Rate my build 2

OK, I made some modifications to the last PC build I posted on here. I haven't purchased anything yet, so heres what I came up with respectively keeping the price under 2k American:

Case: Apevia X-Jupiter Jr. 420 Watts Case (I love this case) with 2 case fans.
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 @ 2.4GHz 1066FSB 8MB L2 Cache 64-bit
Mobo: Asus P5N-D nForce 750i SLI Chipset LGA775 FSB1333 DDR2 Mainboard
RAM: 2GB (2x1GB) PC6400 DDR2/800 Dual Channel Memory (Mushkin Xtreme w/ Heat Spreader)
Vid Cards: Dual (2) Superclocked NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB 16X PCI Express cards.
Power Supply: Thermaltake Toughpower 700W Power Supply
Thermaltake MaxOrb Enthusiast CPU Cooling Fan
250GB SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 8MB Cache 7200RPM HDD
Creative Labs SB Audigy SE sound card
Intel Pro Gigabite 10/100/1000 Network Card
PCI Wireless 802.11g 54Mbps Network Interface Card (i have my reasons)
Professional Wiring for All WIRINGs Inside The System Chasis with High Performance Thermal Compound on CPU
A few USB 2.0 ports
And Windows XP Home with SP2.

And I didnt get an optical Drive because I already own a pretty good external Plextor one. Plus it's better for heat spreading

 

Component choice is mostly decent now, but the video cards are BAD. That's not to say they're slow, but the new 512MB versions are cheaper, and MUCH faster. On a component by component basis:

Case: Decent size, not to my taste, and Apevia build quality is soso, but it's better than a few cases. Make sure you bin the PSU it comes with.
CPU: Good
Motherboard: I'd avoid. The Prececessor to that board was appalling. This one might not be the same, but to avoid risks I'd go with something like an XFX 680i board.
RAM: Mushkin stuff is good, but in a PC of that calibre, go with Crucial Ballistix PC8500, much beter.
Graphics cards: Get NVIDIA Geforce 8800GTS 512MB G92 cards instead. Also, you don't need to get EVGA SuperClocked ones, the standard ones will do, you can overclock them yourself in rivatunr.
PSU: Good
CPU cooler: Poor, go with a Freezer 7 Pro or a Thermalright Ultra 120, using a Scythe S-Flex fan.
Hard disk: All drives have those stats these days and most have bigger cache sizes, that's meaningless unless you tell us who makes it.
Sound Card: Good
Network card: That's integrated into your motherboard you realise?
Thermal compound: Make sure it's Arctic Silver V.
OS: XP SP2, a wise choice.

At current: 6/10, 5 if the hard disk is a Maxtor.

 

Are the vid cards really worse? That sucks >>

 

the older 320 and 640 8800GTS (G80) are weaker than the newer (G92) 512 8800GTS and 512 8800GT.

they may have more memory, but the gpu core is weak, compared to the updated ones.

 

The OLD 8800GTS are overpriced for their performance. The 8800GTS 512 is MUCH better, MUCH MUCH better, so only a little bit more.

I personally think two 9600GT in SLI will work fine for you.

 

Not bad but if you going to be using this for gaming I would have both vista and xp installed on there so I can run games at DX10 and use my regular XP Pro. Just and idea. Oh yeah if you got the cash get a western digital raptor, there nice. WD all the WAY for mee I love WD never failed me before.

 

Well indeed, I've only had one problematic drive from WD so far, and out of a total of 9 that's not bad. Avoid the 150GB Raptors though, as I say, they're unreliable.

 

Apparently you get better framerates though with XP. I'm pretty torn between XP and Vista right now.

 

Framerates are better with xp but it is a very minimal difference. I have ran both on the same system and there was just not that much difference. I settled with vista and have been very pleased with performance.