If the cost of the 7970 is too much, I would look at the 7950 or 7870 before the 7770.

BladeD,

One off cost is not an issue, but 525 Kwh annum as a returning item of about 275 Euro annul regrettably is. Power cost here goes aggressively up, the more one uses, so it's a major criterion to consider [100% green it supposedly is]. We've already been announced a 19% price hike over last year, 12 month frozen contract... in fact, the higher Kwh max potential used has been raised by 50%, so we're looking at smart managing, to keep peak potential below 4.5Kwh down from 6Kwh [not run dishwasher, laundromat, iron and airco all at same time].

twilyth,

1) Result throughput is way higher on my checklist over hours clocked.
2) The mobo can have 32Gb spread over 4 slots.
4) Yes, I'm gravitating towards the 7770...(see the power consideration)
3) Have a BluRay R/W in the Q6600 that does 50Gb burns, which I'll be swapping out, so the old machine can still act as backup service.

The power source is clean clean, except when the thunder comes really close which can be 365 days of the year in this corner where cold and hot meet in opposite directions [yet to ever have to power down, even during the worst]. The UPS's are zillion joules protection... standard issue, even the laptops run off them. The assembly as posted originally is pretty much OCable/voltable in all critical areas. I'll be approaching that very very slowly... past experience with fried RAM dictates that.

Sek: by UPS (uninterruptible power supply), I mean a battery back up. Power strip surge protectors don't do anything to condition the AC waveform coming in.

May I ask how efficient your UPS is?

I have always thought of them being similar to a Bronze PSU but for the life of me I don't know why.

Long time ago I checked in and posted about it. All attached devices off, and the suckers were still eating 20 W/H. Unplugged all devices, and still 20 W/H, and this is with the power switch of the UPS off. They felt luke warm, which is when I started to unplug them from the wall-socket when away. Oddly, when plugging in the laptop, without battery in it, it was eating 85W/H when crunching full out on 2 cores. When plugged directly into the wallsocket it also takes 85W/H... what in the world is this?

And this is kinky... a LED light bar of 1 meter takes 2.4 watts when on and 3 watts when off. Maybe the kilowatt meter is broken [And this is made in Germany], but still, a lukewarm UPS is a lukewarm UPS, when powered down. Bronze... maybe Brass rated.