Honestly, I'm flattered. It also makes me happy that the people who take the advice end up happy with it. I listen to the requirements, pick solid parts from reviews and build the sorts of systems that I'd like to have (going by the stated requirements), but it's all vicarious, so it's good to know that practice matches the theory. And yes, you two*, if my batting average stays this high I'll seriously start thinking about doing this as a sideline, if not a full career.
Right, then. 2hrs of research later, we have the following:
First, the bad news. You simply
must wait another week or two before you start buying stuff. Sandy Bridge is about to be officially released for sale on January 9th, and it is a
big step up from the older Nehalems. Also, it is a new socket (LGA 1155), which should help you stay more modern than the 'older' (by all of about a year) LGA 1156 and LGA 1366 Nehalem/Westmere sockets. Building a brand new 1156/1366 system right now would make about as much sense as buying a brand new VCR. It is a new architecture, so nobody knows if there will be any late-breaking revelations, but for now the test results are clear: If you are building a new system right now, you should choose either AMD AM3 or Intel Sandy Bridge. For gaming, Intel still holds the lead, so Sandy Bridge it is. There isn't enough data yet on AMD's next chips for me to make any kind of guess how well their Fusion line will perform, except to say that I think getting good performance out of it is going to mean rewriting software to take full advantage. We'll see.
After making that decision, and taking your budget into account, the rest pretty much falls into place.
(Prices are as accurate as I could get seeing as how some of these things aren't actually released yet)
270.00 MLB - P67-based such as Gigabyte's GA-P67A-UD5
-P67 allows multiple lanes for SLI/XFire, H67 does not. Easy choice.
-Make sure to get a board that allows for x8/x8 slots rather than x16/x4 or x16/x1.
225.00 CPU - Core I5-2500K
-The 2500 is right under the top-of-the-line 2600, but costs half as much.
-The "-K" suffix means the multiplier is unlocked to allow for clock speed adjustments.
40.00 HSF - Zalman CNPS8000A
-Quiet, inexpensive, and will help keep the surrounding voltage regulators cool, also.
NOTE: I could not confirm 100% compatibility with the Gigabyte MLB (since it's not out yet),
but Zalman's site does not have any warnings about socket area clearance.
100.00 RAM - 2x4GB high-quality (CAS 7) DDR3-1333 (PC3 1066x)
-No real difference in application performance between 1333/1600 to offset the increased heat/power.
-Latency is what matters for gaming. Try to get CAS8 or even CAS7 if available.
150.00 OS - Win7 Pro 64-bit OEM
-My Windows OS of choice for any build these days.
220.00 PSU - Seasonic X850
-Good power efficiency and plenty of juice for lots of drives and a pair of hungry GPUs.
400.00 GPU - ATI 6970 or NVIDIA GTX 570, your choice
-Both of these cards trade performance depending on the benchmark, so make your choice with these:
ATI 6970:
-Larger framebuffer (2GB v. only 1.25GB on 570) means more/bigger monitors, higher quality textures.
-Better OpenCL support (if that matters to you).
-Supports HDCP sound over HDMI, no secondary audio cable needed.
(I'm not sure if the 570 has finally gained sound over HDMI, I couldn't find anything that confirmed)
GTX 570:
-Slightly faster framerate (on average) in most games.
-Supports CUDA and PhysX
-Lower noise and temperature than 6970 (but same power usage)
------- ---
1405.00 SUB - System price
95.00 XTR - Budget surplus
Reuse your old ATX case, DVD, HDDs, etc. and replace them later (if you want). If your current PSU is beefy enough, you can put off the Seasonic purchase until later and free up an additional 200 or so.
A year from now (when prices come down!), either replace your system drive with a pair of good,
enterprise-level SSDs in RAID0 to eliminate the HDD bottleneck OR add a second graphics card for SLI/XFire. Then do the other one the year after. Assuming none of your parts have failed by then, you should have 3 years of awesome followed by 2 years of pretty good.
Make sure you let us all know how it turns out. Yes, it's going to be faster than your current rig (no matter
what you currently have, I'm sure), that's a given. The questions is, how
much faster.
--Patrick
*You know who y'all are. And thanks for the nudge.
