Umm.. yay for me and stuff:
The video card: eVGA 8800GTX. My biggest moment of insanity I guess, considering I could have spent 50% less and still gotten good frame rates. The money I would have saved could have been spent on a PS3 at some point. However there is something about playing NFS:Carbon at 1280x1024 with 16x FSAA 'Quality mode' at over 60 frames per second. Yes it looks drop dead gorgeous. In F.E.A.R. I am running everything at max at 1280x1024 with 16x FSAA and nearly 75 frames per second. Again it looks amazing. Oblivion at 1280x1024 with all options on MAX in the outdoor settings runs silky smooth.
The motherboard: Asus P5W DH Deluxe. I was going for a far cheaper mobo initially, but I did a bit of research and the processor I wanted (E6600) wasn't a great overclocker because of a higher L2 cache that was causing some heating. A slightly lesser processor (E6400) was running faster than the E6600 when overclocked
without any increase in heat. Unfortunately to be of good value it required faster RAM and a great mobo, which would mean the money I saved on the processor would be lost on the RAM and mobo. However as a longer term investment it made sense, since instead of having to change my processor, mobo and RAM, I would just have to replace my processor in the future.
The mobo is beautiful though and comes with a multimedia remote as well as a fantastic overclocking program. The coolest thing though is a built in Wi-Fi router. Basically with my high speed DSL, I am using an antenna at the back to create a nice little LAN in the house.
RAM: I wanted something by Corsair, Ballistic or OCZ but had to settle for DDR2 800 by Kingston. The timings are really low and voltage is quite acceptable.
The Processor: It costs a bit more here, but in the USA it goes for $220. I have quite easily overclocked it to the levels of a FX62 without having to up the FSB to anything near dangerous. The voltage is 1.304 which is again less than anything remotely risky. I could go further, but I am happy with where I am. This is also the first time I have had a dual core, and man the difference is easily noticeable. If you even sorta like multitasking, then a dual core is so worth it. And burning a DVD is really fast. With my Athlon 64 3800+ I was burning an 8x DVD in about 20 minutes. With this baby I am doing it in 6.
Case: Asus Vento 36000. This is the best case ever. It is HUGE and gorgeous with a wonderful paint job and shiny finish. Plus the front and side panels open in a very cool and futuristic looking manner. It looks a bit like a storm trooper though.
Looks better in person though.
Monitor: VX922. This is the fastest monitor in the world. They did a few tests with recently released monitors boasting a similar 2ms response time and it was still faster.
There is absolutely no ghosting. The only issue was during movies, the visuals were a bit funky and the gamma was far too high. However when I got my 8800GTX I ran the nVidia monitor software and everything looks gorgeous now.
I still think CRTs are quite superior, especially the ones with an aperture grille... but LCDs are coming along. I think the flat panel, and the liquidy display is well worth the trade off.
I'll post pics from my digi cam in a bit. I was feeling a bit down after having spent so much money to be honest. This system was ready nearly a week ago and I hadn't quite played anything on it. I will immigrate to Canada in what should be another year and I will probably need money for a while. So I felt a bit dumb, but after playing NFS: Carbon and F.E.A.R. I say fuck yea.
