I'm just about ready to put the stamp of approval on this build! I thought I would run it by you guys first

This is a home office/Photoshop workstation build. Prices are in Canadian dollars:

CPU
C2D E6600
$400

MEMORY (4GB)
OCZ Platinum XTC REV.2 PC2-6400
$475

GFX CARD
MSI Radeon X1650 256MB
$115

MOTHERBOARD
ASUS P5B Premium Vista Edition P965
$295

NETWORK CARD
Linksys WMP54G 802.11G
$70

STORAGE DRIVES (6 drive RAID-01)
Western Digital RE 250GB 16MB Cache
$635

OS DRIVE
Western Digital Caviar SE16 250GB 16MB Cache
$100

DVD WRITER
LG GSA-H10LI
$70

POWER SUPPLY
Silverstone Zeus ST65ZF 650W
$140

CASE
Lian Li PC-1200 PLUS II
$290


TOTAL: $2600 CAD (~$2100 USD)

With a nice system like that I would use a more capable HD for my main OS drive. Using Vista 32 on my e6600 system and the WD 250 drive you chose is the only factor holding my system down to a 5.4 rating from an otherwise highest possible rating of 5.9 using Vista. Here is my suggestion:

http://microcenter.com/byos/byos_s [...] _id=235236

A Raptor would probably be a better idea. Although, I would only get the 74GB.

It would be nice to know what the best 7200 drive would be for the OS and applications... only 80GB - 160GB is really required for the OS.

Just curious, will that memory need to be underclocked to 533 Mhz to work with the (non-overclocked) E6600 at fsb 1066? Somebody asked this question in another thread and nobody has offered a definitive answer so far...

Thanks!

I have the E6300 with a 1066mhz FSB, the P5B motherboard and 667mhz memory. The memory, by default, runs at 667mhz. I found it offers slightly better performance (~2%) when underclocked to 533mhz to synchronize speeds properly with the FSB.

8O

There is the possibility, in fact, that I will overclock the E6600. I was going to gauge the performance of the system at stock speeds, and then if I felt I should be encoding a little faster, or zipping a little quicker, I would attempt to overclock.

Could you explain further why my RAM choice may not work? I honestly don't care about 5% performance differences... but if it means more like 15-20%, then I would purchase the other type of RAM to bring things up to speed.

Hey, I'm not saying it won't work. It should work very nicely as far as I know. Also, the faster memory gives you a better chance to reuse it later if you upgrade the CPU, I guess.

On a different subject now, why not get the Q6600? It should drop to less than $500 on April 22, if you can believe all those messages and web sites going around these days.

I just can't wait any longer! I've waited three months already... I'm sure the E6600 will provide me with what I need for now. I will be interested in an upgrade in about 2 years... at which point I might be able to pop in a quad Penryn for a reasonable price

Makes sense. I'm sure 2 years from now software will handle four cores better than today too

The memory can be run at the full 800MHz RAM speed with an underclocked E6600 at 1066QFSB. You'd just be running it as a 2:3 FSB:RAM synchronous ratio. For overclocking, it's best to run at 1:1.

Those are some really high prices. Is that Canadian or US?

Good build, if you're overclocking you'd for sure want DDR2-800 like what you've got.

Looks good guys. I'll be placing the order today.

Cheers.

Missed that, thanks. Looks like an awesome build. Good luck.