Time for a new PC

[Freddie]

With regard to your starting point --

The 9800 GTX isn't as good as either the HD4850 or HD4870 from a bang-per-buck point of view. I would pick one of those new cards instead (which one depends on how much you want to spend).

The CPU is the sweet-spot chip for 5-boxing WoW. Good choice.

I think a cheap-but-high-quality P35 motherboard is the right way to go, but I can't comment about that particular board. (I think Gigabyte's high-quality line with solid state capacitors is very good, but I don't know anything about the Asus board you picked out.)

The memory may be faster than you need.

You didn't include a big hard drive. The Western Digital AAKS series are excellent, either the 640 or 750 GB models.

I love Lian Li cases and that one's gorgeous. However it appears from the photos that in order to get into the case, air has to go through a bunch of little slots and that the front fan is partially obstructed by your hard drives. Doesn't sound like great air flow. With your system this could be bad because the HD4850 and HD4870 [edit: oops, only the 4850] exhaust their heat into the case, so they requre good air flow. One of the customer reviews on Newegg (I only read a few of them, you might want to read them all) says the case overheated with two video cards in SLI. You'll have only one card but at best you're not going to have much margin. I would consider getting a different case with better air flow.

The power supply is a poor choice imho. It's not top-quality and it's bigger than you need. I would get a 550 volt [edit: typo, I meant watt] Seasonic or Corsair.

[Caspian]

Thanks again for great feedback!
I am planning on a different PS and going to the 4950 ATI card. I will probably be going to a different case as well, I have a buddy that highly recommends one that I can pick up at Fry's on sale, I don't remember what it was though. I need to update my wishlist, I'll get to that tonight.

I have used ASUS and Gigabyte boards in the past and have been happy woth both of them. I was just browsing newegg and this one had the features I was looking for at the right price so I picked it.

I won't need a large HD in this machine. I already have a machine that acts as a file server for the home network. I also have 2x 350Gb 3 MB/s Seagate that will be RAID 0'd. This machine won't be used for email or web browsing, not even to download addon's.

I am not sure I understand why the RAM I picked is too fast. I thought I would want it to match the FSB speed of the MB. Is that not the case?

Thanks again!

[-silencer-]

I am not sure I understand why the RAM I picked is too fast. I thought I would want it to match the FSB speed of the MB. Is that not the case?

It's not the motherboard that determines the FSB. It's the CPU. Here's how default speeds work:
The Q6600 is a 1066MHz FSB CPU, but that's quad-pumped. Which means the actual FSB of it is 1066/4 = 266MHz. That's the actual FSB the motherboard will use with that CPU at default speeds. DDR RAM is double-data-rate *ah ha!*, which means it runs at 266MHz * 2 = 533MHz at default 1:1 memory:FSB divider. So, at default speeds, your motherboard will run at 266MHz, the RAM at 533MHz, and the CPU FSB at 1066MHz. Since the CPU runs at 2.4GHz (2400MHz) and the FSB is 266MHz, you have a CPU multiplier of 2400 / 266 = 9x.

Now, the reason we get faster motherboards and memory than default speeds is to allow for overclocking, which is risky for those who don't know / respect the risks that come along. If we use our motherboard overclocking utility to bump that 266MHz to 400MHz, our CPU will now be at a 1600MHz FSB (up from 1066MHz), our CPU clock speed will now be at 3.6GHz (400 * 9x), and our memory will now be at 800MHz (400MHz x 2) at a 1:1 memory:FSB ratio. Of course, kickass cooling will be needed to run a Q6600 at 3.6GHz without problems.. and that's *if* it will even be stable at that speed.

If you don't understand this far, or don't want to deal with the risks associated with overclocking (like ruining CPU / motherboard / memory / more..), then just get a Q6600, a P35 motherboard that supports it at 1066MHz, and DDR2-533MHz memory. I usually get DDR2-667/675 CAS2 memory to have lower latency and some 'cushion' room even if I leave it at stock 533MHz speed. You *can* get faster memory and run a higher memory:FSB ratio, but there's not a significant performance gain. For example, I had my E6600 at stock speed (266MHz FSB), on a 965P motherboard, with Corsair DDR2-675 C4 memory. Since I ran my memory at 5:4 memory:FSB ratio (333:266), everything was stock but the memory ran at 666MHz instead of the default 533MHz for my CPU. This is called asynchonous-mode when it's not a 1:1 or 2:1 ratio, and performance benefits really aren't significant since you'll have to wait clock cycles to read data anyway. There's a huge article at anandtech.com a few years ago that explain all this with DDR2 memory..

[Caspian]

Excellent explanation. Thank you very much!


EDIT: I also have updated my list based on the feedback I have received. Thanks again!