What would you do different?

[JoePro]

I concur. Antec not only makes some fine cases, but their PSUs are also excellent.

[Nomad84]

[ QUOTE ]
....so you might as well get any decent PCI express card (your choice seems fine for poker). I'm pretty sure you can get 2 dual video cards and have 4-monitor support using the 2 PCI express slots on your mobo. Hope that helps a bit.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thanks a lot. That's what I was hoping. I will be running 2 monitors right now, but I was curious what options would be available to me in the future with this setup. Since I am not sure about video cards at all, I may start a new thread in a little while for video card suggestions only, but I'm gonna do a little digging first.

Also, thanks for the tip on the power supply cables. Thanks to all of you for confirming the Antec power supply's capability too.

Looks like all of the componenents should be where I want them now except for the video. That should be easy to figure out too now that I have everything else configured.

I appreciate the comments from everyone. [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]

BTW, the price dropped $10 overnight after the first post, then it dropped again last night. Total cost for the same components listed above: $938.00 shipped.

[bly]

Throwing in my $.02 here. I've built or had built over 1000 PCs for my company in the last 5 years.

You say you "Won't be doing any real gaming", so why are you going over kill on the CPU and chip? Why ASUS and AMD?

Nothing again ASUS or DFI, or any of the other good manufactures out there, but it'd be nearly impossible to get me to use any board but a true blue intel board and CPU combo.

For none gaming applications, the rock solid Intel boards just don't fail. I have over 500 running daily in my company and I've yet to have a single board or cpu failure over the last 3 years. I can't say that when I used to use DFI and ASUS, now and then I’d get a board and chip that just refused to play well together.

I don't get funky software quirks with the Intel stuff either, it just always works. I can't tell you the number of hours I spent tracking down dumb issues when I used none intel boards and CPUs. The amount of time and money Intel spends to make sure it's boards don't have issues is second to none.

You can get a 3.0gig 800FSB with a true intel made mother board for under $300. 5 times the power you'll need for spread sheets or poker tracker.

I'd rather have a little slower however rock solid PC. Blue screens of death in the middle of a poker hand would suck. I'm sure lots of people have great AMD ASUS systems, I had many also that never game me a problem. But 5 to 10 problem PCs out of 500 vs. 0 out of 500 is a no brainer.

For my home machine I'm using a 3.4 800FSB on a 915 intel board and I love it.

As it's been said before go with a different power supply or try to have the one in your case upgrade to higher quality power supply.

Just my $.02. Lots of people are going to disagree. But you have to ask yourself, do you feel lucky? Are you trips aces going to be busted by quad 10s on the river? Not likely, but it happens.

[MyMindIsGoing]

"For none gaming applications, the rock solid Intel boards just don't fail."

I would say they don't fail for gaming applications either.

"I'd rather have a little slower however rock solid PC."

Me too, it is the way to go, Intels boards might be a tad slower in tests (a few %), but you wont notice it in real life. I am happy to trade those % for a much better system.

I myself use a 3.0ghz p4 and an intel "rock lake" mobo. Never ever did it crash or cause me any problems. I had a lot of other brands before like Abit and Asus. There were always something funny about them, not with Intel.

[Isura]

[ QUOTE ]
You say you "Won't be doing any real gaming", so why are you going over kill on the CPU and chip? Why ASUS and AMD?

[/ QUOTE ]

Maybe because AMD is cheaper, and he's only building a poker computer.

[MyMindIsGoing]

[ QUOTE ]
Maybe because AMD is cheaper, and he's only building a poker computer.

[/ QUOTE ]

A 3.0 ghz intel p4 is cheaper and fast enough for poker. How much use does a average person have of an athlon64, prolly none. If he is "only building a poker computer" it is overkill anyway and if the price is critical a cheaper cpu is a good choice. I would go with an intel mobo and intel cpu for stability. You wont regret it.

*edit*
I put together an intel system (3.0ghz) instead with about the same specs. $805+shipping from newegg. It is pretty much the same as above but with intel cpu and mobo, and maxtor 300gb hard drive instead of seagate. Also a pioneer burner instead of nec. I would chose that instead of the athlon setup, easy.

[bly]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
You say you "Won't be doing any real gaming", so why are you going over kill on the CPU and chip? Why ASUS and AMD?

[/ QUOTE ]

Maybe because AMD is cheaper, and he's only building a poker computer.

[/ QUOTE ]

The AMD chip and ASUS board he's looking at $431, the intel combo can be purchased for $300.

The stability of Intel boards is second to none. A small performance hit won't even be seen in the real world unless you're doing alot of graphic gaming or 3-d modeling etc.

The capacitor issue on most generic (ASUS, DFI, and Abit all shared this problem) boards is enough to scare anyone away. ( http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/20...0207018535.htm ) The capictor issue has been fixed since 2003, but it highlights the issue of boards that aren't properly designed and tested like the Intels.

This comment sums it up best: "Intel components are still the pinnacle when it comes to building a problem-free system that we can rely on." from http://radified.com/Articles/stability.htm