Need upgrade suggestions

[dj6888]

My son wants to upgrade his computer (I have built all our computers, and price has not been a factor in previous builds. I never go bleeding edge, but try for best bang for the buck). However my son the college student will be paying for the upgrade...

Other than the mandatory college work, he is a gamer. Currently WoW and Oblivion.


I talked him into OC'ing (more bang for the buck) an Opty 165.

I need suggestions on:
mobo (requires sata raid0)
CPU cooler (quiet/good air cooling)
GPU (prefer 7800/7900, but need price around $300)

Should we update RAM (currently 4x512 patriot DDR 400 2-3-2-5, OC's very well) to 2x1024? If so, what (keep the prices reasonable and they need to OC well). If not, make sure the mobo you suggest will handle 4 sticks of dual channel.

This will be put in his Tsunami case with 500W Xconnect PS and all the standard add-ons.

Thanks for your help.

 

[shadowduck]

My son wants to upgrade his computer (I have built all our computers, and price has not been a factor in previous builds. I never go bleeding edge, but try for best bang for the buck). However my son the college student will be paying for the upgrade...

Other than the mandatory college work, he is a gamer. Currently WoW and Oblivion.


I talked him into OC'ing (more bang for the buck) an Opty 165.

I need suggestions on:
mobo (requires sata raid0)
CPU cooler (quiet/good air cooling)
GPU (prefer 7800/7900, but need price around $300)

Should we update RAM (currently 4x512 patriot DDR 400 2-3-2-5, OC's very well) to 2x1024? If so, what (keep the prices reasonable and they need to OC well). If not, make sure the mobo you suggest will handle 4 sticks of dual channel.

This will be put in his Tsunami case with 500W Xconnect PS and all the standard add-ons.

Thanks for your help.

1) DFI Lanparty Ultra D - $122 at Newegg
2) Stock Opteron cooler is beefy, and there is no need to buy a 3rd party cooler. (Its quiet and does a great job)
3)eVGA 7900GT video card- $320- Newegg should have stock April 20th.
4) 2x 1GB is always better than 4x 512. Look at Corsair XMS or OCZ Gold (around $200). But they want to ditch it, so they are offering huge rebates. You can get some great deals.

 

[smedlin]

If price is an issue, why do raid?

Keep your current ram chips. While 2 is better than 4, it's not $200 better...

 

[dj6888]

If price is an issue, why do raid?

Because there is nothing like raid0 raptors.
If you had the drives in raid, would you go non-raid when upgrading?
If you answer yes, then you have never experienced the performance boost they offer.

Thanks for your opinion.

 

[dj6888]

1) DFI Lanparty Ultra D - $122 at Newegg
2) Stock Opteron cooler is beefy, and there is no need to buy a 3rd party cooler. (Its quiet and does a great job)
3)eVGA 7900GT video card- $320- Newegg should have stock April 20th.
4) 2x 1GB is always better than 4x 512. Look at Corsair XMS or OCZ Gold (around $200). But they want to ditch it, so they are offering huge rebates. You can get some great deals.

Thanks for the input.

 

[Onus]

Now that your son is in college, his work is probably going to become important enough and time-consuming enough that he'll want to back it up. If you and he really want to go RAID-0, I would strongly recommend supplementing it with another drive; IDE will do, just to regularly copy his most important work off the dual-point-of-failure RAID. Alternatively, particularly if he may need or want to move work between various computers (home & school, dorm & data center, etc.) an external USB drive can serve this purpose too.

 

[dj6888]

Now that your son is in college, his work is probably going to become important enough and time-consuming enough that he'll want to back it up. If you and he really want to go RAID-0, I would strongly recommend supplementing it with another drive; IDE will do, just to regularly copy his most important work off the dual-point-of-failure RAID. Alternatively, particularly if he may need or want to move work between various computers (home & school, dorm & data center, etc.) an external USB drive can serve this purpose too.

Very sound advice. Hopefully it will help others reading this thread.
Here's a bit of background info:
I have been building PC's for the past 10+ years as our home needs have outgrown our hardware.
I am a computer engineer (unix) and I am well aware of the dangers involved and precautions for using raid0.
Right now I don't have the time for researching the products he needs to upgrade. That is why I am asking for suggestions for the mobo and GPU to complement the Opty 165.
Please recommend suitable upgrades and stop assuming I don't know what I am doing.
Keep those parts lists coming...

 

[smedlin]

Because there is nothing like raid0 raptors.
If you had the drives in raid, would you go non-raid when upgrading?
If you answer yes, then you have never experienced the performance boost they offer.

Thanks for your opinion.

O, i see.

You never said you already had them. I just assumed you would be getting new ones. Yes yes, I know...that's what I get for assuming.