Building a new PC. Help with hard drive and sound card

xbonez · 10-10-2009, 01:25 AM

I'm assembling a new PC primarily for gaming. Below are the specs:

Motherboard: EVGA A1 X58 3-Way SLI Core i7 Motherboard
Processor: Intel Core i7 920 2.66GHz
RAM: Corsair Dominaor 3x2GB Tri Channel 1600Mhz (8-8-8-24)
Video Card: Either 2 x HD 5850s in X-fire, or single HD 5870
Hard Drive : Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB 32MB cache 7200RPM
Chassis: Antec Twelve Hundred
PSU: Corsair CMPSU-850TX 850-Watt TX Series
Procy Cooling: Corsair Cooling Hydro Series H50 Liquid cooling

Question regarding Hard drive:

Apart from the hard drive I mentioned above, i want to get an additional hard drive (for OS + games). Which of the ones below is my best option?

(a) Kingston 64Gb SSD
(b) WD Raptor 10,000RPM 150GB
(c) Another Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB 32MB cache 7200RPM and RAID 0 using a hardware RAID controller

Question regarding sound card:

My motherboard supports 7.1 channels, co-axial and ToSLINK. The soundcard I have in mind is the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional Series Sound Card.

Now, the thing is, I'm assuming the difference in sound quality from my (high end) motherboard and this sound card will be almost negligible to my ear (correct me if I'm wrong).
So, the only incentive to get the sound card is to off-load the burden of sound processing from my procy to the sound card when playing games. Is this required considering the procy I'm taking (i7 920)?

PS - Fell free to leave any other comments regarding the build.

desiibond · 10-10-2009, 06:33 AM

which speakers do you have?

for soundcard, yes, it's better to go for Creative's as it is the most popular and most of the games provide full support for EAX and are optimized to work well with creative sound cards. you can also check ASUS Xonar series of cards.

If you have a 5.1 speaker setup, adding a high end soundcard will let you enjoy the full power of Dolby/DTS. also, for high end speakers, it's better to have a good sound card. The difference in quality will be audible while gaming or watching a good movie.

xbonez · 10-10-2009, 07:27 AM

@ desiibond: I have the Logitech Z-5500 5.1 speaker set. the thing is, the Z-5500 has an inbuilt amplifier with Dolby DTS processing. I'm gonna send digital signal to the Z5500 (via ToSLINK) and allow the Z-5500 to do the Dolby processing. is the sound card still worth the $150 it costs? i don't mind spending that much if its worth it.

also, on most latest games, havgin an external sound card will shift how much of a load from the procy to the sound card? is it a significant amount, or not so much?

desiibond · 10-10-2009, 09:02 AM

^^afaik, not all games support Dolby over SPDIF passthrough. so, it's better to get soundcard that does Dolby/DTS.

It's not just about sheeding load on CPU, a good soundcard can make lot of difference, especially with high end speakers like MX-5021 and Z-5500D. And doesn't your mobo have passthrough option? My mobo has SPDIF port and I can do audio passthrough to speakers.