1) Is that power supply aqequate for the rig I´m planning?

The power supply WATTAGE isn't what's most important. You need to look at the specs on the PS and make sure the AMPERAGE (ie 12A, 20A) on the +12V rails that will be suppling power to your graphics card is high enough as that's what gets folks in a pinch early on. Generally speaking, anything 600W and higher will have enough of a current (measured in amps) to provide juice to the card. My guess is that since you're buying a pre-built system from a company that specializes in PCs, they SHOULD know what they are doing. If not, make sure you have a warranty when the video card toasts your power supply and have them fix it.

2) Is that graphics card worth the upgrade from the 1024MB 8800GT or is the difference really not there atm?

Personally I use an 8800GT when I rebuilt my system for the ungodly recommended specifications for Age of Conan...and I can run 4 800x600 WoW copies without so much as a hiccup. Both the 8800 and the 9600 use the same G92 based graphics processor. NVIDIA uses the x8xx to denote when they switch graphics chips currently. Your performance for just about ANYTHING won't be too noticeable. I would stick with the 8800GT if it will save you some pounds.

3) I´m planning to put the OS on the 500GB hard drive and running two installations of WoW (one for the main, another for the slaves) on the Raptor drive. Is that the best idea for performance?

If you're running the installations separately (as I do) then having them on a dedicated (non-OS drive) that's roughly 35% faster disk access then yes, I would say how you plan on setting up your drives would be the best. But then again, WoW was designed in 2004 to run on a moderate system back then...which is an antique by 2008 standards.

4) Processor wise am I seeing a worthwhile difference from the 6600 that´s recommended for multiboxing. The rig will be used not just for WoW but for future games/music processing apps so is it worth spending that extra for the difference?

My brother in law runs a quad core Intel 6600, I run an overclocked AMD 5000+ Black Edition that was about $250 less and I keep up with him performance wise. I don't run many applications in the background (iTunes + 4 instances of WoW) and never use more than 35% of the processor's capability. That being said, I'll probably upgrade to a quad core if I need the 2 extra cores if I'm editing in game video, burning DVDs from TV captures, etc. If higher end applications are what this system will be used for down the road, in my opinion that would justify the extra for the quad core processor.

5) I´ve read something about problems with SLI (not somethingI know much about) with Nvidia cards - am I affected by that or is it only if you try to run 2 cards in XP?

SLI issues (as far as I know) only stem when running TWO cards in SLI mode. NVIDIA is sneaky. Both cards generally have to be not only the same model (8800GT and 8800GT, not 8800GT and 8800GTX) but sometimes from the same MANUFACTURER. I don't run SLI so I can't really comment any more than that. My 8800GT by itself chugs along quite nicely, and even though I pushed up the clocks, it doesn't get too warm inside.

6) I was determined not to upgrade to Vista for a long time given how long it took for XP to get its act together but I understand there´s less driver support for XP64 and I want that 8GB - I also do some heavy audio processing so I can´t get enough RAM. Is Vista chugging along pretty well now or should I go the XP64 route regardless? (My spidey-sense tells me I´m opening a can of worms here, heh heh)


When I built the system for my brother in law (late April), he insisted on Windows Vista. To my surprise, not only was the installation a breeze, it hasn't crapped out on him yet. I believe he went with the Windows Vista Home Premium with Service Pack 1. Only had to update a couple of drivers and uninstall some old software that wasn't compatible with Vista... and he wasn't using it anyways.


I hope this helps out some. I've been building systems for the better part of the past 10 years or so, and try to offer up opinions or suggestions based on MY OWN experiences. I don't work or get paid by any of them, so I have no reason to blast or sing the praises of any particular brand/type/manufacturer.... Hmm, that almost sound like legalese. I'm just an ordinary electrical engineer who loves to tinker.

If you have any other questions, PM me here and I'll try to get them answered for you.