forgot who posted this build several weeks ago

The i5 is your best bang for your buck processor for gaming. The i7 is not any faster for the only difference between the i5 and i7 is hyperthreading, and hyperthread actually decreases performances for games via a very small amount (I can get in an explanation why, but it is a long one, and simple answer is just trust me for this, you don't need an i5 for gaming.) Now hyperthreading makes some things faster but best case scenario (under the situations it actually helps) it is only 20% faster. The i5 is the best bang for you buck processor out there right now, the i7 860 is still a good deal though.

The i5 750/760 is an i7 with hyperthreading disabled. It will not slow down your gaming at all, nor will it slow down multiple video cards.

Now i7 with the 1366 socket are about 5% faster for dual videocards with sli/crossfire but that is a marginal improvement (this is not due to the processor itself but due to the motherboard supporting x16 slots at pci express 2.0 speed). They show better gains when you do tri or quad sli/crossfire.

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You can get an SSD later, but like I said in the last thread (I applogize if you are affended by the next line)

SOLID STATE DRIVES ARE COMPLETELY AWESOME

Newegg had a great deal for one of the best SSD out there (sandforce controller, you don't care who makes it, but what controller is inside such as sandforce), for 60 GBs for $60 dollars. Now this drive was sold out in the first 30 mins after Newegg posted it. No this was not a price mistake, this was a shell shocker. Thus while it may be hard to get such a good deal again anytime soon, keep an eye on the Slickdeals Frontpage and I wouldn't be surprised to see an almost good as deal soon due to it being the winter season.

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Always buy 1 video card instead of doing an SLI/Crossfire. A 470 is about the speed of two 450s in SLI, a 480 is about the speed of two 460s in SLI this is assumming the game supports SLI/Crossfire and support it well.

1) Not all games support SLI/Crossfire well
2) SLI/Crossfire generates more noise than a single card
3) SLI/Crossfire generates more heat than a single card
4) SLI/Crossfire causes you to spend more money on a motherboard than you need too. Your savings on the video card may end up as a wash if you get a more expensive motherboard.
5) SLI/Crossfire causes you to spend more money on a bigger PSU than 1 videocard for 2 of the SLI/Crossfire cards usually such up more energy than a single card.
6) Sometimes with SLI/Crossfire you may have issues with actual play, you may see 80fps on your FRAPs benchmark but it may feel less due to microstutter. In addition you care about the minimum frame rate the most and the minimum frame rate with SLI/Crossfire is less than a similar speed single card.

SLI/Crossfire is really only beneficial for people who want to do the two top of the line cards of that generation (where you can't simply buy a better single graphic card.) That or they were doing it for ego reasons. Trust me I know, I did it, I bought a second 4890 for 170ish since the price was so good and I was convinced it would give a better experience. In reality with the resolution I play at 1920x1080 it only benefited 1 or 2 games (namely crysis) and even then it wasn't really necessary it was just for ego. I HATED though how much louder my system sounded though when I played games with crossfire running (due to the fan kicking in on high due to temperatures), and because it wasn't really helping I sold the card for only 20 dollars less than what I purchased it.

That said I would wait to build this computer until the 6900 series of ATI cards come out (which is expected to come out via the end of November or early December, at least a couple weeks before Christmas). There may be price drops on video cards. Furthermore consider buying an ATI card such as the 6800 series for the 6870 is as fast as a 470 but runs cooler and less loud. Rumors are that Nvidia may also rename there 400 series of cards to 500 series of cards before the year is up (even though the 400 series are only 6.5 months old now and you are supposed to wait a year before renaming or have an architecture change).