New Rig - Time to pull the trigger?

I'm determined to build my next rig myself, but have been in a bit of "analysis paralysis" for the past few months trying to get the best components for the best bargain. It seems like we've had a bit of a recent price drop so I'm thinking I need to pull the trigger, but have a couple of questions. I'm basing things on Father Xmas' $1375 Box, which is now around $1050 after rebates and is from April. The one significant change I know I want to make for personal experience reasons is to swap the XFX 5850 for a GTX 460 1GB or better (like this one).

1. Is now the time to buy? Or put better, any reason to wait? Do Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Xmas sales, after Xmas sales, etc. generally have any impact on prices of components? Or is a new piece of hardware due out soon that may lower prices?
2. Does my decision to swap to an NVidia necessitate any other changes? Specifically, will the Mobo and Power Supply (it says "Crossfire ready") still work fine with the new card?
3. I've had good luck with EVGA GeForce cards before. Any thoughts on the one I linked above? Since the prices are a little lower, I could afford to go up to a 465 or even a 470 like this EVGA GeForce GTX 470. Is it worth it?
4. Any other updates you would suggest from Father Xmas' rig? I probably have $100-200 budget flexibility from his list if there are any easy wins.

I don't do any PC gaming outside of CoH currently. After I buy this, I may put Civ V or Starcraft 2 on my Xmas wish list, but for the purposes of this discussion, assume I'm only playing CoH and related tasks (HeroStats, Sentinel, Wiki) on the rig.

Thanks for any advice!

(stupid forum logoff bug ate my reply, twice! Grrr)

Once more from the top.

Yikes, hadn't looked at the bottom line lately, and boy have the prices dropped. I would list this configuration as a $1250 rig today, if I wasn't planning on tweaking it soon.

The two pieces that have dropped the most has been memory, now that DDR3 is the mainstream standard for both Intel and AMD's current CPU lines and the video card. Back in April, the ATI HD 5850 was starting to creep above it's MSRP of $299 since there wasn't any real competition from nVidia. Since then the GTX 4xx series arrived and after a price war or two and recently with the introduction of the AMD HD 6870, the price of the HD 5850 fell like a stone. There's also been a few price reductions on parts like the case and hard drive as they are no longer the new shiny hyped at review sites.

The tweaks I'm looking at and/or waiting for are the following.

First I would swap out the HD 5850 and put in the HD 6870. Reason I haven't yet is due to the limited availability of the HD 6870. NewEgg can't keep them in stock and I rather not list a configuration you can't actually get right away.

Second, I've received reports from people that the Corsair TX750 is a little flaky. This saddens me since the TX750 was a very popular and well thought of PSU. However that said there are a few options out there but they are all a bit more expensive. The TX750 listed at $140, but like most PSUs are on nearly continuous sale. The ones I'm considering are the Antec New TP-750 for $160, the Corsair HX750 for $170 and fugly green fan aside, the XFX 750 watt Black Edition (it's built by Seasonic) for $160. The Antec is 80 Plus Bronze while the Corsair and XFX are 80 Plus Silver (their efficiency rating) and have modular cabling. All three can push 62 amps at 12 volts, essentially all of their 750 watts rating.

Lastly you may want to go with 8GB of memory. More memory never hurts, unless they physically get in the way of the 3rd party CPU cooler. A pair of 4GB sticks aren't at a ridiculous premium anymore over four 2GB sticks but are probably easier to overclock besides avoiding possible conflicts with a CPU cooler.

On to your questions.

1. I have no insight on whether now is the time to buy or if you should wait. If I knew the future I would be playing Powerball. The only "new" thing coming soon are the AMD HD 69xx video cards mid December, but I believe they are targeting the GTX 580 so I don't expect them to drive down the prices of mid range cards any time soon.
2. That motherboard supports either Crossfire or SLi in x8/x8 mode. I'm quite sure any of the PSUs I mentioned here can drive either configuration. I picked the PSU size of 750 watts because of SLi/Crossfire possibilities as well as moderate overclocking of the CPU. A pair of overclocked GTX 460s will use more power than a stock pair of HD 5850s but there should be more than enough spare power to handle them. If you feel concerned, step up to an 850 watt version of any of those three PSUs I listed above.
3. Stay away from the GTX 465, it was a short term gap filler that the GTX 460 eliminated when it came out. The GTX 470 may be a bit faster but uses a lot more power than either the GTX 460 or the HD 5850. A lot as in 50+ more watts per card for not a lot of additional performance. I would definitely step the PSU up to 850 watts if you are planning two GTX 470s.
4. Well, I already gave you my changes. If you want you could go with the i7-870 for $81 more list. It can use DDR-1600 memory without needing to OC the CPU and is a little bit faster, has better turbo boost as well as hyperthreading. And unless you compress video or use some other massively multicore aware application, I think it's overkill for a gaming system.

One point I'd make is there is never a correct time to buy. There is always new stuff coming soon or prices will drop soon

I would say if you are ready to start then start. If you wait for the "best" time you will never build one

Okay, I can only really echo Father's reply.

As to buy now or wait.

Normally, as has been said, something better is ALWAYS around the corner.

Even so, you're less than a week away from Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals. I'd say that's a small enough window that you could get by with waiting a couple days to see if prices nosedive a bit.

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

if you have a microcenter near you check out their prices - their in store cpu prices are insane compared to the egg - I got a I7 950 for 199 and an i5 760 for 149.

Definitely go with the eVga 460 over the 470, 480, or even the 5xx series cards. The 460 will get you the best performance at the best value for nVidia cards, and eVga doesn't skimp on components when building their cards.

Thanks Father Xmas for the advice, guide, and wish list, and everyone for their input. Looks like I'll stick with the 460, more memory, and look over the PSUs. I will check out Microcenter and Fry's for sales, and finally pull the trigger this weekend.

I'll post back with my experience. Just for reference, I am upgrading from a P4 2.4 GHz, 4GB (but on XP 32 bit so more like 3GB) with a 7900GS pushing two monitors (main being a 1920x1080 Samsung 22"). I expect big improvements in both framerate and quality, as well as loading times.

The trigger has been pulled. I have most of my stuff and hope to receive the rest this week. Here's what I ended up with:
CPU: Intel I7-950
Memory: G.SKILL Ripjaws 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) F3-12800CL7D-8GBRH
HD: WD Caviar Black 1TB SATA 6Gb/s OEM
Vid Card: EVGA GTX460SC 1GB
PSU: Corsair CMPSU-750TX
Fan: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus
MoBo: Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R
Thermal: IC Diamond 7C Thermal Compound
Optical: Samsung 22x DVD±RW Burner with Dual/Double Layer Support OEM
Case: Cooler Master 690 II Advanced ATX

Most of it is either exactly or based on Father Xmas' 1375 list. Thanks to fur_nes' suggestion on Micro Center, I got the i7-950 for $5 LESS than the i5-760 at the egg. Note this did require a MB upgrade as well since that processor is a 1366 socket vs an 1156, but that was only about $60 more and I thought it was worth it. I could have gone with a cheaper MB, but the Gigabyte was well reviewed. I believe the rest of the components are fine with either CPU, but let me know if I'm wrong.

I also went with the RAM upgrade to 2 4GB G.SKILL Ripjaws 7 Cas. I stuck with the Corsair 750TX PSU despite Father's notes above because I got a great deal on it (around $50 after rebates) that I couldn't pass up. Hopefully, it will work well for me, but I would have preferred the modular wiring. If it's an issue, I may upgrade to the HX or even AX (good deals on this one too).

My total came to around $1100 after rebates, not including the Win7 license I already have, but I was very anal about comparison shopping finding the deals over the holiday weekend.

I've put a system together before, but it's been a while. If anyone has a handy link to a good walk through (like this one), send it on over. I have seen conflicting info on how best to apply the thermal compound and this was something I definitely didn't do last time.

Thanks again for all the input. I'll check in again once I'm up and running.

Yea, that's a big oops right there Big King.

Socket 1366 CPUs, such as the i7-950, want their memory in groups of 3 while Socket 1156 CPUs like the i5-760 wants it's memory in pairs.

Well, crap. I could have sworn I asked that at Micro Center. Perhaps he thought I was asking about DDR3.

Just to clarify: Will just 2 sticks work at all, just not optimally? Or do I have to have 3 of the same modules for it to be able to use any of them? Just confused if "want their memory" means it's mandatory. I guess I'll go to 3 X 2GB, but am wondering if I can get by until it arrives.

Sorry, should have said preferred rather than want. The i7-9xx series "officially" supports up to DDR3-1066 memory (don't worry, motherboard manufacturers have found ways to ignore this) so coupled with 4 cores and 8 threads, Intel decided that triple channel memory was the way to keep the CPU flush with bandwidth to system memory.

Two sticks will work but with a performance loss, see the last table on the page here. They only saw 3% drop in games between dual and triple channel modes using DDR3-1333 on an i7-950.

The performance impact depends how the application uses memory. If it streams through a lot of memory, touching it infrequently so the CPU caches can't help, then the loss will be greater than an application that touches the same memory frequently. So applications like Photoshop or data compressors take a larger hit.

FYI, the next generation CPU series that will replace the Socket 1366, Socket 2011, is going to use quad channel memory with only one stick per channel max.

Thanks for the clarification. Those charts seem to focus on 3 channel 6GB vs dual 4GB and dual 6GB. I'm assuming a 3 X 2GB is also superior to 2 X 4GB dual? So should I be using DDR3-1066, 1333, 1600, or even 2200? The MB documentation says:

I got my memory situation corrected and got the rig built over the weekend. I've had a couple of play sessions since then and am loving it. The only issue I faced was when I had both FSAA and Ambient Occlusion turned all the way up (frequent game crashes), but that seems common. Ultra Mode is not the complete game-changing experience I was hoping for, but it very pretty, especially near water. My game and zone load times are far better.

Thanks to all contributors to the thread for helping me get here.

I have no idea why so many people thought UM was going to be game changing. It's been that way since they first announced it. These features simply add more realism to the world, assuming they don't drag your frame rate through the floor.

Glad to hear you got it up and running. I take it that it's significantly better than your old system.

awesome to see - you actually have the same cpu and mobo i do lol...I love the ud3r - almost as feature packed as thier high end for a lot less money.

6 gb is just fine(4 is too) as father pointed out the difference between dual and triple in real world is not that much. Looks like a really nice rig there!