Please review this build:
WESTERN DIGITAL
WD Raptor 150GB HDD 10000rpm sATA serial ATA 16MB cache 3,5Zoll intern RoHS compliant 24x7 Dauerbetrieb
€ 158,98
SAPPHIRE
Radeon HD 3870 512MB GDDR4 PCI-Express Dual DL-DVI TVout aktiv 256bit
€ 197,72
CORSAIR
DDR2 2048MB PC800 NON-ECC Kit
€ 46,57
INTEL
Core 2 Duo E8400 3000MHz LGA775 6MB FSB1333 ATX DT boxed CPU
€ 174,--
i would suggest a good 550W psu if you dont want to eventually upgrade to crossfire.
also the cpu is 10 euro above average price, though they seem to be out of stock everywhere right now.
Yes you are right. I will go for E6750 cpu(160 euro) instead of E8400.
thats not what i ment though, if you use your machine just for gaming i would wait for the e8400, otherwise i would take a look at the q6600 as an alternative.
Raptors are noisey and 5x the cost per GB. The miniscule boost you get in perfromance is all but unnoticeable. Get 2x SATA drives, no RAID. Put the OS and apps on the first and your paging file and data on the second. Huge performance boost compared to any single drive.
For me storage capacity has very low priority comparing to performance. Considering this, do you still think that raptors aren't worth extra cost?
What about these PSU:
LC-Power LC6560T Pro-Line Titan 560W ATX 2.0
Chieftec Smart GPS-550AB-A 550W ATX 2.0
OCZ StealthXStream 500W ATX 2.2 (OCZ500SXS)
All around 60 euros.
The new seagate 7200.11 drives are performing about on a par with the raptors. WD needs to update their drives, or their pricing model. All they have left is a small advantage in average seek times.
PSU's... No Antecs or Silverstones available?
OCZ is generally reliable, but some of their models tend to be a bit iffy. A good website for PSU reviews is jonnyguru.com .
As croc said, there is no performance advantage to Raptors. This makes them very poor from a price / performance standpoint, even more so because you get 8x less capacity.