Great review of the EVGA 9500 gt with some very good benchmark results <iframe width="425" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/WJPkJyDmH10" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
NVIDIA GT9500. Tiki, nice video. That's the GPU I'm looking at for now. It's about $40-50 and seems like it'll more than do the job. Would you settle for this or is there something similar out there for a better price? Amazing how prices on these drop so fast; it used to be about $120 when it first came out
That is a real great card... No question, and the benchmarks for the geforce 9500 gt show some really decent results for the price. This card for the $10. off additional discount is a nice bargain. You posted $39.99 a card . I looked around and could not find a better price on the card. Nice price , great card. Follow Boli's advice also and go for 3 of the same cards ( whatever card you decide on ) if your intentions are to eventually install six monitors. As for the sale on this card, even if the other card will sit around a while, for this price and have matching cards this is a good deal. I will look for some comparable but I don't think I can match the 3 card price.
The only thing I would do is call over to a Microcenter and ask if the 9500 video cards will fit all 3 PCI Express 2.0 in this board ( ASUS P8P67-M Pro R3 LGA 1155 P67 mATX Intel Motherboard ) before making a video card purchase. I cannot tell but 2 of the pcie slots look very close.
I don't see any reason why they wouldn't fit. Per the EVGA specs and the pictures, each card conforms to 1 card width with the heat sink and fan. They should be all right. http://www.evga.com/PRODUCTS/enlarge.asp?PN=01G-P3-N959-TR&I=5 If I strictly use this box for trading (2D charts) I would even go for a lower end video card (EVGA 8400 GS), $19.99 each. But it's up to you. Or you can compete with LEAPup for the next used 3 Quadro NVS 295 cards coming on to EBay.
Sam, I know this wasn't directed at me, but I have to put my 2 cents in on that hard drive . IMO, with your choice of cpu I wouldn't consider any less than a SATA III 6Gb/s SSD. Then add a storage drive (spinner) of the capacity to meet your needs. With your choice of MB and CPU it will be very easy to create bottle neck and give back some of your available performance. I also believe (I think Boli mentioned) 8 Gigs of RAM would be my minimum if I was running Win-7. Sharpen up your pencil and shop around, and you should be well under budget. I built a AMD Phenom II X6 1090T (sorry guys .... Go BLACK and never go back ) this spring and it preforms beyond all my expectations. I can't imagine the speed of these latest Intels.
Naturally the next step is on to the chassis and power supply. Disk drives are quite generic. You can go with whichever you like (capacity, speed, physical dimension, interface). Your MoBo has a mATX form factor. It will fit on to a chassis that is designed for ATX (just 2-inches narrower, and that's on the right hand side of your MoBo picture. All the pins where you bolt down the motherboard to the chassis should fit. I use an Antec 300. $60 on Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/Antec-Three-Hundred-External-Internal/dp/B000GQMHBI Tiki used a higher end Antec box. They are both big. Leaving a lot of empty space inside the chassis unused (probably would never be used). Maybe you can shop for a smaller chassis (make sure to have room for 1 hard drive and 1 DVD-RW drive... though most of them would). Powersupply: Coolmaster or Corsair or Antec. There are others. 600W to 850W should be what you need. I don't think you need any higher. Extra CPU fan... I tend to think the one comes with the Intel chip is enough unless you overclock your CPU, or you anticipate that the CPU will be busy crunching numbers all day. If you want one, CoolMaster makes pretty good models. But make sure the extra headsink/fans fit inside your chassis.