Looking for any advice on what might be a better choice of parts.. I'm not sure if I should be going for an SLI motherboard or not, I cant seem to find any very good name brand ones. I'll be playing moderate games (like Dirt, HL2 and Guitar Hero3), some video editing, 3d level design and multitasking like crazy. Also plan to overclock at a conservative level. I'm also trying to keep the system under $1000 (excluding the monitors). COOLER MASTER RC-690-KKN1-GP Black SECC/ ABS ATX Mid Tower Case Antec earthwatts EA500 ATX12V v2.0 500W Power Supply GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3L LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX All Solid Capacitor Intel Motherboard Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale 3.0GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor Model BX80570E8400 2x (4GB total) Kingston HyperX NVIDIA SLI-Ready 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model KHX8500D2K2/2GN EVGA 512-P3-N801-AR GeForce 8800GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card 2x Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3500320AS 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive LITE-ON 20X DVD±R DVD Burner with LightScribe Black SATA Model LH-20A1L-05 2x SAMSUNG 906BW Black-Silver 19" 2 ms (GTG) Widescreen LCD Monitor ZALMAN CNPS9500 AT 2 Ball CPU Cooling Fan/Heatsink Thermaltake CL-G0102 VGA Cooler Plus assorted extra cooling for the memory, case and hdds. And just for kicks, this is what I've been using the past few years: Antec True Blue 480 Asus K8N AMD Sempron 3100+ (1.8ghz, OC to 2.0ghz) 3x 512mb Corsair DDR400 GeForce FX5600 Dual 1995 Goldstar 17" CRTs Seagate 320gb + 500gb SATA II LITEON IDE DVDRW
Unless you're running at an extremely high resolution, a single 8800GT should be fine. However, if you want SLI, you need an nForce-based motherboard. Most SLI motherboards out there are fine, but the likes of eVGA, XFX, and BFG have been associated with video cards, not motherboards, so they may be unfamiliar to you. They are perfectly fine as many companies with nForce boards use the nVidia reference design, which has typically proven to be a fine set up. I don't know if you'll need a 3rd party cooler, as the 8800GT's use a smaller manufacturing process than the rest of the 8800 series.
