building my own custom

should I go thrrough this digital storm to build a custom or should i build it myself, this is what ive come up with so far, any advice or changes in anything are greatly appreciated.

Antec Twelve Hundred Black ATX Full Tower Computer Case

Western Digital VelociRaptor WD3000GLFS 300GB 10000 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM

ASUS M3A78-T AM2+/AM2 AMD 790GX HDMI ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail

BFG Tech BFGE981024GX2E GeForce 9800 GX2 1GB (512MB per GPU) 512-bit (256-bit per GPU) GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card

Thermaltake Toughpower W0132RU 1000W ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply - Retail

OCZ Reaper HPC 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model OCZ2RPR10664GK - Retail

MASSCOOL BLD-08025S1M 80mm Blue LED Case Fan - Retail

ZALMAN CNPS 9700 NT 110mm 2 Ball Ultra Quiet CPU Cooler - Retail

AMD Phenom 9950 BLACK EDITION 2.6GHz Socket AM2+ 140W Quad-Core Processor Model HD995Z***HBOX - Retail

TOTAL: $1,900

with tax/shipping i believe $2,250

dude thanks for the tips man just saved myself 600 bucks so far i think that was great help.  If anyone else has some advice please give.  And please specify why the intelq6600 is better than phenom.  From the specs i hear the phenom has hyperthreading which the intel doesn't i plan on overclocking so please give some more explaination.

Originally posted by Kliebor2 One reason not to go Phenom, in every gamer review I have ever seen Intel just plain crushed AMD in every benchmark, it is not even close. It is really quite sad. Dave

Just to look from a different perspective, the Phenom 9950 BE with an AMD chipset combo of 790 northbridge and 700 southbridge can overclock fairly well. Benchmarks aside, it is a good performer and the new mobos with the 700 SB open up the bottleneck that Phenoms once had.  FYI, the new deneb with such a mobo has been OC'ed to 3.2 GHz and rumors say that others have OC'ed it to 3.6 GHz! AMD isn't lagging as badly as marketing hype would have you believe. Statistics can be manipulated to change a story.

P.S. To answer your first question. My feeling is that if you have to ask whether or not to build your own pc, it's likely much better to let an experienced technician do it for you. They have the knowledge, resources, materials, testing equipment, and they do it all the time. Plus, it's hard to beat a 3 year warantee on a pc for no extra charge. Customer service based in the US is a big big plus, and you only have to go thru DSO for problems, whereas, if you build your own, you go thru the individual manufacturers for warantee service.


Edited by widdlecat - 15 Aug 2008 at 1:06am