The parts are starting to roll in for my new rig:

CPU: Core i7 920
Motherboard: MSI X58 Platinum
Graphics card: MSI GTX 260 OC
RAM: 6Gb Corsair DDR3
HD: 500Gb Western Digital Black
CD/DVD: Samsung Q223

And the most ridiculous heatsink I've ever seen:

Thermalright Ultra-123 Extreme

The area of the heat fins is like 6 inches square.

 

Neato, I've been using the ultra 120 for a couple years now, it even kept the overclocked Pentium D I had cool.

 

Sounds good. Although I'm persnally 0-2 in my own experience with MSI boards so I probably wouldn't go there myself. That's just me though.

After some the threads last week, I did an on-paper build of a similar system myself. Then it occurred to me "What OS am I going to put on this?" and I said fuggit.

 

Are you going without a fan on that heatsink? You should look into getting an SSD, they provide a huge speed boost. It's probably the best bang for your buck nowadays performance wise. Get an SSD for you OS and program and keep a HDD for your porn and whatever else you may have. SSDs are literally 4 or 5 times faster than HDDs, and HDDs a definitely the biggest bottleneck for speed in a PC.

Ask some of the members on this forum who have and SSD, Ken1997TL, rza49311 and others. I'm getting one the next time I rebuild my PC.

 

That heat-sink looks like a Harley V-Twin.

 

Looks decent! Although I too have had a bad experience with MSI. I recently had to replace my MSI board after having to RMA it twice, only to have it return in worse shape each time than when I sent it off. And they won't reimburse me for shipping costs. I will never buy anything from them again.

I have a GTX260 in my current machine. Great card, but it is a space heater. If you do reconsider your mobo choice, get one that supports hybrid SLi. It really cut down on the heat. Well, if that's a consideration for you.

 

My MSI board is still going strong, I've had it for 5 years now. (K8N Neo Platinum)

After hearing all the complaints though, I will at least look at other Mobo options for when I build my new PC.

 

I had a K9N Diamond (their top of the line board) and the primary PCI-e slot went bad. I RMA'd it for that. When they sent it back the PCI-e slot was still bad and now two of the rear USB ports didn't work either. I got a new RMA from them referencing the original and sent it back again. When I got it back the last time it wouldn't post. By then I had bought the ASUS board that I'm running now. Everything works flawlessly in that board, but the MSI won't post. I've taken it as far as I can with their tech support. And I refuse to pay to ship it again, and they won't pay either.

 

There is a fan on the heatsink. The pic just shows the heatsink itself.

I usually go with Asus, but I've heard really good things about the MSI. I hope trying to save a buck doesn't come back to haunt me.

But even being a big Asus fan, I've heard people swear they'd never ever buy one again. I'm sure every major Mobo maker has its fair share of horror stories.

As far as SSD drives, the price-to-storage ratio is just too high right now.

 

What sort of case are you running?

 

Coolmaster Centurion 5

 

yeah but you just buy a fast 32gb or 64gb one and put your OS (less than 10 gb) and all your programs (probably less than 10gb) on there and put media everywhere else. They smaller ones aren't that expensive and they'll give you a much bigger speed boost overall than getting a quad core and DDR3. If you took a dual core with DDR2 and SSD and matched it against a quad core with DDR2 and an HDD, the SSD would boot and shutdown MUCH faster and open apps almost instantaneously while the HDD and quad core would still take a while to boot and open apps. No matter how fast or how many cores you got, you'll still be waiting on the HDD.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJMGAdpCLVg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96dWOEa4Djs

 

^^^You're not telling me anything I don't already know. But right now, SSD is pretty much cutting-edge stuff in terms of storage devices. SSD will definitely be in my future after prices come down a bit. This system is built around expansion. I had to spend a little more in order to get i7 and base a system around a technology that will be around for a bit and thus is upgradeable. At some point, I have to make a decision based on finances. I had to stretch in order to get an i7 system.