Thread: Help me get a new computer!

Originally Posted by SneeBeezums

Core i7 are quad core. I'm not sure how much of a difference between US and Canadian currency would be, but here's some stuff I dug up:

Core i7 920 - $280
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115202

Gigabyte x58 Motherboard - $200 (185 after rebate)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128375

OCZ 6GB Triple Channel DDR3 - $100 (80 after rebate)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820227365

As for a heatsink and fan, I recommend a Xigmatek. You'll need this conversion kit ($10):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835233027

For this color ($25)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835233001

HDT technology provides better cooling on the CPU. Get some Arctic Silver and you'll be set.

All of this for $615 USD. That leaves you plenty of money to put a HDD of your choice and a case. Something like the Antec 900 or the Thermaltake Element S would be good. Or maybe a Coolermaster Cosmo. Get something bigger that provides plenty of airflow. Make sure your PSU will be strong enough to support the CPU

This set up will pretty much gobble up anything you throw at it.

Yeah but after the video card ($250) and psu ($120) alone youre looking at a price around 1k. For the i7 youre going to want to make sure it has active PFC.
The i7 and Q9550 are pretty similar running a single gfx card and you can save some money by going with a Q9550 setup as opposed to the i7. The i7 tends to do better with multiple gfx cards though. Keep in mind when picking a graphics card that it makes more sense to spend more on the video card because most of the time the frame rate is bottled not by the CPU, but by the graphics card. I think you can get like a GTX 280 for $250 these days. Or you could spend like $350 and get a 4870X2 which is a pretty godly card. The GTX and 4870 and 4870x2 are great cards/lines to go with. I mean if you already have a comparable video card though, you dont really need to get another one but maybe should get another to run in SLI with an i7 if you choose that path.

Originally Posted by SneeBeezums

You might want to step it up a notch. I believe the CPU requires 130W alone. Not sure how much your video card requires. I believe there are websites out there that will calculate how much you need.

http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculator.jsp
this works well if you dont feel like finding it out by hand