Is retail work hard?

Will these high end computer parts work together?

• So I am going to build this amazing gaming computer for someone who demands the fastest computer possible because he is a gamer and he trusts me to not up the price like everyone else around here. I have a lot of experience with computers but not really with the higher end stuff. I went on Newegg and got everything top-of-the-line and just want to make 100% positive that im not going to waste my time or his money. By that I mean a couple questions... Generally are these parts compatible and work well together? are they even good parts at all or would you suggest something better? Will the video card work with 3 way SLI? is it too big to fit? If it will work, will the SLI be ready to install with all of the needed parts, right out of the motherboard box? Will the power supply support three way sli and will it allow all of the cables needed to get that working? Will using 3 way SLI render that pci slot (the longer black one) in the middle of the 3 PCI express 2.0 slots (the red ones) useless? Do you need to use water cooling with that case or is it just an extra feature? Will this motherbaord allow me to use RAID 0 for the OS with 2 of the 10k RPM hard drives Im getting? Is it better to use RAID with a PCI card or the motherboard? Is there anything extra you have to do for RAID (IE with the pci raid cards you have to plug in certain chords for each hard drive and install drivers) when using the motherboard or will it just work out of the box? is the ram too fast for the motherboard? PLEASE HELP IT WILL HELP ME OUT SO MUCH! THIS IS STRESSFUL! Here is what I got... TWO-Western Digital VelociRaptor WD3000HLFS 300GB 10000 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM Item #: N82E16822136322 ONE- NEC Display Solutions LCD3090WQXi-BK Black 30" 6ms, 12ms(GTG) WQXGA Widescreen LCD Monitor - Retail Item #: N82E16824002419 THREE- BFG Tech BFGEGTX2951792H2OCWE GeForce GTX 295 1792MB GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 Video Card - Retail Item #: N82E16814143182 ONE- Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Champion Series 70SB088600007 7.1 Channels PCI Express Interface Sound Card - Retail Item #: N82E16829102021 ONE- RAZER Mako 300W RMS 2.1 Speaker System - US Full - Retail Item #: N82E16836556001 ONE- Logitech G15 USB Wired Standard Gaming Keyboard - Retail Item #: N82E16823126034 ONE- Logitech G9 Black 5 Buttons Tilt Wheel USB Wired Laser Gaming Mouse - Retail Item #: N82E16826104079 TWO- CORSAIR DOMINATOR 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1866 (PC3 15000) Triple Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model TR3X6G1866C9DF - Retail Item #: N82E16820145232 ONE- ZALMAN 9500A 92mm 2 Ball CPU Cooler - Retail Item #: N82E16835118223 ONE- ABS Canyon 695 4 x140mm Fan Multiple Heat Zones Full Aluminum Super Tower Computer Case - Retail Item #: N82E16811215012 ONE- ABS Tagan BZ Series BZ1300 1300W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready Modular Active PFC Patent Piperock Modular Power Supply - Retail Item #: N82E16817814011 ONE- Intel Core i7 Extreme Edition 965 Nehalem 3.2GHz LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor Model BX80601965 - Retail Item #: N82E16819115200 ONE- EVGA 141-BL-E759-A1 LGA 1366 Intel X58 SLI Classified ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail Item #: N82E16813188047 ONE- Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 64-bit for System Builders - OEM Item #: N82E16832116493 Subtotal: $8,589.82

• Answer:

  OK so a few problems. The first one is the biggest one. you can't do 3-way sli with the graphics cards you picked out. The gtx295 is a quad sli ready set up meaning that you can only put two in a case, there are actually two cards on this thing to begin with. Also if oyu are asking about the pci card slot available, it won't be usable. the two graphics cards will have an SLI bridge that will make it impossible to have a full sized card in between them. you can try it, but the heat output could melt the card, I have seen it before. The sound card you chose will work, it is a pci e card if oyu didn't realize it already. it will work on that 4x slot above the first graphics card. The case will do fine, but why not buy a mozart in stead, this way your freind could show off the goodies inside, there is no point in owning a computer that is that much and not be able to show it off. The cpu cooler won't work. it is for a socket 775 only. you will need to find a socket 1366 compatible cooler. luckily the 965 comes with a cooler until you find a good one. And I might as well tackle the watercooling question now. if you have an extreme cpu, I assume you will want to overclock it, there is no point in owning one unless oyu are planning on running it at 4.0GHz+ and in which case you will be unable to do so with air cooling. go to http://www.frozencpu for the best selection in water cooling. i will be happy to help you pick out the right set up if oyu email me about this later. For the power supply you won't be doing three way sli now, nor would I have recomended it if oyu were going with the quad sli. but this psu will be more than enough to do quad sli. it owuldn't have been able to do tri sli. Quad Sli requires 2 pci e 6 pin power connectors and 2 pci e 9 pin power connectors to work. this power supply has all of that. Tri sli requires 6 pci e power connectors, all being 6 pins, this psu doesn't have that. Not an issue since you are going quad right? i'm never really a fan of 6 railpsu's because they split up the power among six different outlets. but each pcie connector has about 180watts on one rail plus the minimum 30 amp requirement, so it should be fine. If he really want the best in gaming hard drives, why not go with an ocz vertex series ssd? you could get 2 128gb drives for the same price as the third 295 you had ot give up, plus they'd out perform the raptors about 10 to 1 easily. then you could buy a good westerndigital 1tb drive forstorage, this is the perfered way to have a computer setup. if oyu plan on having everything on one disk set up they would eventually bogg down the os. As far as raid goes, the mothebroard has on board raid 0 and this will work great with any raid set up. also raid cards are outdated today, you are better off with the on board controller. In vista the raid controller for the set up is usually straight forward, but your motherboard manual will tell you what else you have to do, the worst case ecenario is that you'd have to load the raid drivers on a usb drive and install them BEFORE you load vista. simple. The ram is fine, the cpu will underclock it if nessesary to save the memory controller, btu really the issue was never with speed, it was with the voltage. the speed just feeds off of higher voltages. the memory controller can't go over certain voltages, btu that is why they are coming out with better ddr3 ram with lower voltages for about the same speeds. the ram you have selected will work fine. The guy who posted before me either doesn't know what he's talking about, or didn't even pay attention to your build. either way he's wrong, your build looks good for the most part, but it needs some tweeking. I would reccomend two gtx295's they do out perfomr the 3 285's any day on any game. also I strongly recomend the mozart by thermaltake, it is a tower case also, but much more stylish, plus better for water coling. I also reccomend the solid state drives for performance and to avoid the annoying clicking and other loud noises of the velocoraptors. The only other concern I have is heat. water cool the cpu, this is a big reccomendation. also look into water cooling the grphics cards, those little guys will make the case heat up to the point that it will burn you. trust me I have two similar cards at home that really improved afterwatercooling. Email me, we will talk more, I think you could use more of my help. Hope this helps The Rebellion is waiting EDIT A quick note, the 965 is a better cpu, it is not only clocked higher, like many have pointed out, but has twice the memory controller that the other two models have. many people don't realize this fact when they claim the 965 is JUST an over clocked 920, this is how they justify not paying $1000. but truth is that clock for clock the 965 is about 35% faster than the other two models because the memory contorller has twice the throug put possibility. So, keap an eye out for that myth