specs I am looking at, and have priced out.

Processor:
i7 chip, not sure which, the prices seem to vary every week and I'm not buying for a month. (likely the 920 since its the most cost-efficient)

Motherboard:
ASUS P6T X58 Motherboard - Could use some suggestions on this, I need a hearty MB with 6 ram slots and lots of sata.

RAM:
I want 12g of ram, so 6 2g sticks, and I am looking at Corsair and OCZ who have good low-latency ram. need advice on what to look for on RAM for boxing, I knwo RAM is very important and this is something I am not used to having to fuss with.

HDD:
these seem so cheap it seems silly to pick one, but I assume I need 32mb cache, now I have 3 HDDs currently, one with windows and 2 with WoW installs, I run 2 instance sof WoW off each install, and my performance is "ok" with all the settings down. What is the best performance people have
figured out? one HDD per install? wows on different HDD than windows? let me know, thanks.

Video Card:
nVidia GTX 275 - the 285 seems to be a $100 price jump here and pretty sure this is my best bang for buck. advice on video would be good.

Power Supply and Case.
Well I live in South Korea and some of the cases you can get back home are not available here, but what should I look for in a power supply? with my setup I see I probably need at least a 600w+ but if I add more HDDs for installs should I be safe and get the monster 1000w power supplys? This is my real unknown since I don't usually pay much attention to them other than, get a big wattage.

Operating System:
I want to use the new Windows 7, but I am sketchy on using something beta, can anyone give me advice and if they have a virus-free copy can you send it to me? or a link to a trusted torrent for it? thanks.

thanks guys for any advice you can give on this project, remember I'm not buying for over a month so there's no rush and the prices may change so I need a good idea on what I should look for in these components.

[Twyman]

I would look into Solid State Disks ... they are much more per gig but they are soo much faster too. I am looking into getting 5 SSDs. One fore each WoW client. Anywho just a thought...

[Rott]

Something like the following (doghousesystems.com multibox system) 8)

Thermaltake Armor MX + Chassis
Corsair 750W Power Supply
ASUS P6T Deluxe CrossFireX / SLI Motherboard ( Asus Rampage II Extreme afaik)
Intel Core i7 920 2.66 GHz processor
6 GB Kingston HyperX DDR3 1333 Memory (3 x 2GB DIMMs) mboard supports up to 12GB
1 x 500GB 7200 RPM WD RAID Edition II SATA drive
GeForce GTX 285 Video Card

64 bit OS

[Enndo]

I wouldn't use anything less than a 750 power supply for that setup. Also I would avoid the asus p6t deluxe, I did alot of research before I built my i7 and the reviews on the p6t were pretty bad, check newegg,tigerdirect,hardware canucks, toms hardware, you'll see what I mean, it seems Asus' quality conrtol has gone out the window. Alot of these boards are DOA or have various other issues that cant be resolved with anything other than replacing it. Some people do seem to have no touble with the p6t, but for me I read too much bad stuff on it to think its worth trying.

[Mokoi]

I wouldn't use anything less than a 750 power supply for that setup. Also I would avoid the asus p6t deluxe, I did alot of research before I built my i7 and the reviews on the p6t were pretty bad, check newegg,tigerdirect,hardware canucks, toms hardware, you'll see what I mean, it seems Asus' quality conrtol has gone out the window. Alot of these boards are DOA or have various other issues that cant be resolved with anything other than replacing it. Some people do seem to have no touble with the p6t, but for me I read too much bad stuff on it to think its worth trying.

What would you recommend in it's place?

[Enndo]

EVGA boards work great, mine posted the very first boot, and it has a lifetime warranty!

[puppychow]

keep in mind intel is releasing a new set of CPUs this September (was supposed to be released in June, but they pushed back since they have so much stock of i7s out there right now!) and are going to discontinue the current i7s after that. Even if the new CPus are overpriced it should drive i7 920 prices down a lot.

Otherwise rig looks good, currently the OCZ Vertex and Intel SSDs are pretty good bang for the buck, newegg even has a sale on the Intel SSDs today from 3pm-midnite, something like $250? Great price for it. The next gen of SSDs aren't due out for a year or so, so its a decent time to buy an SSD. You can put the OS or just WoW or both on the Intel SSD, dunno about the Vertex.

[keyclone]

looks like you have a good handle on your path to success. i'm not sure i could offer up much more that wouldn't jump you into the "best of the best of best (sir!)" price range real quick (SSDs could be a relatively cheap bump in performance, but be careful which brand you select)

when you do get the gear, please... take pictures of each stage and post. makes for a great story, and helps demystify the process for those less hardware savvy. plus we get to hear about the (almost) bleeding edge rigs and see how they perform (maybe we should have a 'featured' poster every 4-6 months doing just this... hmmmm...)

i'm looking forward to seeing how it goes.

good luck!

:thumbsup:

[Moorea]

Operating System:
I want to use the new Windows 7, but I am sketchy on using something beta, can anyone give me advice and if they have a virus-free copy can you send it to me? or a link to a trusted torrent for it? thanks.

Why would you want or risk a "trusted" torrent or any other source than the original one:

Get your copy there: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/win.../download.aspx (valid until July 09)

[Mokoi]

Operating System:
I want to use the new Windows 7, but I am sketchy on using something beta, can anyone give me advice and if they have a virus-free copy can you send it to me? or a link to a trusted torrent for it? thanks.

Why would you want or risk a "trusted" torrent or any other source than the original one:

Get your copy there: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/win.../download.aspx (valid until July 09)

OH, LOL.. i was under the impression they had taken their downloads down until next year lol.

when you say "valid" until July 2009, does that mean the download is valid, or the Operating System is valid, when will it shut down on me? I won't be buying my computer until July.. so.. what's that mean for me.