I'm planning on building myself a system which I want to last a while near christmas by splitting the money with my parents, in this system I planned to get:

Asus M4A79T Delux 790fx (am3)
6GB of lowrange ram (Advise against this if you'd like, I realy know nothing of ram)
Either Crossfire 2 4890's or see about 5 series (I prefer nvidia since im used to them, but the prices are rather high)
Phenom II x4 955 black edition 3.2
Corsair 650W TX Series PSU (I know nothing of power supplies)


I would then like to use my Asus Xonar D2X Soundcard in this setup but I have a few worries.

1) Will it fit in if I crossfire the 2 4890's into the recomended blue slots?
2) Can it fit in the Pci x16 and a pci x1 card?
3) Will the motherboard accept it as ive read about SLI motherboards only allowing video cards into the 16x slots.


To add to this I have a few more questions.

1) Is the procceser a overkill for gaming/wanting it to last a while and would I be able to overclock it at all on the retail cooler (I currently have a ahtlon 64x2 4000+ which I didnt realy care about and its running a 2.59 from 2.1 and ive never had any stability or heat problems.)

2) Should I care about ram gimping the rest of the system? should I get some expensive good quality ram to match the rest of the parts or stick with some cheap ram to save money?

3) Are SSD harddrive worth the money over Sata?

4) Could I get a cheaper and just as acceptable power supply with a lower voltage for such a system? (All I know about power supplies is that hte general idea is you should take a well branded one so it doesnt screw up and take verything else with it, I just went for the corsair one saying "This should have all enthiusasticis needs blablabla)

THe motherboard comes with 2 crossfire "bridge connecters" 5 sata cables and 1 ide cable, other than the floppy drive cable for the soundcard will I need anything else?


5) Is there anything horribly wrong with this setup?

6) Any tips and such as this is my first ever build and ive never touched a procceser before, other than that I believe I should be fine. (Ive had most parts in/out switched cases and it apears to be just plug+play.)

7) Is this case going to fit all this in? I chose it mainly because of the sound padding as I get realy annoyed with the mear sound of my computer atm (120mm intake, 60mm exhaust/system, GPU fan (xpertvision 8600gt) and cpu fan running) it sounds like a damn plane.


Sorry for the long bloat fest of a post, but thanks in advance.

Cheers, Jim.

If noise is an issue get an Akasa A876 (I think thats the model number, it's in PC#2) CPU cooler, it's quieter than the standard one by a fair bit and only £15.

What are you planning to do with 2 4890's? And why a soundcard? I assume you got proper speakers?
Also, for gaming 4GB of RAM should do it. Get some good quality, and fast 4GB ram. IF you put 2 cards in the blue slots, you SHOULD have room for a PCIx1 piece of hardware. It may not, if you have custom bigass coolers or w/e.

For the CPU, I don't think it's really overkill, It's ok.
The PSU also looks good(I'm planning to buy it myself too).

SSD's are not worth it IMO atm, because they're really expensive. But if you got the money, they are I'd say.

As for the Case, I'd get a nice big full-tower with some good airflow. Because all those components produce quite alot of heat ofcourse.

All I can say is you could buy a nice i7/Quad-core and a good Asus motherboard.

Good luck.

Well the soundcard is mainly for music/gaming (positional) purposes, I have a midrangeish headset (music wise) Barracuda 5.1 hp-1 (PHysical 5.1 not virtual) and some cheapish logitech 5.1 speakers which I use from time to time, after been used to the sound and features of the Xonar D2X through these things id rather not go back to a inbuilt soundcard.

Ive never realy gone down the intell route due tomore bang for my buck with AMD, also I'm pritty sure the am3 phenom chipsets are more future proof than the I7 due to amd's plans to use the chip for a while, correct me if so.

If this is true about the ram then I'll listen to you and go for some decent 4gb sets.

The two 4890's I plan to use for gaming, video editing, such and such but I want them to last a while (hence I might wait for the 5 series or gtx3 series)




When it comes to the cpu cooler it apears to me that currently that isnt the main problem with my volume of my computer and if I buy a different cpu fan I'd much rather go down the route of big beasty cooling fan because even thoe sound is a issue I'm much more bothered about perfomance from the system.

Cheers for the help so far.

Jim.