Honestly, I see no benefit in expensive soundcards.

My onboard sound works just as good as my fancy stereo consoles.

I notice an insane amount of difference in sound quality between my onboard and 30$ soundcard. I don't dare think how well the more expensive ones do.

The only antec case worth mentioning is the 300, and that's shit IMO. Lian Li is top tier on cases. Since you're going all out, remember this: Cases are old tech. They won't be dramatically improved in the near future. They last forever. If you get a new computer, you can keep the old case.

While Lolicont is an asshole, he still give some good options.

For the audiophiles out here, nothing is good.

See? 590 and 690 are both there. Best non-Lian Li cases around.

The problem with most non Lian Li cases is their inclusion of plastic on the face. CM 5/690 are ridiculously good for the price. However, price is no object for you, so do yourself a favor.

Oh yeah, water cooling is pointless.

Gigabyte makes good mobos, so I've heard, but chalk another one to DFI, as mine has done well for me. A very nice part is the hex display which tells me what part of the booting sequence I am on, and if it gets stuck, I can easily diagnose the problem. DFI is a much smaller company but has always been well respected. As for the "they ship defective parts" comment of your friend: keep in mind I've had 5 nVidia cards break on me or someone I know, and 0 ATi cards break, with slightly more ATi cards being used than nVidia. That doesn't mean nVidia sucks.

watercooling is for when your sli/cf gpus are choked for air or you prefer a quieter comp. if you're not going for that, don't even bother. its quite a bit of work - to do it properly.

Liquid cooling is for when you can't get your components cool enough on air if you're OCing...

It is far from useless. And it isn't hard to do at all if you just go for full rig submersion.

My mobo (a gigabyte) also has a 2 digit hex POST code display. I've had one ATI card break on me.

I like nVidia cards better than ATI.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jun 25 2009, 3:25 pm by Excalibur. Reason: Useless post, see response.

Why? Posts like this are not only pointless but should be spam. I'm giving you a point for it.

Anandtech, a respected tech site, just put out their GPU buying guide for this month. Nvidia was not preferred in a single price segment due to their high prices for lower performing cards in comparison to ATI. My 4870 1GB cost me 152$ 4-5 months ago, which was a steal, and at the time NV could offer me nothing near it's performance for the price. You can like whatever company you want to like but you might as well be spamming LOL DICKS if you're going to make such a pointless one liner with a basis of fanboyism.

The one thing in that nVidia shines in is that there are open source (and therefore 100% Linux compatible) drivers for most of their cards, if not all. Most ATI cards won't have that, so if you're running Linux you won't be able to take advantages of most of the GPU features for things like Compiz-Fusion.

Iam contributing by giving my opinion. And if you had something to say about it, act like a mod and use private messaging instead of posting it.

I cant even begin to start out how StarEdit.net fails by making Excalibur a mod.

Not only that, their logo looks way better than ATI's- which matters the most for most people.

Both of ya, shut the fuck up, and keep it out of this thread. Thanks!

If Praetor is going to piss his money away, let him buy 2 GTX 295s for the absolutely best performance he can get right now. Of course, that'll run him at least $900, but then he can boast to his friends about how fast he can spend money.

For a case, I've had wonderful experiences with Cooler Master and Silverstone. The Silverstone TJ07-BW case is the strongest case that I've ever laid eyes on (I have stood on it to reach something too high up from the ground, and I've used it as a seat when all the chairs were taken). I have a CM Cosmos, and it's just very appealing to me aesthetically. Lian Li cases have always seemed a little cleaner and sharper, but I definitely prefer curves in my cases.

Holy shit, a post that gives a valid reason for one being better than the other and I didn't post it? Wow.

I could just have easily have posted 'I like cake' and it would have been the same quality as yours. If you're going to say 'I like so and so' make it 'I like so and so because', and if you'd like to tell me how to do my job you can PM me. Actually, if you don't like how I do my job, I can just show you the door and save us both some trouble.


You completely disregarded the entire point of this section, which was that ATI is kicking serious ass. Way to fail at replying. Also uh, see that little globe? That's administrator, not moderator.

Besides making mouth breathing droolers go OHHH SHINY I don't see what logo design has to do with it.

You first? If you had just replied to Dazed I'd have let this go, but my post was completely valid.

Some of my responsibility when I design builds is to make sure money isn't being blatantly wasted, however I have to do that while still giving him what he asked for, which was a large amount of RAM and multiple GPUs.

Hey, I'm prepping my final decision on parts before I order, is there anything that you would change from the original build suggested for me?

I noticed this deal on a monitor that seemed like quite a steal:
http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3326540&CatId=2318
Should I get one of these and 2 of the other ones?

I think I do want a sound card, even if it is pretty cheap. I don't think I will get speakers, as I will just use a headset.

Thanks for your help

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jul 11 2009, 5:10 pm by Praetor.

Choosing my own sound card was a pain in the ass, simply because it's such unfamiliar territory. Eventually, I went with the HT Omega Striker 7.1 for $90. No complaints. I also teamed it up with a set of Logitech Z-2300 speakers, and am enjoying my thumping sound system. I didn't go for a 5.1 system due to lack of space.

I would recommend speakers if only for the simple fact that headphones wear on the head/ears after a time, no matter how well-padded (unless you're using earphones, but I personally cannot stand sticking crap in my ear canal like that). You may be in a living situation where speakers simply are not an option, so this may be a moot point. Of all hardware, however, speakers are likely the one piece you can always carry over system after system.

Speaking of carrying over, technology will always be improving, but certain pieces have a much longer lifespan. Those are the ones I'd favor my money on. Just food for thought.

I'd suggest not going for an i7 Extreme/Pro, in terms of cost/performance you'd be better of with a vanilla high-end i7.
i7 processors only take DDR3, so buying 12GB is extremely expensive. I'd suggest 8Gb, as that should be more than enough for anything.
nVidia cards from the GTX200 line have both Aegia PhysX hardware and CUDA acceleration built in, so I'd suggest a GTX285/290 over an HD 4850/4890.
Three monitors is really excessive, unless you have some sort of specialist interest (digital/3D arts, music composition) . I'd invest in two monitors and a sexy keyboard and mouse instead.
Watercooling is a bitch to set up and keep running, and it's also rather expensive. I'd invest in a good heatsink, as the i7 runs quite hot (up to 80C under load). Otherwise, you should really have no need for watercooling, as a good case with enough chassis fans will keep your components cool.
Some Asus motherboards come with a tiny linux distro loaded on EEPROM (I believe) so you can access the internet and the like without a running OS. Great feature, if you ask me.
Get a good headset rather than speakers if you are going to gaming, IMHO. Voice communication is nice, and speakers echo, so yeah. If you plan on using your PC in a home theater-like setup, invest in a good sound card and speakers.

EDIT: Looking at these i7 processors:
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115212
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115211

The i7 extreme is over a thousand dollars, which buys you increased QPI speed and a small clockspeed increase. The QPI is essentially an FSB on roids. I have a friend that owns an i7 920 and he rarely, if ever, is above 40-50% total processor load, even while running UT3 on max settings. So really, there's no reason to buy an Extreme. You could probably get away with a 920, even.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jul 12 2009, 6:46 pm by Dr. Shotgun.

800:1 contrast ratio is terrible.

Correct.

You mean compared to 1000:1? Unless you've compared the two or know of a review that has, you can't really comment on it. (I haven't really looked into it, btw) Also, contrast ratio is partly dependent on the current brightness setting of the monitor. The quoted contrast ratios on monitors may be for less-than-ideal brightness settings.

I would definitely look for reviews comparing the contrast ratios, though. However, if I had to guess, I'd say it might not quite have as dark of blacks as some monitors. That's all the contrast ratio is really about -- how dark the black is compared to the white at a given brightness setting.

Note: I do not know of any LCD monitors that have a real contrast ratio better than 1000:1 (in their specs).


As far as using a headset for voice communication during games, personally I'd prefer to have the game audio through the speakers and the voice through the headphones on the headset (with a headphones style that lets me hear outside sounds). One reason for this is that I can easily adjust the volume dial on the headset if I'm having trouble hearing someone, without the game audio increasing volume as well.

This can be accomplished if you have at least two audio output devices available. I don't know about sound cards, but I think most Realtek HD Audio on motherboards can make the front panel audio be separate input/output devices than the connections in the back. When using a separate sound card as the default, you can also still use the on-board audio in programs that let you select it, so it could still be used for this purpose even in that case (but without having to tell the on-board audio to separate front and rear, since you probably wouldn't be using the on-board rear connections anyway).

Post has been edited 7 time(s), last time on Jul 13 2009, 12:36 am by ShadowFlare.