Am finally planning on upgrading the computers in the next couple of months..

So far the systems I have in mind are:

Mobo: Me: Asus Rampage II Gene, Tess: Maybe a gene II, might look at the cheaper gigabyte x58 models.
CPU: I7 nahalem, probably 2.6, but 3.06 if I can get them cheap
Memory: 6gb corsair 1600 ddr3
Gfx: Me: gtx295, Tess: 8800gt (not changing gfx cards yet)
PSU: Me Hiper 880W, Tess Corsair 650W
HDD: Me: velociraptor system disk + raid storage, Tess: Raptor system disk + sata storage

Although the Rampage extreme seems like an obvious choice instead of a mATX geneII board, the gene has either matched or beaten the extreme in various reviews. The only real difference I've seen is slots and as long as I can fit the barracuda and the 295 I should be set, I would not expect to run 2x295's in SLI; it's more likely I'll replace the 295 with a faster card in the future and move the 295 to tesses. The gene being cheaper and having the same performance makes sense.

HDD: Now that SSD's are cheaper I did look into these, however for the price of a decent capacity SSD, I can get a pair of velociraptors in a striped array (raid 1) + backup or Raid 10 array. Velociraptors vs ssds are still comparable on the reads and better on the writes.

PSU, I've checked a watt monitor on Tesses computer, technically speaking you can power an i7, 2 hdds, a dvdrom and an 8800/295 on a 500w psu. The whole 1kw psu fad is a bit on the overkill side

Not currently looking to change gfx, monitors, mouse/keyboard, just the core system.

Any thoughts on the above?

sounds tasty ^^ give the spares to gabe! he's in dire need ^^

on the topico of vraptors vs ssd's - starting from scratch raiding 2 vraptors and getting a decent speed from them would require a decent hardware raid card as most mobo's knowdays fake raid with software or the onboard 'hardware' chips arent up to the mustard. So when you factor in one of these as well you actually could probably afford 2 solid states...

i could argue all day about how SSD's are better in the long run, but im biased because i own one and its bloody fast with just windows and a few apps i want to the speed avantage from installed on it (CS4 suite, 3Dsmax, the odd game that uses streaming textures etc) - its a crucial M225 128gb


if you care for money you could look into the i5's as i hear they have slightly better overclocking potential then the i7's and are slightly cheaper giving you better bang for buck

i remember oc'ing 2 i7 builds back in summer and they struggled at higher clocks with 12gb ram installed so definitly stick with 6gb as for a gaming rig you wont need more.... (these machine were for a cheapish but decent graphics work station that needed to handle more then a few million polygons at any one time)

fair points.. although I already have an external raid card, so that covers that base

probably want the i7 on mine at least, the way things progress it's nice to 'hand me down' certain bits to tesses computer and if I get an I7 (1366) and she gets an i5 (1156) then it limits that. Also in the the long run it makes sense to use the 1366 chips are upgrades are more possible in a couple of years to faster chips, if I got an i3/5 then i'd probably be buying the upper end therefore limiting upgrades

If I were you, I would probably swap the GTX 295 with one of the upcoming new generation (GTX 480 / GTX 470 - aka "Fermi") and replace the 8800 GT with the 295.

I haven't touched my pc internals since November 2008 (apart from a new soundcard and the replacement for the faulty memory module I had) and my graphics card is even older (GeForce 8800 GTS 640 MB from April '07). I'm planning to replace it with the GTX 470 if the card turns out good and when the price is/becomes reasonably, even though the 8800 still performs quite well in many games to my surprise - even with fairly high settings ("High Quality" filtering, VSYNC enabled in combination with forced Triple-Buffering, 2x MSAA with alpha-texture filtering).

If it turns out that you bought a new Geforce 4xx (before me), I would look forward to a little review by you.

sounds like a plan... but upgrading both the core systems to I7's probably financially cleans me out... I figure a pair of i7's mine with a 295 and tesses with an 8800 will be able to handle any game currently out and most future ones. At some point will upgrade the gfx cards, but at the moment probably can't afford to do the core systems and the graphics cards together