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Well after much angst and pre-buyer's remorse I went ahead and ordered a new rig. If I had ordered it sooner I would have had it to play with while I was off for the holidays, but I couldn't bring myself to pull the trigger until the last minute. Oh well.

The old rig will get a cheap vid card installed (the GTX260 will go into my bench/LAN rig) and I'm selling it to a friend of mine who's going to use it at his office.

CPU: Intel(R) CoreT i7-860 2.80 GHz 8M L2 Cache LGA1156 Quad Core

Mobo: Asus P7P55D LE Intel P55 Chipset DDR3 LGA1156 ATX Mainboard w/ 7.1 HD Audio, GbLAN, USB2.0, SATA-II RAID, 2 Gen2 PCIe X16, 2 PCIe X1 & 3 PCI (CrossFireX)

Memory: 4GB (2GBx2) PC1333 DDR3 PC3 10666 Dual Channel Memory (2 slots open to upgrade to 8Gb later on)

Video: ATI Radeon HD 5850 PCI-E 16X 1GB Video Card

OS: Windows 7 Pro x64

Nice system. I'm still happy with my quad 2.4 that I built 2 years ago, and with my old 8800 GT. In fact, I'm still running the original video drivers that I installed back in Dec 2007 - 169.02 LOL. Still works because I have limited my game playing to only TF2. Simply don't have the time to play multiple games anymore.

Building it or got a awesome deal on a dell and adding some other components?

I thought ddr3 had to be run in sets of 3?

DAMAN: No time in my schedule to build a rig, and no patience anymore. I'm getting a custom build through Cyberpower.com. I'm getting the Gamer Xtreme 3000 which was recommended in this bang-for-the-buck article: http://hothardware.com/Articles/Bang-Fo ... -Desktops/

Only difference between their recommended config and mine is that I upgraded the vid card, added bluetooth (for my Palm PDA), a fax modem (I fax invoices from my workstation), and I picked a different case that has a front panel eSATA jack - The Apevia X-Dreamer III: http://www.apevia.com/ProductsInfo.asp? ... reamer3-BK

I WAS looking at the Dell Studio XPS 8000 for a while but the best card they sell with it is the GTX260.

PUGSLEY: Core i7 CPUs can do dual or triple channel memory. It's up to the mobo chipset to choose the implementation. So far triple channel has not shown enough performance improvement over dual (at least in gaming benchmarks) to warrant the added expense. Most consumer OEM i7 systems are dual channel for that reason.

I just didn't see that triple was worth the expense at this time. We're in the same situation we were in with Gen1 dual channel - many of the Gen1 duals didn't perform any faster than mature single channel boards at that time. I think eventually triple will mature and become the standard as dual channel is now.

I was just looking at the cyberpower site. It's nice that they offer systems with no OS installed. That's rare now a days.

Sweet, Enjoy! When you get it please post a pic or two.

Well then, that reduces the cost of a new rig. Did not know that.

Err: Yeah I debated ordering the system with no OS since I purchased a copy of Win7 Pro when they were offering 50% discounts on pre-orders for Upgrade discs last year, but WTH. I'd rather have a system ready to go right now.

You can almost get lost on Cyberpower's website. While they have pre-configured models EVERYTHING can be customized. That Gamer Xtreme 3000 I ordered has something like 10 optional motherboards and 12 different cases.

The PC is coming complete except that I will be adding a Velociraptor as the boot drive. If I hadn't already bought one from Newegg 2 months ago (when I was still debating just upgrading my present rig), I would have ordered the rig with it pre-installed (their price on it is not much more than what NewEgg charged me). The rig is coming with a 1.5 Gb HDD so I'm going to clone it to the Velociraptor and use the 1.5Gb as a data drive. The Velociraptor will be partitioned into an 80Gb boot partition and a 220Gb Games partition.

Yeah I'll post some pics and make a mini-review out of it. So far I'm impressed with the service. I ordered the thing New Year's Eve so the first chance they had to start building it was Monday the 4th and I got notified the evening of the 6th that it had been scanned for UPS and was sitting on the dock ready to be picked up the next morning. UPS tracking says it'll be delivered here the 11th which is the normal 5 days for a shipment from CA to FL.

Even Dell - who pioneered fast system builds - couldn't get it out that fast. Sad to say much as I love Dell, they have cut back so much during this recession that it takes them more than a week to build a PC. Now that Win7 is out and most of my clients don't need the XP downgrade I've been sending them to Best Buy or Sams Club to buy Dells, Acers or eMachines. I don't much like HPs although I have to admit the last few HP Pavilions I've setup for clients were actually decent PCs for a change, although they are still WAYYYY too full of crapware.

I still prefer mail ordering Dell Optiplex PCs for small businesses though because you get a 3 year onsite warranty with them.

Are you going to use Acronis to clone the drive? I am so impressed with that application, can't tell you how much.

Yeah. That's the easiest way.

I've been thinking about trying a phenom2 quad...not that I need it...but all I really need is case, mobo, mem, cpu..........gee I'm almost there already....

Same here i got a motherboard and ram, all I need is the rest LOL.

IT"S HERE!!!! I have taken today off (perks of being your own boss) and I go abscond myself to the la-bor-a-tory with Igor to bring the new beast to life...

Wow, arrived early. I don't get packages till 3pm usually.