New Rig

[Hitshade]

First of all, I need to sing the praises of ASUS on the rampage II gene. I just finished building a machine for a co-worker with that board and an i7 (much like your setup) and that board is phenomenal. It's an enthusiast board, so the overclock settings are (comparitively) easy to play with, and everything sets up nicely without much tinkering. i7 is also REALLY really nice, especially if you plan to overclock (i can give you some sites if you plan to run a 24-7 setup, but if youre looking to seriously overclock you may want to look into after market heat syncs and the like if you plan to stay air cooled).

HOWEVER: I would be careful trying to crossfire on this board, I didnt see whether or not you had planned to go down to 1 video card (which isnt at all unreasonable with this setup and a 4890, with the money you save you could maybe invest in something like a velociraptor drive) because the PCIe slots are pretty close together (mini atx). I havnt tried to crossfire on this board, but if you want to try you still may be able to considering that most 4890's stay pretty cool even when overclocked, and have some form of rear port exhaust....

to be totally honest, I'm not sure how necessary it is to crossfire at al with your setup....but in the end... really up to you ;P

Yeah, that was my initial reasoning for going with the GENE (the ease of overclocking), but it was the concern over Crossfire that led me to the MSI X58 Pro-E LGA 1366. ( http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.as ... 6813130226 ) After comparing benchmarks the MSI board actually seems to pull ahead ever so slightly, while having a lower cost. I feel as though Ive missed something because the MSI is full ATX and $100 less expensive... but I cant figure out what. Im also considering the ASUS P6T SE ( http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.as ... 6813131386 ) I would love some assistance/advice on this matter. I want to keep the motherboard cost @ or under $300.

I do plan on overclocking the i7 and Im picking up a XIGMATEK Dark Knight-S1283V to cover the cooling needs. ( http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.as ... 6835233029 ) It managed to keep the i7 (overclocked to 3.8GHz, full-load) at the same temp the stock heatsink did while at full-load (non-overclocked). http://www.pureoverclock.com/review.php?id=719&page=4

After Lawlers post I looked at running 2 drives in Raid 0... but I was shocked after looking at benchmarks. It looked like there was very little benefit to running a raid array at all. Gaming load times seemed to get the best results but it looked like some other applications actually saw a loss in performance... (??)

(I will admit though, I really know next to nothing about raid arrays so as with a lot of my choices Im at the mercy of information I find online)

The system will primarily be used for gaming so Im still open to the idea... If anyone can show me some impressive numbers, please do. But at this point, I don't think I'm going to consider a raid array after what I saw, at least with my storage requirements and the money I'm willing to spend on the HDDs.