building a new desktop check it out and help please

Looks good to me, all I would reccomend is a bigger power supply. Since you have the water cooling I would recommend at least a 450W to cover any extras like fans and so on that you will add later.

nuke the floppy. I haven't had one since I bought my 8887-X laptop (Feb '03) nor have I needed one. I do have a 7-in-1 reader, and it's decent. Sometimes tricky with some Bios issues, but easily replaces a floppy.

HD is on the SATA channel - good
Card Reader is USB (I'll assume, as I've not heard of an ata one)
Optorite - caution with them. I personally like the non-outsourced Sony burners (and I am by no means a Sony fan).

Sound - I'd use the built-in sound on the mobo. Unless you're REALLY into sound and such, most built-ins are better than the speakers they go out to, so an add-on card may be wasted.

Of course, my built-in AC-97 sound on my Epox Mini-Me cuts out every now and then while playing City of Heroes... bugs the snot out of me.

-myrkat

Well, it saves some work having a floppy drive when ya wanna install the SATA drive. You will only get a floppy disk with it.

On the PSU: It is one of the most important parts of a computer. It can make or break it. If you go for the AMD64 read the forums at www.msi.com.tw and under the VIA section there is a sticky about powersupplies. It is not all about the wattage. instead the Amperage might be much more important. Check it out.

Otherwise, looks very nice

Ok, heres my run down on it. Personally, I would drop Sony and Optorite, and go MADDOG all the way. They are inexpensive, and very highspeed. You will save about $150 total by switching both to MadDog. I don't know what type of case you like, but the Dragon series have 600-650Watt Power supplies for about $120 dollars. they are well built, and look really nice to. Large, and tall, they take up some room, but you get lots of nic features also. The Viper case is about $100 with a 550Watt PS, and has some really cool stuff also.

I'd go AMD64, but go with an ASUS or ABIT MOBO, with nForce3 for sure. THe advantage to nForce chipsets is that you can download nVidia's tweaking software Forceware to control your whole MOBO safely and effectively. It is nice software, and is a tweakers best friend. If you can get the MOBO with nVidia's RAID 0/1 Controller, do that, since two drives in RAID will probably cost you less then the 250GB Hitachi. I would go Western Digital or Seagate (Seagate is my Fav). If you had 2X 160GB HD's 7,200RPM 8MB Cache in RAID 0/1, that would be very fast, and the data mirroring (RAID 1) allows for a backup of anything you install incase one HD goes out.

About the floppy, I would say only keep it if you need it, if not, dump it. The AquariusIII is very good LC choice, so GJ. Are you an audiophile? If not, dump the sound card. The only advantage to the Platitnum Pro is the fact that is has MIDI and Analog audio inputs/outputs in an external setup. If you wan great sound, with a little cost, Go Audigy Sound Blaster Live Platitnum 5.1 (24Bit ED) or normal ZS 7.1. Unless you are going 7.1, go 5.1 card and save soem dough and hastles or set up.

The Video card is Ok, but what are you paying for it? If you are paying $200+, I'd go Nvidia for sure. For about $250, you can get a 5950 FX Ultra on pricewatch I think. I'll post another one, with my items and prices and links to them, and then you tell me what you like and don't like.

PS- Could you maybe give me an estimated budget you want to stay under? I could really help you lower the cost of the system, but just a last word of advice, go AMD64, to be ahead in technology for now. And you Power Supply is way too small for liquid cooling system, go at least 500Watt with that setup, but I'd go 600-650 for future upgrades and performance.

Without reading the other posts:

Basically any old case would do, but on the point of the power supply as many who posted before me have said, go for a quality PSU. If the PSU fries, it has the potential to take the rest of your system with it, resulting in a very, very expensive replacement job. I would reccomend Antec Power supplies and i would reccomend at least a 440W for a system of your calibre.

I would definately tell you to go for an Athlon 64 based system if you're a gamer. You should get a socket 939 A64 because they provide dual channel and provide some good upgrade options (you can get a Nforce 4 board later with SLI) while the socket 754 socket is a dead end. I would reccomend a Socket 939 3200+ Winchester core (90nm based) Athlon 64. they OC really well too.

At the moment, i would get an Nforce 3 board. The best for that would be the MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum. It's shown to have the best performance out of all the Athlon 64 Socket 939 boards.

I'll skip the hard drives and optical drives as they dont matter that much.

Very good choice. Very, powerful card that beats most Nvidia FX cards maybe with the exception of the FX5950 ultra (which is alot more expensive). With the introducton of the 9800XT, the prices have the 9800pro has bottomed out. Now, the newer 9800pro use R360 cores with the Hynix ram modules. Through a simple bios flash (gigacube 9800XT bios) and a driver update, you have a 9800XT on your hands (just be sure to check the core and ram before you update).

HELL NO!!!! Thermaltake makes the worst water cooling kits out of all the better known kit makers. Horrible performance. If you're willing to spend the time, go research some watercooling and buy parts and slap a watercooling set together. If you're dead set on a kit, then i would reccomend you get the Coolermaster Aquagate. A fraction of the cost of the Thermaltake Aquarius and equal if not better performance and it fits in 2 5.25" drive bays. Koolance kits are good too.
But since it's your first time, i would reccomend you stick with air cooling.
Reccomended cooling:
CPU: Anything from Thermalright would well for you, especially anything from the XP line.
Graphics card: Arctic Cooling VGA silencer is one of the best performing graphics card coolers out there. gives enough room for ramsinks, whisper quiet and dumps the heat outside of your case instead of leaving it inside to heat up the rest of your PC.

Are you looking to overclock your processor? If you arent maybe dropping the water cooling setup and go with a normal HSF would be cheeper.

i would suggest buying a full tower with a water cooling system preinstalled, i was gonna do that anyway. Unless you are good with welding a such,,,from what i understand it is quite hard to get a water cooling system into a non-custom case and requires cutting and welding o the case....Also,i suggest dropping the super sound card down a notch, you wont really notice a difference unless u r hardcore audio, and dont forget the ram,,,maybe a gig or so,,,ur cad might require two gigs...

1 Gig of RAM is typically enough for most CAD applications and more than enough for games. 2 sticks of 512MB in dual channel will be your best bet. 4 sticks doubles your chances of getting a bad stick that holds the other 3 sticks back.

For the sound card, ryan is partially correct. The entire Audigy 2 ZS line uses the same PCI card. It's just that the Platinum Pro versions have a really slick front panel which lets you tweak some settings and connect up your headphones and other stuff. I would just buy the basic version of the Audigy 2 ZS. In short, you arent going to be getting a big sound performance boost from the Platinum Pro. It should in fact stay the same.

For the watercooling, yes, a custom watercooling kit (one u put together with parts from various places) will require you to cut up your case in most cases. Either get a case with watercooling preinstalled, like ryan said, or get the Coolermaster Aquagate. In the former situation, Koolance cases are pretty good. The coolermaster Aquagate performs similarly to the Thermalright SP-94 or XP-90/XP-120 air cooled heatsinks, except at a fraction of the noise. It fits in 2 5.25" drive bays (where the CD roms go) Just mount up the waterblock to your CPU and connect the pipes and ur done.
The best watercooling kit you can get is one you make yourself and requires case modding. You need to make your own to truely unlock the potential of watercooling. I made my own kit and before, i was using a top of the line Therrmalright SP-94 (this was before the XP-90 and XP-120) with a Delta 92mm and i was getting 33 celcius on the CPU idle and 51 celcius on the CPU load, this was taken with a temperature probe inside the socket, making actual contact with the bottom of the CPU itself. After watercooling, i am getting temps of 25 celcius idle and 33 celcius load, using the same measurement methods and the same overclock and basically the same ambient temperatures (air conditioned room).
The only thing i can think of which is better than that watercooling while not having to cut up your case is getting a vapochill case with a Vapochill preinstalled. That takes you beyond the world of watercooling and into the world of extreme cooling, which should keep your CPU temps at a nice frosty -10 celcius even on load.
Here's a link to their site (works with IE, not with FireFox): http://www.vapochill.com/default.asp...ntentSection=2
Some of their Vapochill units are sold as stand alone units which require case modding to fit in, while some units are preinstalled into cases.