Final Build-Final Thoughts?

About to pull the trigger. Thought I'd ask for any final notes on this build (much of it contributed by sonicsurfer). Mainly, how are Sapphire GPUs? Only brand in stock at Newegg. This is part of the reason I'm anxious to make the purchase (apart from unexpected excitement to dig into actually putting the thing together). 4870s are hard to come by.

I appreciate everybody's help and advice. Without you guys, I would've bought a generic dell.

30.99 Pioneer 20x DVD R DVD Burner Black Sata Model DVR-215DBK

99.99 XCLIO Windtunnel Fully Black Finish 1.0 mm SECC Chassis ATX Full Tower Computer Case

79.99 Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD5000AAKS 500GB 7200 RPM Sata 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive

389.99 Acer P243WAid Black-Silver 24" 2ms(GTG) HDMI Widescreen LCD Monitor with HDCP Support

309.99 Sapphire 100243L Radeon HD 4870 512MB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card

129.99 Corsair CMPSU-750TX 750W ATX12V/EPS12V Power Supply

59.99 Logitech Z-4i 40 Watts 2.1 Speakers

86.50 Corsair 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model Twin2x4096-6400C5

229.99 Asus P5E Deluxe LGA 775 Intel X48 ATX Intel Motherboard

99.99 Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 64-bit English for System Builders

31.99 Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro 92mm CPU Cooler

324.99 Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450 Yorkfield 2.66GHz LGA 775 95W Quad-Core Processor Model

Final Price with Shipping: $1,928

Anything else? Do I need a floppy drive? Update disks for Bios? I'm not sure how that works.

From what i've heard, the first batch of HD48xx cards are BBA (Built by Ati). The only difference between them are the stickers. It's only in mid-july or end of july that we'll see cards built by Ati's partners. I know that Sapphire has a 2 year warranty on their cards. But I don't know if it's hard to get an RMA or not from them.

There's a workaround to raise the fan speed of the HD4870, until it can be done in Rivatuner or Ati Tray Tools.

No, you don't need a floppy drive.

Other than that, I think you're good to go. Nice build by the way.

Thanks for the replies. Does this look like a machine likely (read: likely, there's no telling with the way technology advances these days) to hold up for two or three years?

And I thought Bios updates came on floppy disks. Is there an advantage to updating the Bios before installing the operating system? And how would I get hold of an update? My current machine doesn't even have a flash drive. There's just a CD burner.

well soon as you finsh building your computer it will ask you to put in the os disk, you then install the disk then that will install all the drivers for you to use the computer. After you have that done you will get a disk with the motherboard, grahics card, sound card ETC. then you will update the drivers with them disks VIA dvd disk drive:) also the on the internet you can download all the needed drivers :) grate program for this is driver magician./

I really do hope you meant update as in driver update or that was a watse of every1s time :P

That's what I meant.

I just pulled the trigger, so I suppose the next couple days will be spent figuring out what to do and how. I ended up switching to the Asus 22". Only a hundred bucks cheaper, but it's a much, much better brand.

It's funny. After all that, and muddling my way through wattage and cooling and chache and lanes and the rest, the thing I'm least sure of is the monitor.

This just dawned on me, which is another indication that I'm out of my depth.

I need an ethernet card, yeah? How about power cables and the like?