Anthing wrong with this computer?

Minrhael

I no longer follow computer hardware whatsoever; 5 years ago I pretty much knew what I was doing, now I have no clue what is current and what's about to become obsolete. I need a new gaming rig, and have no intention of building it myself; having tried most of the big sites over the years Dell has been the all-around most reliable, so that's what I'm getting.

That said, I don't know what to get. I need a system that can handle most of the games that should come out in the next 4-5 years; if I have to upgrade a video card along the way, nbd, but I'm not changing mobos. I don't need to have all the bells and whistles, and I don't generally play FPS games so I'm ok with being a step or two below the apex of current gaming power, as long as it can handle whatever fancy RPGs will be in the pipeline.

Should the following rig be acceptable for these purposes?

Intel® Core™2 Q9550 (12MB,2.83GHz, 1333FSB)
Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium Edition SP1, 64-Bit
8GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 800MHz (4 DIMM)
500GB Performance RAID 0 (2 x 250GB SATA 3Gb/s 7200 RPM HDDs)
Single Drive: 16X CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW) w/double layer write capability
SLi, Dual nVidia GeForce 9800GT 512MB
Integrated 7.1 Channel Audio (I read that creative and vista don't get along)
$1500

I figure I don't need that much ram, but it seems to be included in the package deal and anything I try to customize comes out more expensive. Budget isn't really a big deal, but it'd be nice to stay under $2k, and I don't want to pay for top end stuff that I don't need, if there's anything that is clearly inferior though, please let me know!

Thanks very much in advance.

andkore

Well, you probably don't want to hear this but this is what I really think.
It's just plain stupid to try to build a computer that will last 4-5 years. Instead, you should buy a capable, yet reasonably priced computer, but upgrade more frequently. For instance, right now I'm building a computer for $240. Yes, $240. It's got an Intel Core 2 Duo E8500, 4GB of DDR2-800 RAM, and a 9600GSO, and it will play most stuff just fine (no, of course it will not max out Crysis or Call of Duty: World at War). It seems that you're budget is a bit bigger than mine, so I would recommend a better graphics card and a different processor. 8GB of RAM is overkill afaik. Also, unless you're trying to go for the very, very top performance, SLI is usually not economical, but I'd have to check for this specific price range, etc.
I'll try to do some research on processors and video cards, but all in all I'd say your current build is way too expensive and will not last 4-5 years (it's just the nature of computer technology). Would you be opposed to building your own computer?

E: Oh forgot to say, the $240 was only for the video card, CPU, motherboard and RAM. And that's what I recommend. Use the same hard drives, optical drives, power supply, case to economize and just replace the core components for gaming performance/general performance.

Ego

SLi, Dual nVidia GeForce 9800GT 512MB

Skip SLI, buy a single higher end video card instead. SLI is kind of a headache right now and doesn't really do much for performance, especially when going with a singler higher end card is an alternative (which it is, over paired 9800GT's.)

Also, I would personally pass on RAID 0 and either go with a high end 1 TB drive or splurge and go RAID 5 with 3 1TB drives (plenty of mobos support RAID 5 nowadays.)

Ego

Offhand since you listed a 2k budget I tossed together what I'd build for that using newegg.

mobo: Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R -core i7, RAID 5 support. $210
cpu: Core i7 2.93ghz quad core. -good performance increase over core 2 quads. Price goes up too. $560
storage: Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB x3 -I'm using several. I chalk up most complaints of bad drives to people getting samsungs that were partitioned for external enclosures. $300 at 100$ each. Use them in RAID 5.
memory: 6 gb of fast corsair DDR3. -$192.
video: BFG GTX 280 1GB (chosen because you had nVidia in the previous setup and I'd take it over paired 9800's any day) -$290

That's $1552. Spend the rest on good speakers or a nice monitor or something I guess. If you REALLY want to be silly you could spend $440 more on the 3.2ghz version of the core i7, bringing your total to $1992, but I'd say you'd be better off buying a fancier heatsink for a 2.93ghz model and overclocking it (further, since I'd be overclocking it anyways.)

I have to say I'd take this over the above setup.

edit: forgot to include an OS. I'd just use the Windows 7 beta, which isn't just free but is also ten kinds of snazzy. If you want Vista, tack on Vista 64 'system builders' edition, whatever flavour you prefer. Note that you'll probably want Win7 when it comes out if you buy Vista now, and from the sounds of it Windows 7 will hit sooner rather than later.

shadydentist

I would also advise against Raid 0 for various reasons. There are very few tasks that would benefit from it, and its much handier to have your OS on one HD and your music/movies/date on the other.