New Computer System

Ok its been three years since I last built a PC for myself and it was high time to build a new one.

I started off by doing price comparisons for the best parts out there for the most bang for my buck. I researched processors, memory, drives, power supply units, coolers, video cards and motherboards by utilizing the customer ratings at newegg.com, tigerdirect.com both sites have excellent shopping carts that let you do side by side comparison of products from different manufacturers and let you view customer honest ratings. And to be honest it was these customer ratings that really determined what to buy and from who.

I ended up purchasing a Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 kentsfield processor (2.42Ghz), a XFX nforce 7801 Sli motherboard and 4GB of Corsair ram (more on the ram later) For a case I decided to go with a Thermaltake Armour+ full tower case. and a Kingwin MAIS800Watt Power supply (this PSU has the nifty modular connectors that allow you to only connect the power cables you need instead of being stuck with a mess of cables you have no use for and end up blocking that all important airflow inside your case which increases your system temperatures.

Video Card...
For my video card I ended with a ZOTAC geForce 8800GT 5122MB 256bit AMp edition (AMP edition means its overclocked out of the box). I bought the ZOTAC version after comparing other manufacturers 8800GT video cards specs and made my determination off of the fact ZOTAC bundles a DVI to HDMI connector along with the DVI to VGA adaptor where as all the other manufactures included 2 DVI to VGA adapters (nice job ZOTAC)

Cooling...
For cooling my processor I bought a masscool heatsink w/fan as well as 2 Cyclo hard drive coolers and a cyclo RAM cooler along with the case fans my system runs very cool on air only (I still dont trust liquid cooling systems (LCS) to not ruin my very nice and expensive rig sometime in the near future...

Overclocking...
I was able to get my Q6600 up to 3.2Ghz with only unlinking the ram and applying a QDR of 1600 (FSB) and a multiplier of 8 trying to get it stable at 3.6Ghz with a multiplier of 9x was a no go (sad really I believe its the Corsair RAM I recieved one module is being reported by my PC hardware Wizard as a TwinX 300MHz 5300 when it is supposed to be a 6400 400Mhz
My processor temps over this past week have been a steady 45C with GPU temps around 50C and hard drive temps running between the 28C and 38C for the 5 Dives I have

Oh yeah the drives....
I have 2 Hitachi 500GB SATA 3Gbs matched pair drives 2 Maxtor SATA 200GB drives and 1 EIDE ATA 133 200GB Western digital for a total of 1.6TB (terabytes) or 1600GB of hard drive goodness.

All in all I am extremely pleased with my new "Beast" and I have seen a marked improvement in response times and performance from my old rig, so much so Im finding I have gotten in the bad habit of "babying" my machine and not trying to put too much of a load on it at any one time.
My old pc had a AMD XP3000+ with 1.5GB of DDR Dual channel memory on a Abit NF7S motherboard and while at the time I built it it was a mid end machine and sufficed for my needs I have found myself wanting some more horsepower so as to be more productive and get more done while working on graphics or web development projects for my clients.

All told I spent around $1700 and have at least a $3000 computer Id say that is a good day at the office and my credit card isnt even sweating...