It's ALIVE! Well, almost.

[prodigy]

Hello, everyone. I've been working at building a new gaming system and have come up with what I think is a final product. I'd like to know anyone's respectable opinion or knowledge on the various parts to identify any early problems, capabilities, etc. Unfortunately, I don't know how to insert those fun links to picture what I'm describing. So, I've decided on the following:

■V9 Series Mid-Tower from Thermaltake USA Inc.
■KINGWIN Mach 1 ABT-1000W Modular PSU
■AM2+/AM2 NVIDIA nForce 780a SLI ATX AMD MoBo
■AMD Phenom 9850 Black Edition Quad
■5-egg Seagate 640GB 7200RPM 32MB cache 3.0GB/s SATA HDD
■Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit SP1
■EVGA GeForce 9500GT 512MB DDR2 PCI 2.0 (x2)
■20x Dual/Double Layer DVD+-RW with Lightscribe
■Viewsonic 22" Wide LCD
■5.1 Surround system

In addition to general pointers on problems/advantages I may have assembling this thing, I could really use an explanation as to what RAID is exactly. Also, the advantages of RAID settings and the difference between a RAID setting and ... the... normal setting? Thanks everyone.
Also, I had a question on latency with RAM, which is why I didn't list it above. After reading posts of builders, I've been lead to believe a lower latency is better for faster RAM? DDR2-1066 for example is better at 5-5-5-15 than 5-5-5-18. True?
Sorry for the slop. I have a lot of questions. I hope someone can make sense of it and come up with a response. Thanks again! (after the second edit)

 

[chihlidog]

Just a few initial thoughts....seems like total overkill on the PSU and the CPU (I'd advise a a dual core over a quad core for a pure gaming rig, just get faster individual cores) and yet the vid card, just from the research I did today, leaves a bit to be desired.

My advice would be to scale down to maybe a 650 watt PSU and a duo core CPU (as I understand it, AMD quads have "bugs" that leave them with only 3 anyway) and bump that video card to a 4870.

Also, maybe I am blind, but I dont see RAM listed.

 

[bpogdowz]

don't do an AMD build also RAID is for more than one drive combined into one volume so if one of the drives fail the whole volume fails. 650 watts isn't enough to power any descent video card and also quad core is better than dual core for gaming but not over clocking dual core is better for DirectX 9 only( Intel).

 

[Sable Wanderer]

Just a few initial thoughts....seems like total overkill on the PSU and the CPU (I'd advise a a dual core over a quad core for a pure gaming rig, just get faster individual cores) and yet the vid card, just from the research I did today, leaves a bit to be desired.

My advice would be to scale down to maybe a 650 watt PSU and a duo core CPU (as I understand it, AMD quads have "bugs" that leave them with only 3 anyway) and bump that video card to a 4870.

Also, maybe I am blind, but I dont see RAM listed.

..........you are blind
jk he didn't list it. quote:Also, I had a question on latency with RAM, which is why I didn't list it above.

 

[Sable Wanderer]

i would suggest getting a corsair or a antec PSU. It also doesn't make much sense to sli to 9500 gfx cards and i would also go with intel.

 

[chihlidog]

Haha nice ninja edits

 

[vochtige]

for the money you pay for 2 9500GT's (let's say low-end card) you can get 1 much better gaming card. just search around if you can get a 9800GT around that price, if the price of 2 9500GT's is like 170 euro, go get a 4850 ati!