Maximum PC

Hey folks. I just built a new machine, and I'm debating tossing a little more money into it. Being as I've already tossed a big chunk at it, funds are a bit tight at moment.
Here's where I'm at on it right now.

Antec 300 case
Asus P9X79 LE motherboard
EVGA Superclocked GTX 560Ti
Antec EarthWatts EA 750 power supply
Intel i7-3820
OCZ Vertex 4 256GB SSD
16GB Corsair Vengeance SSR3 1600
Pioneer BDR-207 Blu-Ray burner
LG UH12LS29 Blu-Ray
Asus Xonar Essence ST sound card
Corsair H60 Liquid cooler

I migrated the Xonar Essence, two 1TB and a 2TB drive, and the LG Blu-Ray drive over from my last build for mass storage. I'm using two Hanns-G 27.5" monitors, and a set of Klipsch iFi speakers and modified Grado SR80 headphones as my sound output devices.
I'm debating getting another 16GB of memory, or possibly another 560Ti for SLI. Other possibilities are a second Vertex 4 and go RAID 0 on my primary drive so I can keep all my games on it, but I'd have to lose one of my hard drives as I'm maxed out on SATA controllers.
Does anyone have any suggestions as to where I should go with his build? I'm a gamer, but it's not my primary use for this build.

Just curious, if gaming is not the primary function of your rig, what may I ask do you do? And what games do you play at what settings?

I concur with LatiosXT on all counts. I might even push the matter regarding your video card. Two 27-inch monitors eh? What resolutions are you running?

I do believe getting another GTX 560 Ti will allow you to SLI and use that nVidia surround thingy. If you are interested in that, that is. Otherwise, your rig could use a new GPU with more muscle (again, depending on what you want to do).

I'm guessing RAM will do very little, if anything, for your system regarding performance.

Another SSD might make sense now, but perhaps the price of 512 GB drives may come down so it would make more sense to replace your 256 GB model sooner or later. Then again, I did read that the price of memory may fluctuate soon.

The monitors are big and inexpensive at the cost of resolution; they run at 1920x1200. I do a fair amount of image editing in Photoshop, and a bit of video encoding. I do a lot of remote access network administration also.
As far as muscle, the 560Ti seems to run Portal 2 just fine for me. I'm not playing a lot else at the moment, but I tend to gravitate toward first person shooters and Deathmatching.
I would think that two 256 GB drives in RAID 0 would give me more throughput than a single 512.
I should mention that my machine is also my primary audio source, hence the Xonar Essence and the Grado cans. I love the iFi speakers, but they seem to be slowly dying, and keeping them alive has proved costly. I may need to go with a proper receiver and a decent set of book shelf speakers and a subwoofer.

I'm going to go on a whim and suggest like everything else in the computing world, your secondary storage transfer rates are going to increase performance logarithmically (i.e., double the performance doubles the performance, doubling again only increases by like 25%-50%). So I wouldn't really worry about improving your transfer speed that much.

Before you start jumping into a Catleap or similar...

• These are the same LG panels used in the 27" iMac
• However, Apple has a zero-defect policy. Yamakasi monitors are those that failed. The vendor claims these are A- monitors, which have 1-5 dead pixels.
• You don't get any real warranty, unless you fork over $50 for one (which I guess is still a good deal altogether)

Meh imho, I think you probably are better off than you imagine Again, I'd suggest consideration of a GPU later down the road that might suit your needs better - I don't recall which, but I do believe some Radeon cards are the preference for image and video stuff.

A better HSF would be a good idea if you plan on overclocking. Something to consider.

The increase in performance from a raid 0 for two 256 SSD drives vs one 512 I did not consider. I guess that could be attractive, but I don't think most people will benefit because the extra complexity of the setup itself and the marginal, real-world performance increase. If it is something you want to do though, then by all means have fun with it - that's the interesting part of building a PC!

I do like kleinkinstein's suggestion for a Catleap or Achieva IPS panel, and I wish I thought of it, as that would be a benefit that you would probably appreciate more than marginally faster SSD performance. It ain't for everyone though, so do some research on the forums and decide if it's right for you.

Bang up job on suggestions, gentlemen. The change to IPS panels is tempting, although I do kinda like my cheapass*d Hann-G monitors. Going to SLI looks attractive also.

I located another GTX 560Ti (they seem to be scare) as well as another Hanns-G 28" monitor. The SLI config is running pretty smoothly at the moment. I should have the third monitor by next week.

As long as you hold yourself to the same standard. Agreed?

The third one should be here in a few days.

Apologies for the cable management. I'm still sorting that out.
My next major challenge is getting a decent shot of the bridge wide enough to span all three panels.

The heat sinks won't fit under the tall fans. I do intend to get lower profile RAM to fill the additional four slots.
The beer is a Racer 5 IPA.

I had planned to get this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820233197
It's effectively the same RAM that's in the other four slots albeit without the big, showy heatsinks, and the old timer in me doesn't want to mix brands or timings.
Racer 5 is a bit difficult to find outside of the Left coast.

Finally!
Next up I want to get another 256 Vertex 4 so I can do RAID 0. 12 GB/s baby!

I finally located a longer SLI cable and was able to put my Xonar ST back in. Onboard sound was pretty unbearable. The major downside is that one of my vidcards is in an 8x PCIe lane. I can live with that.

Video cards don't need x16 to begin with so...