Rookie To PC Building

Champ

Hi all,
Never built a complete PC from scratch before so i hope you veterans would be so kind as to look over what i'm planning and give feedback / suggestions.:)

I do medium gaming and medium media encoding.

The core elements i'm considering from Komplett:
-Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 2.4GHz Socket LGA775, 4MB, BOXED w/fan
-ABIT AW9D-MAX, I975X, Socket-775,SATAII, Silent Otes,2xGbLAN,DDR2,ATX, 2xPCI-Ex16
-Tagan i-Xeye 420W, Dual Fan, Blue Light, 2xSATA, ATX/EPS, PCI-E, 20/24pin
-Gigabyte 3D Aurora GZ-FSCA1-AN Silver Aluminium Body (Without PSU)
-Western Digital Caviar SE16 320GB SATA2 16MB 7200RPM x 2 (RAID 0)
-BenQ DVD±RW burner, DW1655, 16x, Dual, LightScribe, Black, Retail
-OCZ Gold PC6400 DDR2 2048MB Dual Pack, w/two matched 1024MB PC6400 XTC DIMMs
-Club3D Radeon X1650Pro 256MB, GDDR3, PCI-Express, 2xDVI, Tv-Out, Retail x 2 (Crossfire)

My Own Comments:
-No immediate plans to get Vista, will likely stick with x64 for the long term.

-I was agonising whether to just get a single GeForce7600GT instead. However the 2 x X1650Pros aren't too much more expensive than the single GeForce7600GT and while the 7600GT will outclass a single x1650, 2 of them in crossfire should be able to give it a good thumping at a decent price:)

-I'm new to Crossfire so i've been reading up on it, with the x1650s there's no need for special hardware like "Crossfire editions" or bridges? Essentially SLI without the bridge i.e. handled by software.. i can just plug them into the PCI-Express ports, load up the catalyst drivers and i'm done?

Anti

To be honest, thats a ncie looking system. But i would still go for the 7600gt, and hopefully in sli. To enable you to do this you could get the E6300/E6400 instead of the E6600. This should save you enough to buy them.

K.O.Kiki

Seeing as 7600GT's are only about 33% more expensive than x1650pro's, I'm with anti on this -- single GPU is better.
You can probably even get a 7900gs for the price of a crossfire x1650pro setup -- which then means you can save money by buying a 965-based mobo, too

Champ

Thanks for the replies folks.

But i would still go for the 7600gt, and hopefully in sli.

Ah that was one of the very first things i looked into:) , unfortunately the i975 and P965 don't mix well with SLI offically.:( Yes people have gotten SLI to work unoffically in Windows XP, but there's virtually no unoffical resources getting x64 support.

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=32667

You can probably even get a 7900gs for the price of a crossfire x1650pro setup -- which then means you can save money by buying a 965-based mobo, too

Would you actually know that its only +1 euro more expensive?:D
You've convinced me to ditch the crossfire for the card so graphics card revised is:
-XFX GeForce 7900GS 480M 256MB GDDR3, Xtreme, PCI-Express, 480/1400Mhz, 2xDVI
Done a little reading and this particular variant performs almost like the vanilla flavoured 7900gts.:)
Probably should invest in extra cooling for the card as:
(A) Under load this thing can go up to 78 C
(B) RAM chips aren't covered by the stock cooler
(C) If last Summer is any indication of the heat to come next Summer, then this would be a prudent measure to take to prevent a possible meltdown.

Anti

Just add zalman cooler to it for 40€. Should keep it nice and cool. Your lucky your not getting a x1900xt. These can hit 100C under load.