Anything unnecessary?

im sorry, you will need to explain a little better what you mean by "Anything unnecessary?" to get a proper answer here, if you mean unnecessary in the sense of: would my computer still do everything listed as needs and wants without any of this very expensive hardware? then yes, lots.

drop the os tweak, you wont notice it with todays cpus also if you need something that was disabled... A. re-enable your self whicvh you need to know how to, B. call ds for a walk threw. even if it is free it still isn't worth it.

drop vid card boost b/c it will create a lot more heat for only 3-7% increase in performance depending on app or game. it isn't like cpu oc which can see 90%+ increases in performance.

what photoshop will you be using? cs7? cs7 is one of the few programs ut that can handle hex cores if you do a lot of photoshop work then it is worth it. however if you mostly game there isn'ta  real point to it yet b/c they can use 2.5 cores max. so if you use programs that can't use all 6 the rest are sitting in a corner knitting and thats wasted money.

as a gamer you wont need anythign higher then 3.89 ghz after that you wont notice a difference. if your doing 3d movies, animation, folding, movie editing, medical research, science research ect then it may be worth it to go higher. think of a 2ghz cpu like a 120 watt lightbulb (now imagine 4ghz) they get hot which why they need cooling. no matter how much cooling you have that hot air is still going to getg dumped outside fo your case so it is important your room is also properly ventilated and/or cooled


lc: the lc you chose is very nice however you don't need to chipset for a stage 1 oc 2 or 3 yes it would be recommended.


storage: they key to perforamnce with this is to have a small fast drive in slot # 1. for example 40,80,120 gb intel ssd they are much much faster then trad hdd this will help with power consumption, boot up times, load times, install times, remove times, scan times. these are very fast how ever they cost $ which is while it is ideal to have enough for you os and apps. games optional. games that frequently load will see a improvement but other thern that in terms of gaming you wont see much. but for things like photshop ect you will see very nice bonuses.

then for #2 get a wd black caviar 1tb this is where you put everythign that needs to be stored. other games movies pictures work documents ect. if you ened more space add another one. i wouldn't go for the 2tb drives yet they have higher failure rates due to density issues which should be resolved in the next year or 2.

with only one of those gpus you only need a 750 watt psu 1k watt if your a lil worried about future proofing. it takes roughly 350 watts at max load. you would only need the 1200 watt for 2x gtx 480. keep in mind the avg apt/house circuit is how many watts? do you know? 1600! so you can overload your circuit if you have a lot of gadgets and lights running on that circuit. which is one reason why we don't like to give people more psu then they really need.

do you need sli? not unless you are running 2560 x 1600 as your resolution. 1920 x 1200 and below you will get good fps with the games.


Edited by Raif - 02 Oct 2010 at 10:45pm

yeah i meant 5... i am really bad with typos as you can see lol.

for the boost in heat for marginal performance across the boards nty. 3-7% in only a few fps which is marginal come to think about it is increasing vid cards temps worth 2-4 fps? not really.

you can get way better improvements from overclocking video cards, but the general idea on the forum seems to be that the cards are not overclocked very much by digital storm, which i dont know for sure...

Both of you are correct, and incorrect. lol

My "case" didnt have a 10+ c raise in temp 
The Antec 900 is almost open air, the cards may have generated more heat but in the 15x12 office it didnt make much of an impact.  And my games did benefit very well.  *I* was happy with the results and had no negative impacts to deal with so it was a win for me.

Originally posted by Raif lol nice one what about stability issues, from what i heard some apps/games will have issues with it and not even display a picture

Thats a great article Ender, I'll be following it *IF* DS ever gets the "Signature" systems on line for purchase  :