Had not even considered that. I won't be going SLI right away, but possibly down the road and I definitely want to make room for it.oberonqa wrote:Overall though, the 650W should serve you well. One last though regarding PSU selection.... it's really time consuming and potentially difficult to replace a PSU should you wind up upgrading your rig with power-hungry components (such as adding a 2nd Fermi card to SLI, for example), you'll have to pull everything out of the case in order to replace the PSU with a more powerful one. That being said, if you can swing it, you would have a lot more breathing room if you went with either a 750W or 850W PSU.
Good suggestion. My only worry is that this stuff will up the price even more. I'll just have to see what I can work with. Thank you.I would also give some serious thought into getting a bigger case. The Antec 300 is a great mid-size case... but the Fermi's are pretty big. You don't need to go with a full tower case.... but you should look into getting something a bit roomier. Also keep in mind the Fermi's run pretty hot, so you'll need to pay attention to air flow and make sure you got a good push->pull airflow configuration going. If your open to a case recommendation, I use a CoolerMaster HAF 922 with my rig, and it runs cool and quiet. It also has plenty of clearance for large video cards such as the Fermi and plenty of breathing room so hot components such as the video card don't wind increasing the internal ambient temperature too much.
I was told that 8GB is currently overkill for gaming and that 4GB would be plenty enough. Also, I can buy more RAM afterwards if need be.Also... I see your going with 4GB's of DDR3 RAM and pairing that with a 64-bit operating system. Depending on how heavy of a gamer you are, I would suggest getting another 4GB's, which would give you a total of 8GB's of RAM. You will really see a huge performance increase not just in your gaming, but in Windows as well.
I found this EVGA Fermi which is $10 more but has a $30 mail-in rebate which turns out to be cheaper than the other card. It's also slightly faster clock-wise. A good alternative?And lastly... if you don't have your heart set on that MSI video card, look into going with EVGA. They offer a lifetime warranty on their video cards (which only requires you to register the card on their website within 30 days of purchase) and they also offer a step-up program where you can step your existing video card up to a new video card later on down the road without having to pay full retail.
Good to know. That's a relief. I keep second-guessing myself about this but I'll stick with the 460.As for whether you go with a 460 or wait for the newer 560's depends entirely on whether you want to be the first on your block with the latest and greatest. The 460's may a little old... but it would serve you well for a couple of years. The 560's may have better stats... but the last couple of generations have only seen a 10%-15% increase in performance each generation. If you ended up getting a 460, you shouldn't have to worry about upgrading for at least two to three years. And if you did end up purchasing a second 460 to take advantage of SLI, the performance gained by a single 560 would be even less. I know a couple of people that are still gaming with a pair of 250's in SLI that are playing the latest and greatest games at max framerate at 1900x1080 resolution... and the 250's are starting to get a little old.
EDIT: I was looking at this Corsair PSU and it seems the most attractive right now, if a little pricey. It has a single 12-volt rail and is Gold standard 750W. Your opinion? Or maybe there's something better on this list?
