thanks guys. I changed the case, and managed to cut some fat. The final price was under $1300.
I went with a cooler case (p182 instead of cosmos). I also decided not to get an after-market heatsink or fans until I see how how the system runs at
stock. I don't intend to overclock, so hopefully it won't be an issue.
I also went with the 8800GTS 512, because it was a little faster than the 8800GT, and it was made with it's own cooling. I've read in almost every
review that the 8800GT demands some type of extra fan or cooling, and just went with the complete solution.
I have to admit, if I was brave enough to do liquid cooling, I would have went with that... maybe next time.
Here was the final setup:
ADD ON FW 1394 SYBA| SD-NEC-4F RT - Retail (Qty=1, Price=$12.99)
VGA EVGA 512-P3-N841-A3 8800GTS 512 - Retail (Qty=1, Price=$359.99)
CASE ANTEC|P182 BK RT - Retail (Qty=1, Price=$139.99)
PSU ROSEWILL|RP550-2 RETAIL - Retail (Qty=1, Price=$56.99)
MEM 1Gx2|KST KHX6400D2LLK2/2GN - Retail (Qty=1, Price=$99.99)
MB GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3L P35+ICH9 - Retail (Qty=1, Price=$99.99)
CPU INTEL|C2Q Q6600 2.40G 775 8M R - Retail (Qty=1, Price=$274.99)
HD 500G|SAMG 7K 16M SATA2 HD501LJ - OEM (Qty=1, Price=$109.99)
DVD BURN SAMSUNG|SH-S203B % - OEM (Qty=1, Price=$29.99)
S/W MS WIN VISTA 32BT HMPRE 1P DVD% - OEM (Qty=1, Price=$109.99)
Total: 1291.91
oh, and as for vista... I had to. I develop, and some of the projects demand vista. I still have 2 other computers running XP though.
Originally posted by sardion2000
Yeah I agree, don't use Vista we all gotta force the video game companies to support the newest OpenGL which looks waaay better then DX 10.1
Vista supports OpenGL already.
blogs.msdn.com...
We get a lot of questions along the lines of “Why did Microsoft drop OpenGL support from Windows Vista?” that leave us scratching our heads.
Microsoft doesn’t implement hardware-accelerated OpenGL directly – we offer a mechanism that allows hardware vendors to integrate a
hardware-accelerated implementation of OpenGL (called an ICD or installable client driver) that utilizes their hardware into Windows. This has been
the case since Windows 2000, and hasn’t changed much in Windows Vista.
[edit on 6-1-2008 by scientist]