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.

hello zonkerman.
3 weeks ago I got an I7 920 on a gigabyte ga-ex58-ud3r board with 8 gig of patriot sector 5 1600mhz ddr3.  I then bought a leadteak gtx285 and a 500 gb sata and a decent corsair 750w psu.  Then the monitor looked like the poor kid at the party so i got a samsung syncmaster p2270, which i have to say is fantastic, looks almost CRT.  lovin the rig more than life to be honest and is a massive massive massive upgrade from what i had before, which was as fast as a dog on a rug (4 gb ddr2/9500gt/dualcore 2.4ghz monolith)

i recommend this motherboard primarily cos its got triple channel ram and reads my ram bandwidth as 4800mhz lol, mmmm, plus a host of overclocking features and custom storable bios settings.

been playin round on vue and poser on the old rig for a yr or more, and never could render anything more than 200 frames cos of time issues and stability but this new one is a joy, frames are ready in no time, regardless of displacements or shadows and ive been able to push the polycount of scenes to numbers i couldnt dream of before.

one thing tho, dont know if its cos im now on 64 bit windows 7 or if its vue itself, but i still had some stability issues, but not the kind i had before.  

experimenting, i decided to put my old 9500gt in the 2nd pci-e 16 slot to use as a dedicated physx card for gaming, and after benchmarking,  i got roughly the same overall scores but one important additional factor:    the cpu then read as an i7 975 extreme (BONUS), i guess cos of cuda technology, and i was then able to ramp the settings up even more and the stability issues disappeared.    considering the 9500gt 1gb is only about 50 dollars or something, and it increases the effective load of the cheapest i7 to the equivalent of the most expensive i7, surely something to consider?    works for me anyway.

next step for me in a couple of weeks is dual sli, wanting, no, needing the second card just to make my eyes bleed.   good luck on whichever rig u build and let me know.

peace out.

Thanks fenyxfury.
Several folks at renderosity have been reporting that they are using the gigabyte board and are pretty happy campers so that board is a serious consideration now.  I have the money to buy now but just hesitating a few more days I think but not much longer.  For now my sights are on the  ASUS P6TD DELUXE   and asus brands. 

I thought about the GIGABYTE GA-EX58-UD3R, especially with many folks here loving them.  I think when the 3 or 4 gig sticks come out I'll be using them to go past 16 gigs of ram because I use VMWare a lot. Because of this I'm gonna pass on using the Gigabyte board because it stops at 16 gigs.  Other than this that board is pretty nice looking.

I also originally gave consideration to evga and msi boards as well but they are no longer on my list.

Glad to hear your Vue stability cleared later cause I've seen many people complain on the Vue forums about stability of their product.  Vue is one of my favorite tools so I hope I don't run into any issues later.

hi again. asus was my 1st choice to begin with, always has been, but the stockist i bought from didnt have any in at the time and i was just itching to buy and build so i got the gigabyte and i have to say im not sorry yet. sure its a bit teenage blue and shiny compared to the classy aesthetics of the asus but i think it was also a considerable amount cheaper and it realy is just an interim board for me if im honest, ive gone graphics card nuts and wanna go triple sli  just to shut my buddys up and justify how much time i spend on the pc to the wife lol.     im just happy its 2009 and we can finally talk real ram numbers and more cores than nasa.

good luck on ur build amigo

Okay I finally selected a motherboard.  I've settled on the Asus Rampage 2 Extreme.  Below is the complete system of parts I ordered this morning:

CPU:  Intel Core i7 975
Motherboard: Asus Rampage 2 Extreme
RAM:  12 gigs Corsair ddr3 triple channel 1600 ram
Hard drives: 2 Western Digital Caviar Black 1Terra Byte Drives
Power Supply: Enermax Galaxy EVO 1250 watt
Case:  Cooler Master RC-932-KKn1-GP HAF 932 (Black)
Mouse: Logiteck trackman optical wheel contour
Operating System: Windows 7 64 bit

I'm going to give my existing monitor a try on this system to see if it is good enough before buying another.  I still have to order the video card but that is from a different online order place.  Before I do get a new video card, thinking of Nvidia Quadro 4800, I want to see just how well might this system run with an old card like a GeForce 8800GT or ATI HD2900.

Argh!
I had to cancel that order on the motherboard. It appears the Rampage II Extreme is an excellent game motherboard and does pretty good on other things so long as you are happy with 6GB or less. But I wanted 12GB triple channel and that posed lots of problems.  You have to use much slower ram to run with high stability on that mobo if you going to have 12GB or more.

The other mobo that was on my list which I am checking is the ASUS P6T6 WS Revolution. Once I get all the vendor info for parts on it I guess then the order will go in again.  That one has fewer memory speed restrictions when trying to run 12GB or more.

Hello I am myself researching graphics cards for a build ... maybe workstation.

Currently I have

I7 920

12 gigs ddr3 1333 G.skill memory (fairly cheap) got an extra 6 gig due to displacement ...it canes Ram.

ASus p6t

5850 ati graphics card

2x 320 gig harddisks 7200 rpm

If you have bought your system I woulld love to know how Quadro 4800 performs?

I have had 8800gt , and an ati 4870 not a big leap in performance between the two but fairly good for most vue users needs I expect. Got the 5850 ati card and the open gl data is good nice speed and much more detail - massive improvement.

for next build purely for modelling and rendering I will prob go for i7 again - amazing rendering speed especially if overclocked.

But cannot work out whether workstation card is worth the money.

P6T works extremely well with 12 GB and NVIDA 9800 GT SLIi x 2 on windows 7 x64.

everything I've installed poser 7-8 carrara 7 and vue 8 inf no problems.

I have 2 monitors on this box an old viewsonic bottle and a 1080p LCD

Renders that took all day to render on my old dual core now render in hours so to keep my machine bogged down I now can render 3x4 6400x2400 to maintain my all day renders when i'm working.  One thing to modify on w7 is standby sleep mode, i7 needs a method to see cpu usage and if below a level then go to sleep.  Poser 7 uses 13% of the core, poser 8 uses 100%. carrara uses 100% but is still memory limited.

I don't think my computer would ever go to sleep whilst trying to render something in Vue - its barely on anything less than 100 % cpu usage all the time!