So Ive decided I need to upgrade a little and am going to be making a whole new PC for my "schooling"

Any advice/recomendations would help. This is my build-up list so far.

Case: Antec Nine Hundred (bought for $75 @ BestBuy on clearance)
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600
Mobo: EVGA 122-yw-E173-TR NVIDIA nForce 750i SLi
PSU: 750 watt Antec unit
GPU: EVGA 9800 GTX+ 512 MB superclocked (x2 in SLi)
HDD: Western Digital Caviar Black 750GB 7200 rpm SATA 3.0/gb/s
RAM: 8gb Crucial Ballistix DDR2 800

pretty much I just have a case and Im just finalizing my purchase list.

 

8gb of ram .... seems excesses but ram is a lot cheaper now than it used to be
750gb hd you download porn instead of streaming?

 

Sounds like a nice build for a reasonable price. And I am sure you can use it for a lot more than just school work hehe

 

RAM cost me around $100 since its the "older" DDR2 style and um yeah of course I download it lol you get less interuption that way

 

my figures come out to around $800 and for that price you can buy the crappy low-end systems from computer companies

 

save yourself some money and get 4GB of ram. unless you're doing some heavy gaming or running a server, 8GB is overkill IMHO, no matter how cheap it is. Put the extra few bucks towards improving other components.

If I were you I'd get a smaller, faster, primary drive like a WD raptor drive to put the OS on, and then a secondary 500GB (or more if you want) as your data drive.

 

8gb is great if you plan to run virtual machines.

 

I agree with sly, get a 100GB drive for your OS and software and a 500 or bigger for your data. things run way faster that way.

 

How much do the 2x 9800GTX's cost you? I'd recommend getting a single more powerful video card as some games don't fully utilize SLI. Maybe a GTX 260 w/ 216 cores or something better.

 

the 2 cards will cost me around $200 maybe a little more. A GTX 260 card is still pretty high up on the price range, top end hitting $500+

 

I have a dual monitor setup, 2 22in widescreens and I normally use Ubuntu on one for day-to-day stuff like internet and word processing and the other screen runs microsoft for games...

If i do it that way itd just end up getting a solid state drive for OS and games and a normal hard drive @7200 rpm for storage.