Decivox

I am about to hit a milestone in my life pretty soon. I will be turning 18 (income tax and other expenses) and will be attending college. I am living with my parents and have been enjoying "expense free" income for some time now. By expense free I mean no rent, no grocery bills etc.

After this summer I will be a full time student in college and will probably have a car paying for insurance gas and etc. With all these added expenses to my part time job income, I dont think I will have the salary to purchase a new computer.

Ive had my current set up for the past 3 years, its only been recently Ive added my Opty and more RAM. My friends have all pretty much upgraded in the past month, and i can see a huge difference between performance. Ive been saving for something big for the past 3 months, since previous months income has gone to school savings etc, and I want to purchase a new computer with it.

My dilemma is, is that the Yorkfield Quad Cores will be coming out soon, and these 790i mobos that support DDR3 are out. Should I continue playing the waiting game? Ive been playing it for 3 months and its not too fun.

My planned build is:
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 G0
2x XFX GeForce 8800GT XXX 512MB or equivalent
EVGA Nforce 780I SLI Motherboard
Patriot Viper Extreme Performance 2GB DDR2 2X1GB PC2-9600 CL 5-5-5-12???
Antec 900 or CM 690?
Keep Current Power Supply, Hard Drives, DVD Drives, Tuniq Tower etc.

Trying to get a build that will last the 3 years that im in college.

Thanks for your opinions in advance!

Usedhippo

Looks like it will be a pretty nice build You might want to consider sticking with ddr2 for right now, I believe the general consensus is that its not worth the price just yet. Have you thought about going with 2 9600GT cards instead of the 8800GT's? They are supposed to perform about the same for a lower cost. Just some thoughts. Good luck with the build and have fun with it

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0rion

Since you're on a budget, I would suggest NOT waiting for the 45nm quads, DDR3, and 790i. Unless you go for the Q9650, which is still verry expensive, you wont be able to get high clocks out of the chip. the 9450 only has an 8x multiplier, and the 9550 only has a 8.5x multiplier. Also, DDR3 is still very expensive, and unless something changes pretty quickly, most likely when you're ready to buy the new stuff it'll still be prohibitively expensive.

The build you came up with looks pretty solid, but Id suggest either getting g.skill or crucial ballistix ram. You can pick up 4gb of either brand for under $100, and with Vista ultimate you'll want the extra ram to really make your system shine. I recommend the Ballistix 800 or 1066 stuff, but Im biased Either brand will serve you well.

pjlietz

I would strongly recommend getting a matching hard drive for a Mirror array, or an external back up drive. Way to often do I see people at work who's assignments or term papers are on their dead HDD. Other then that the above build should do you well.

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upgrade that to 4 gigs of DDR2 and you'll be set. Looks like a nice build.

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carl25

one 8800gt is enough
get some good pc6400 ram

Indignity

Wow, you just missed out on a weekend deal at TigerDirect(tigerdirect.ca) on an
EVGA nForce 780i SLI Motherboard CPU Bundle - Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 Processor 2.66GHz OEM

It's $599 now, was $499 over the weekend

Wait, just checked the .ca site & it's $499.97
http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applicatio...MBM-780I-Q6700

Rest looks very solid to me.. you'll always be able to dump the cards & get some of your $$ back when you are ready to upgrade. To me, video cards are a waste to spend tons on because they are going to be old news pretty quick.

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arekieh

get 4GB of ram,
If ur looking for the future
im guessing windows 7 will be just as much if not more of a memory hog,
id go with 4

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Truambitionz

Welcome to life.
Maybe you could get some cash from the leftover parts in your current rig.
Gas and insurance is a pain, but as bad as it is, the best advice I can give you is not to get a girlfriend. Then you'll really be broke

Either you wait it out and go str8 to a 790i for the ddr3 and future processor support or get a 680i with a Q6600. You won't miss much by not getting a 780i.

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AMD2600

Printer???? Laser. You really don't need anything more than you have right now, except for a better graphics card. Playing games to pass the time and relieve some stress. Also maybe upgrade ram to 2x2gig. I would almost want to buy an old cheap P4 with XP on it. That way if one craps out you always have a backup.