The case is more important than just aesthetics.You have hard drives, chipset controllers, voltage regulators, and memory that need to keep cool in addition to the GPU and CPU. You need adequate clearance for a large PCB such as that found on the 8800 series.

If you are looking to cut expense, run SLi 8800GTS rather than 8800GTX. The performance difference is minimal to non existent depending on the application.

That power supply is overkill.  An 850 watt model should do fine.

I would simply not count on any rig, regardless of expense, to keep up with gaming software for 7 years. 5 is *really* pushing it. Having said that, the selection of motherboard and CPU is decent, but the mainboard lacks official 1600 FSB support, which may prove to be a limitation down the road. I would hazard a guess DDR3 will also be the new standard within a year, two at the outside even in mainstream systems. I would concentrate on the here and now, and look for your best values if value for the dollar is what is important to you.

The physics card ... should be a feature you'll see built into every NVidia GPU that supports CUDA if their press release is to be believed. If this is indeed true, purchasing one of these would be like purchasing a 7.1 channel soundcard without an APU when your motherboard came with built in 7.1 channel sound. It's your call, but you're cutting expense in areas that would get you a greater performance gain.

Opinions vary on the HDD's. Some swear by the Raptors, others that own them say they would just get a couple of cheaper 160GB HDD's and put them into RAID 0 if they had it to do over again. Personally, I think it makes very little difference if you have 4GB of RAM to play with. It's not like you're going to have to use virtual RAM all that much. In that sort of configuration, I would drop in a couple of HDD's ignore RAID, and install my OS seperately which keeps things nice and easy if you need to upgrade OS, or re-install it later.

Liquid cooling an overclocked quad and two 8800 series GPU's on the same loop in a cramped case is a recipe for tears.

Upgrading the GPU's later on is easier if they are air cooled. Call and ask DSO what sort of results they have seen with their new stage 3 wind tunnel cooling in the 850i case for the sort of configuration you have in mind.

Yes, overclocking is something you can do for yourself.

There's no real downside to your OS and RAM selections, aside from the fact that some programs will not run in a 64 bit environment, and with only a single OS, you'll have no way around it.

Alright, I'll go with the GTS dual sli instead and get a bigger case.

Thanks I appreciate the advice and taking the time to give your recommendations.

I cut out the Physics card, hopefully the box has room for upgraded ones down the road though.

I was also able to cut some more fat and get this right at $4,000... with a small HDD and CPU only liquid cooling.  Still in progress.. not making a decision on this for 1 or 2 weeks but it looks like I'll be buying from Digital Storm at least :)

The 9800GX2 is just two GTS in SLI.. nothing special.

By that way thats just what ive gotten out of reading up on it and SLI. I could be totally wrong,im a novice at best when it comes to this tech crap. I just read up a lot on it when im about to dump some money into it haha. Ive learned how to research well....my problem has always been trying to find quality advisors for information.

Hey, that's alright... there is no apology needed.  Any conversation about the current technology is good information right now.  Especially since it's in relation to what's available on Digital Storm and to keep in line with my pricing.  Alienware and Falcon have less options (such as 64 bit vista and some better hardware) and are still $1,000 more.

Edited by Kain - 05 Mar 2008 at 12:48pm

Not to hijack, and on topic but..

My last question... why can't I upgrade to 8GB down the road if they use 4x1GB memory slots instead of 2x2 GB slots for the 4GB I'm getting now?

Or I could throw all 4  out and replace with 4x2...yes?