Hello everyone.
I'm planning to build an Intel i7 based PC and would like to see what others who have done this or purchased one ended up with that works for them on their 3d projects.  So, this is kind of a poll or survey for me.  Please share the following in response to this thread if you built an i7 based PC and/or have one and know its configuration:

CPU Model:
Motherboard:
Memory (model,brand, speed, amount)
Video Card(s) (model, indicate if using SLI or Crossfire configuration)
Hard Drive(s)(model, capacity, rpm)
Monitor(model,resolution)

Also, please let me know if you are having problems with your configuration.  There are many possible configurations and every time I think I have a good one I find many reported problems on technical forums so its' getting pretty frustrating.

This is my current system, self-built in February this year (and added to occasionally since then).

CPU: Core i7 940
MB: Gigabyte EX58-DS4
RAM: 12Gb Corsair DDR3 667MHz
GPU: ATI Radeon 4800, 512Mb GDDR5
HDD: mixture of Western Digital, Seagate, Maxtor, Samsung, all 7200 RPM, 1Tb RAID 1, 1Tb standard disk space
MONITORS: NEC SpectraView Reference 2690 (1920x1200), Samsung SyncMaster XL20 (1600 x 1200).

The only glitches I've had with it were GPU freezes in Poser (no idea why) and in Photoshop (dealing with very, very large image files). Recent driver updates appear to have rectified the problem.

The system runs slightly overclocked at 3.06GHz with no problems.

The only thing I'd do different is the GPU: the ATI Radeon 4800 runs very hot and doubling up via Crossfire would cause real cooling problems.

Final note: you will always find problems posted on technical forums, that's what they're for. In my experience 'technical problems' are very often 'I did something stupid but I won't admit it' problems. If you're in any doubt about your abilities as a system builder, there are plenty of places on the web that will let you specify what you want and will put it all together for you. They'll charge you for that, but it's cheaper than frying a CPU, motherboard, RAM chips etc.

CPU: Core i7 940
MB: Gigabyte EX58-DS4
RAM: 12Gb Corsair DDR3 667MHz
GPU; 2 Nvida 9800 GT
Win7  Ultimate x 64
a mixture of 3 TB in Drives, 1 ext 1TB raid

no problems with poser7 & 8, carrara pro, Photo shop cs 3, vue 8 infinitte.
clean install and had to get the proper drivers for the NVida cards to run
in the proper mode.

3 monitors.

Thanks for the info adegner and cspear.  It's interesting to see that both of you found your i7s to work with the same Gigabyte motherboard.

adegner, it's good to see that Windows 7 64bit is also working for your products, in particular vue 8 infinite.  I planning to use Windows 7 64bit and was hoping that there would be not problems.  When you use vue 8, was it installed onto the native Windows 7 desktop or did you have to install it into the xp mode area to make it work as a Windows xp application?

I'm also on Win 7 x64.

Vue 8 will install as a 64-bit application (I assume, I don't have it, but that's how Vue 7 worked) so XP mode isn't relevant.

I've had maybe 3 applications - nothing important - that I've had to put into compatibility mode of some sort to run under this OS.

Cspear,
very nice on the Win 7 x64.  I've been using XP Pro 64bit and have been wanting to leave that operating system for some time.  Windows 7 64bit looks good now. Guess I'm going to leap over Vista and am going straight to Win 7 x64.  Thanks for the info.

Vue 8 runs in 64 bit mode with my nvida SLI setup and utilizes all cores and ram.  Haven't found any
limitations yet.  In win7 you have to prevent the box from sleeping and I've done much higher resolution renders than I could do with Vue 7 Inf.  a typical render on my machine is normally
3200 x 2400 and i've done as high as 6400 x 4800.  The next setup I want to try is creating a HDRI
with the usual spherical camera on a render which they say vue can do.

I've also added some ancient usb microscope which uses xp drivers and it installed and functions
just like it should.  Win 7 Ultimate works fine for me

adegner.
Somehow I missed the sli setup you mentioned.  Have you tried rendering to screen with 1 card and then 2 to see if there is a difference in render time?  I wonder if it works like some games where one card will render the top half and the second will doe the bottom half of the image which basically cuts the render time by video card in half because neither card renders the full image but rather a part of it to make it whole.

If you do this test make sure its a render to screen operation in Vue. Curious if you've done this before.

i7 920, 6 Gb DDR3 RAM, Asus P6T Deluxe motherboad,
24" Samsung LCD (with true 24-bit color depth as opposed to dithered colors by cheap panels), NVidia 9800GT

Operating system (Ubuntu 9.10 64-bit) on a 64Gb SSD by OCZ (very fast), Poser stuff on a 10000 rpm 150Gb WD Caviar disk, other stuff on a 1Tb Samsung and then important stuff gets mirrored on a 500Gb Samsung (both Samsungs being 7200rpm disks). Weekly back-ups go to two external HDs.

No problems to report. I'm using my machine for Poser use, program development and image editing (with Wacom Intuos 3).

Windows 7 Professional x64 Retail
CPU Model: Intel i7 920 @ 4.0Ghz
Motherboard: Asus Rampage II Extreme with bios 1639
Memory (model,brand, speed, amount) 12 Gig OCZ Blades DDR3 2000Mhz
Video Card(s) (model, indicate if using SLI or Crossfire configuration) ATI Sapphire 5870
Hard Drive(s)(model, capacity, rpm) WD 300Gig Raptor, 2 1 Terabyte Seagate HDs
Monitor(model,resolution) Asus 24" LCD 1920 x 1080

Poser 8 running well with SR2 update.  No problem to report either.....

Cspear,
Did you render that picture in your gallery with the big squirrel and black cat behind it using your current i7 system?  Using the ATI Radeon 4800? Did you do the final render in Poser? How long did the render take?

Did you render that picture in your gallery with the big squirrel and black cat behind it using your current i7 system?  Yes
Using the ATI Radeon 4800? The GPU plays no part in rendering
Did you do the final render in Poser? Yes, Poser 8 pre SR1
How long did the render take? Don't recall exactly, but more than 30 mins, less than 60.