New Rig

[kfa]

I'm looking to build a new rig when I get my nice lil bonus in October and so far here's what I'd spend my pennies on right now:

Qty Description Cost
1 ThermalTake Armor VA8000BWS $150.00
1 Thermaltake A2400 Case Side Panel with 25cm Fan $33.00
1 OCZ GameXStream OCZ700GXSSLI ATX12V 700W $160.00
1 Core 2 Duo E6700 Conroe 2.67GHz, 1066FSB, LGA775, 4MB $699.00
1 Scythe Ninja Plus (SCNJ-1000P) $50.00
1 Mushkin PC-8000 Redline 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR2 1000 $430.00
1 ASUS P5W-DH Deluxe $270.00
2 Raptor WD1500ADFD 150GB 10,000 RPM 16MB Cache Serial ATA150 $500.00
1 PLEXTOR Black 18X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW $98.00
1 PLEXTOR Black 16X DVD+R 8X $73.00
1 X-Fi Fatal1ty FPS $199.00
1 BFG Geforce 7950GX2 $630.00
1 Acer AL2416Wd Silver 24" $698.00
1 Logitech THX Z-5300e 5.1 $115.00
1 Logitech G7 Laser Cordless Mouse $68.00
1 Logitech G15 2-Tone $69.00
1 Windows XP Professional With SP2 $138.00
Headphones, Cables, Fans, Etc $100.00
Total = $4,480.00

Also, I'm not sure whether I should go with one raptor for the o/s and apps and then get 4 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB SATA 3.0 Gb/sec for $400 for other stuff...

I'd appreciate all thoughts and comments.....

Thanks

 

[aristotelus]

Well if you are planning on playing some seriously fast solitair....it will probably do........

 

[chuckshissle]

You should get 4 36Gb Raptors and raid 0 it and then get a 250Gb normal hd for backup and storage. It would be fast and solitair will load in 3nano seconds!!!!!!!!!! 8O

 

[adamb10]

Yeah, you could get some good FPS in Solitare with that system. 8)

 

[xyzunit]

1 Core 2 Duo E6700 Conroe 2.67GHz, 1066FSB, LGA775, 4MB $699.00




Why settle for that when you're going balls out on the rest of the system?
And get liquid cooling ftw!

 

[calyn]

You should get 4 36Gb Raptors and raid 0 it ...

Not the 36GB's. They are 10K rpm, but that's it. Just stripe two 150GB raptors and be done with it. Or amke that a stripeset of 4, since it doesn't look like your on a budget anyway.

 

[The_Prophecy]

Suggested Changes:

Video Card: If you REALLY want good gaming performance right now, get the eVGA Geforce 7900GT KO for now. Otherwise drop down to the 7600GT and then go nuts once the DX 10 cards arrive.

1 PLEXTOR Black 18X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW $98.00
1 PLEXTOR Black 16X DVD+R 8X $73.00

Drop these drives and replace with 1 NEC ND-3550A. There is NO REASON WHATSOEVER to have more than 1 DVD burner in a computer. Another option would be to eliminate the legacy PATA devices from your system altogether and get a Plextor PX716SA/SW.

Hard Drives: Drop one of the 150GB Raptors and replace with 1 (or more) Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB SATA2 drives.

If you really want the E6700, grab it here instead where it's $9 cheaper. To be honest though, don't waste your money and drop to the E6600. From what you're getting in terms of RAM, i'd say it's a safe bet you have overclocking planned, which is fine, but you could probably get the 6600 just as high (if not, only slightly lower) as you could take a 6700.

 

[kfa]

Suggested Changes:

Video Card: If you REALLY want good gaming performance right now, get the eVGA Geforce 7900GT KO for now. Otherwise drop down to the 7600GT and then go nuts once the DX 10 cards arrive.

1 PLEXTOR Black 18X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW $98.00
1 PLEXTOR Black 16X DVD+R 8X $73.00

Drop these drives and replace with 1 NEC ND-3550A. There is NO REASON WHATSOEVER to have more than 1 DVD burner in a computer. Another option would be to eliminate the legacy PATA devices from your system altogether and get a Plextor PX716SA/SW.

Hard Drives: Drop one of the 150GB Raptors and replace with 1 (or more) Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB SATA2 drives.

If you really want the E6700, grab it here instead where it's $9 cheaper. To be honest though, don't waste your money and drop to the E6600. From what you're getting in terms of RAM, i'd say it's a safe bet you have overclocking planned, which is fine, but you could probably get the 6600 just as high (if not, only slightly lower) as you could take a 6700.

Thanks for the suggestions. I will drop one of the drives and If I can get a black face-plate for the PX-716SA/SW I may well go that route.

I've also been pondering going with a couple of 15k cheetah scsi drives for the o/s and apps then doing a 4x Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB SATA2 for storage giving me 1.28TB in storage.
I've heard the noise maybe an issue with the 15k drives.
I'll have to see if I can find any performance benchmarks between the 10k raptors and the 15k cheetahs.

I'll most likely switch to one of the suggested Graphics cards too as I wasn't aware the release of the DX 10's were so close.

Thanks again for the help!

 

[calyn]

I've also been pondering going with a couple of 15k cheetah scsi drives for the o/s and apps then doing a 4x Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB SATA2 for storage giving me 1.28TB in storage.
I've heard the noise maybe an issue with the 15k drives.
I'll have to see if I can find any performance benchmarks between the 10k raptors and the 15k cheetahs.

The 15k drives are really fast, but if you buy a cheap PIO SCSI controller you won't get it out of them. The drive itself is a lot more expensive, and having to add a decent SCSI controller will add significantly to that cost. For the price of a controller and one 15k drive you could probably get 3 more raptors and build yourself a raid5 with 4-5 raptors.