Please review - comments appreciated

The Difference between Stage 2 Air Cooling and Stage 3 Air Cooling is that Digital Storm will over clock your CPU.  With the Q6600 it will OC to between 2.7 and 3.0 GHz.    To get a better chance at a higher over clock you should go with the A1 revision Mother Board.

Thanks for the feedback.

^^ I agree, I would also go with the 8800GTX, plus that gives you some $$$ to either save or add something else.   you could get that soundcard you had on your first post if you went GTX instead of Ultra.  To each there own though, some people love the Ultras but for me the 8800Ultras are so much money for just one card.  I could buy just a regular desktop at bestbuy with the price of one Ultra LOL.

I've got liquid cooling on my CPU only, and I have the Ultra case (which, if you look, is pretty wide open - practically mesh - with almost no noise-dampening ability).  It gurgles loud enough that I can hear it over the various fans that are still in the case (powersupply, GPUs, misc. case fans), but it's a gentle gurgling, and it's not constant.  Honestly, it took some getting used to - not because it was loud, but because it's just an unusual noise for a computer to make.  Sorta reminds me of those relaxation waterfall things they shill at Sharper Image or something.

As long as you have a case with good airflow (Ultra/Extreme) and don't plan to crazy-overclock your GPUs, liquid cooling on the video cards is probably not needed.  You can still OC the GPUs a little on air, and liquid cool the CPU where you're likely to want/need the overclocking in the long-term.  Not having to monkey with a liquid cooling system also makes video card upgrading a lot easier in the future, whereas you're probably not going to upgrade the CPU until you're ready for a whole new machine (which, in turn, makes it an even more attractive component to invest in and overclock).

If you think this machine is going to need to last you 7 years with some selective upgrades, then the things you'll probably want to invest in are:

* Case
* Power supply
* Motherboard
* CPU

since these are the things (at least in my personal experience) that, by the time you need to upgrade them, you're more or less going to get a new machine.  (Changing CPUs in 3-7 years almost certainly means a new motherboard for a different CPU socket format, which probably means new RAM and possibly a new case for a different form factor, getting a new case probably means you need a new power supply and now you're to the point where you may as well buy a whole darn new one.)

The things you're most likely to replace over 7 years are:

* GPU(s)
* RAM
* Hard disk(s)
* Soundcard
* Optical drives

in roughly that order.  I'm in the same boat - my DS machine is going to have to serve as an upgrade platform for years to come, I'm afraid - so that's why I made sure I got a great case, a larger-than-currently-needed PS, the best possible motherboard, and the highest-end quad-core, overclocked and liquid cooled.  As I said before, unless there is a failure, replacing any of those things probably means replacing all of them anyway, so I might as well build a system around those core components, upgrading video, RAM, and disk around them as needed.

Just my $0.02.


Edited by Stonevulture - 23 Oct 2007 at 8:49am

I dual boot xp/vista on my soon to be replaced rig and all I had to do to get the Audigy 2 zs to work was get the latest drivers.