|
Liquid cooling isn't necessary...Best to put the money where it counts. If you plan to do some heavy OC'ing, a thermalright ultra 120 extreme will be adequate.
But yes, buying late but not too late is the best route....Regarding intels Nehalem platform, the high end bloomfield board and cpu's come out LATE q3 or q4 this year. But they will be high ends, so expect extreme edition processors..probably all 900+ and nothing below. Mainstream is Q1 2009. The reason I was asking him if he was deciding a cpu upgrade, is due to the fact that if he does plan to switch over to nehalem within 2 years, best to just get a p35 board to save funds...PCI-E 2.0 isn't needed since no cards break the barrier, and only VERY few titles can actually take advantage of it, one being Flight Simulator. So really no need if you plan to upgrade relatively soon...But if he wants the rig to last 3-5 years with a gpu upgrade down the line and stick with a penryn/kentsfield, best to just pick up a x38 board for PCI-E 2.0 due to the time frame.
8GB isn't necessary, but it's nice to disable page files if you have that much memory =P. But absolutely not necessary, 2x2gb is fine. Plus, you actually lose a bit of OC potential by filling all 4 ram slots.
__________________
|