New computer

[Lissa]

I did a bit more research lately and thought more about what I could afford, and what I wanted...

• $250 -- 2 x SSD -- like ADATA S599 64GB Striped <-- as the OS volume
• $65 -- HD -- Samsung F3 1TB
• $210 -- Mobo -- Gigabyte GAX58A-UD3R
• $425 -- Video -- 2 x EVGA GTX470 (or 465 maybe)- SLI w/lifetime warranty
• $270 -- CPU -- Intel Core I7-950 3.06Ghz
• $90 -- Ram -- 4 x 2GB G.Skill Ripjaw DDR1333 1.5v
• $97 -- All in one CPU water cooling kit
• $100 -- Case -- ANTEC 900 Black Steel ATX Midtower
• $190 -- Power -- Silverstone Strider Plus 850W
• $115 -- Liteon HBS112 Blueray Burner

For a total of about -- ~ $1800

These are Newegg prices. I can source most of it locally at Microcenter for less, and probably a couple hundred less.

I would stay away from LGA1366 and LGA1156 as those are dead sockets and no new processors are being made for either. If you really want to go with the equivalent of LGA1366, you need to wait till atleast Quarter 3, probably Quarter 4 of this year for the release of LGA2011 (the new iteration of LGA1366).

Also, if you get a motherboard with SATA3 sockets, get the new Crucial M4/C400 64G SSDs for around $120. Much faster read and write than the other 64G SSDs available.

This is what I just ordered (have case and PSU already)

• 1 x Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound - OEM
  1 x Arctic Silver ACN-60ML (2-PC-SET) Thermal material Remover & Surface Purifier - OEM
  1 x Noctua NH-C14 140mm x 2 SSO CPU Cooler
  1 x Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 64-bit 1-Pack - OEM
  2 x EVGA 01G-P3-1380-KR GeForce GTX 460 (Fermi) SSC+ 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card
  2 x Crucial M4 CT064M4SSD2 2.5" 64GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
  1 x Intel Core i5-2500K Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz (3.7GHz Turbo Boost) LGA 1155 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor BX80623I52500K
  1 x G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL7D-8GBXH
  1 x ASUS P8P67 DELUXE (REV 3.0) LGA 1155 Intel P67 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

That's $1500 total after shipping.