New Hardware Time - Intel i7 Upgrade w/ Pics

I miss regularly writing about hardware besides one of the side jobs I have so you guys can either enjoy this or suffer through it.      I mentioned last week that I was working on a new upgrade for my "command center" as Wadsworth1 likes to call it.  All my components are now here though I do need an extra one to complete the setup but more on that later. 

Those of you in the know may question why I went socket 1366 (Bloomfield) when socket 1156 (Lynnfield) just came out today and is arguably the best deal in CPUs right now (or even the 920).  I could have gone Lynnfield and an i7 870 as well though I choose the i7 950 instead.  They both would have been free so it was a wash in that regard.  The main reason came down to my desire to consider Gulftown, the 6-core CPU, which should be out next year.  Gulftown will work on my my motherboard and would not work on a Lynnfield board.  Plus this setup is a much better option for multiple GPUs if I consider that route with the ATI 5xxx series.



Right now this is my setup as it stands.  Those the optical drives up top have been removed.

Intel i7 950
EVGA x58 LE Motherboard
Sapphire 4850x2 2GB (will be swapping this for the upcoming 5870x2)
6GB 1600MHz Corsair Dominator
300GB Velociraptor (selling this and picking up a Intel X25-M 160GB SSD for Windows 7)
2.3TB storage space
Cogage TRUE Spirit cooler with Sycthe S-Flex Fan
4 Yate Loon d12sl 120mm fans
Antec P182
X-Fi Xtrememusic
Corsair 750TX
Benq 24" G2400W
MS Natural Multimedia Keyboard
Audio-Technica AD700s
Logitech G9 Mouse with ID Grip
Razer Sphex

I have been debating about changing my case for ages now as I have had this P182 since it came out as it was a review model.  Unfortunately there is pretty much no case that is acoustically this quiet, large, and has a solid layout right out of the box.































I did make one small mistake on this latest build.  I didn't realize that this board didn't have an IDE channel so I have two worthless CD/DVD burners here.  Now I have to go out and buy a SATA optical drive, probably the Sony Optiarc.  At least it gives me an excuse to finally get one with a black bezel to match my case.

Besides for the Solid State Drive and a new video card I probably won't upgrade for quite some time, most likely later next year when Gultown becomes reasonable.  The hard drive is currently my weakest link as you can see in the Windows performance index so I am itching for a SSD.  I've thought about a another 24" monitor to go with my current one and my HDTV.  Now that ATI will support three monitors out of the box on their new cards I may get around to that.

I sold my old stuff for like $50 less than what I paid for the new stuff after rebates and Bing Cashback and the cheap CPU so this was a really cheap upgrade.  I'll get around to overclocking eventually though it isn't a major concern on day one.

If you want to check out pics of my complete "entertainment" setup you can check those out here and here.

As usual when I talk hardware feel free to ask any questions on mine or your future builds and I'll try help out.  Or you can always hit up the Tech help thread in the forums.