Building my first gaming PC - halp please!

[Lumograph090]

look at toms for a review on heat sinks, you won't need to spend $70 for a good one, in fact im sure that you will find one for $30 that performs as well as that $70 one

edit: I just looked, I would recommend the Scythe Mugen-2 Rev. B (not available at newegg, but many others have it in the $30-$35 range)

next, I like WD hard drives because of their warranty and return policy, they are willing to ship you a replacement drive before receiving your broken one - I don't know many other companies that do that, and their failure rate is about the same as samsungs/others

SLI right now performs better then crossfire (it's just more efficient), the % bonus from getting a second card is between 71 and 85% for sli and only between 30% and 71% for crossfire

consider that with a large or full-tower case, you might run into cable length issues and need longer cables or a cable extender or have problems routing the cables (keep your cables nice and organized with zip ties, and keep extra cables in an empty hard drive/cd bay so they don't block the airflow)

go for the pny cards if you like PNY, personally I like xfx because their warranty is twice as long, but they both perform the same

if you NEED dx 11, then only the 5xxx series radeon and 4xx series nvidia cards have that, but their price/performance just isn't good compared to the previous generation in sli or crossfire

let me ask you again, do you have a microcenter near you? you can save $80 on the CPU

like I said earlier, you don't need to have 2 hard drives right off the bat, you can add it in anytime later, but it's better both for cost and performance to have multiple drives, maybe you can even use the hard drive from your old computer (the one you were going to salvage a cd/dvd drive from)

edit: P.S., make sure you go register your products within 30 days so that you get the full warranty from the companies (I think you only need to do the graphic cards, but possibly the motherboard as well)

I just checked google maps and from what I can tell there is two Micro Centers about 2 hours away from where I live. I may check those out, well see though.

I'm definitely just going too go with 2x PNY VCGGTS2501XPB GeForce GTS 250.

I suppose if it comes down too it I can buy extra cables. Also, I'll take a look at perhaps a Mid level case and a different Heatsink.

 

[sqrage]

Avoid Western Digital harddisks.
They are failing recently.
Many people are complaining the failure of WD on my local forum.
Get Samsung SpinPoint F3. it is faster, cooler, and quieter.

IMO Western Digital are the only HDs to buy... Never had a problem with them in over a decade where I've seen pretty much every other brand of HD fail.

 

[Lumograph090]

IMO Western Digital are the only HDs to buy... Never had a problem with them in over a decade where I've seen pretty much every other brand of HD fail.

Yeah, everything I've read has supported this idea. I'm buying a 650gb WD Caviar Black and a 160gb WD Caviar Blue hard drive.