Just upgraded a little again, bad move, good move? SLI and more RAM

[sageuvagony]

OK, so I just ordered another EVGA 9600GT 512MB card 2 days ago to finally set up SLI. I also just ordered 4 GB more of ram (Same OCZ 2X2048 kit) as well. So now my new system specs are

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 @ 3.5 GHz
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro CPU Cooler
OCZ 8GB (4x2048) DDR 2 800 Vista Edtion
XFX nForce 680i LT SLI
2x EVGA GeForce 9600 GT 512MB in SLI
4x Western Digital 500GB SATA 300 (AAKS)
Apevia Beast Power 680W
Antec P160W Case
Vista Home Premium 64-bit/Windows XP Dual Boot
ViewSonic VX2035WM 20" Wide Screen
APC BR800BLK Battery Backup Unit (UPS)

Does this sound like an OK system? I'm a huge multi-tasker and moderate gamer (not a HUGE game freak.) I figure this system should hold out for a few years I hope. I'm new to SLI so hopefully things will go smooth for me. I basically built this system a little over a month ago now and the deals have all been great since almost everything had a rebate. I just now today received my 4th out of 5th rebate and it's only been just a tiny bit over a month. I can't believe I've received all the rebates this quickly or at all. Most of them say wait 8 or 12 weeks, but it's been about 4. I received email conformations from 3 of them as well which is beautiful.

The 4gb kit of ram I just ordered also has another $30 rebate with it so it ended up costing $61 for it. I read the rebate details and also emailed them to verify and yes I qualify for the second rebate since their terms state "One rebate only PER PROMOTION" and plus, I ordered it from 2 different sites at different times.

All this ram will be very useful since I have tons of windows open at once and I use at least a gig for each virtual machine I have open. Any thoughts on my decision? Am I stupid? Is this a decent system? May I run into any problems? Thanks all for your input so far!

[Scott]

Looks good to me. Only thing I would say is your APC may be a little on the small side.

[jellyrole]

Sounds like a pretty solid system except for one thing. Your running on the 4 available RAM slots, and that can cause trouble for someone people using the 680i. By now, if you haven't experienced any problems with it, you should be fine.

[Scott]

I ran 4 slots when I had mine with no issue.

[PP Mguire]

Sounds good. Kudos to the 2 new guys setting up awesome systems!
I ran 4 slots when I had mine with no issue.Im even on an NF4 system and have no issue.

[sageuvagony]

Yea I receive the second video card and ram tomorow, so I'm hoping I don't run into any problems having all 4 slots filled. I've heard people having problems filling all 4 slots but I also have heard of people running it just fine especially for those that just replied and said it's fine.

I've read alot on SLI the past 2 days and it seems that setting up SLI seems pretty straight forward. Only thing I'm concerned about is heat since my 1 9600gt already produces enough heat as it is, now it'll be that heat x2.

My friend at school just started his own pc repair business and just last week my friend got his resellers license. I asked him how much he could get a EVGA 8800 GTX 768mb for and looked it up with me there and saw that he could get them for $150 from his supplier. I'm thinking either I should stay where I'm at, or just sell my current 9600gt and return the new one, and order 2 8800GTXs. If I do that, I don't know if my power supply would be enough for it and then I'll have to deal with more headaches and buying a new PSU and stuff...blah... I don't even game THAT much to even think I'll need 2 GTXs.

What do you guys think I should do? Thanks for the info so far.

EDIT : Ohh and also, I had these hard drives running RAID 0 for about 2 months just fine with my old motherboard but eventually got scared and broke the array and just installed them as separate drives. This new mobo supports RAID 5 and I was thinking about setting that up but I've heard mixed reviews on it. It's nice because of its redundancy and its performance but my friend told me his RAID 5 setup was not as peppy as his RAID 0. I'm debating on whether to RAID 5 my current drives and be done with it or buy 1 or 2 150gb raptors for my OSes in RAID 0 and raid 5 the 500GBs for storage. I'm finally broke after this system so I probably can't buy the drives for another month or so, so I still have time to decide. I could always buy the raptor and put it on my credit card but bleh, I've also heard mixed reviews on the WD raptors. Any thoughts on this as well? I am a really impulsive buyer which I hate so I really need help on deciding. It's not like I upgrade my system every month. I ran on an Athlon XP 2800 for like 5 years and 512MB of ram. Please guys help meeee

[david.hill64]

I run this motherboard with 2 XFX 9600GT in SLI and with 4*1GB of OCZ DDR-2 6400 memory and have no problems.

Before you install the additional memory, make sure that your memory voltage is set correctly and that the memory command rate is set to 2T.

If you decide to have twin 8800GTX in SLI, NVidia recommends a minimum of 750W for your PSU, so you should change that too.

However, if you do not do much gaming the twin 9600's should be fine and will produce much less heat than two 8800's.

No experience of the raptors so cannot help.

[PP Mguire]

I agree with what that guy said on your latest post. And same here, no experience with RAID or Raptors so cant help you. I will say this though, ive heard where RAID can be a real pain sometimes.

[Dragon_CPU]

I agree with what that guy said on your latest post. And same here, no experience with RAID or Raptors so cant help you. I will say this though, ive heard where RAID can be a real pain sometimes.
I dont know I run raid and I've never had a problem its very fast compared to IDE havent tried out raid 5 yet though or raid 10. I usaully just stripe my drives together in raid....

[sageuvagony]

WOOOOOO I finally got my ram and video card in the mail today! I first installed the ram to make sure the system booted ok with all 8 gigs and everything was fine. Then installed the second 9600GT and blah. I was upset because the frame rates didn't change much. Well that's because I would click "Enable SLI" but stupid me didn't see the button on the bottom right corner that says "Apply" lol. So anyway, once I finally enabled SLI, here were some of my results. I'm pretty damn happy.

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b197/sageuvagonyx/nonsli.jpg

^^That's Crysis without SLI on max settings (High) in XP using 1680x1050

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b197/sageuvagonyx/sli.jpg

^^That's Crysis with SLI enabled with same exact game settings

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b197/sageuvagonyx/3dmarkNONSLIXP.jpg

^^3DMark06 in XP 32-bit without SLI

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b197/sageuvagonyx/3dmarkSLIXP.jpg

^^ 3DMark06 in XP 32-bit WITH SLI

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b197/sageuvagonyx/3DMarkVista64NonSLI.jpg

^^Vista 64-bit without SLI

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b197/sageuvagonyx/3DmarkVista64SLI.jpg

^^Vista 64-bit with SLI.

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b197/sageuvagonyx/SLIWOW2.jpg

^^Just playing around in WoW. The FPS there is usually floating around 240 FPS to 305 FPS at the absolute highest settings that game allows at 1680x1050..

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b197/sageuvagonyx/P4240222.jpg

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b197/sageuvagonyx/P4240223.jpg


These FPS's and scores are with my video card's stock clocks. My biggest issue now is heat since now it's hotter in my case x2. I'll figure something out soon enough. Overclocked while playing Crysis brought me up to about 60 FPS instead of around stock 50 FPS-ish. Tomorow I'm going to mess around alot more with this and discover more of it's potential. I'm EXTREMELY tired right now and am about to pass out in bed. Lemme know what ya think :)

[PP Mguire]

.........................................Nice.

[Goliath182]

Id add a couple fans on the side of your case to fix the hot issue. Other than that looks pretty sweet, and some nice scores. ;)

[Sadasius]

Looking good. I like that you wrapped up the wiring to make everything match. Showing good numbers as well.

[the_dope_chaud]

wait, you want to replace your 9600gt's with 8800gtx's because of the heat...?
150$ is a good reason to upgrade, heat isnt. A 8800gtx is a toaster oven disguised as a graphic card.....keeps my coffee hot :coocoo:

[PP Mguire]

Id turn your HDs around for neatness.