Will this system be enough? Custom build or buy?

[socratitties]

Hey quick question. I'm not a gamer but I will often run 12 poker windows, msn, music, internet and some software at once. Looking to upgrade from my laptop to a desktop. Need a computer that can handle a 30" monitor and probably dual monitors in the near future. Is having two hard drives really recommended? Most computers I've looked at from the big electronics stores just have one hard drive. Any thoughts in general? Hoping to keep it around 1k$.

I'm considering this one. Is it better to have a computer shop custom build?

HP Pavilion Elite Intel Core i5-650 3.2GHz
NVIDIA GeForce GT220

I've heard the single harddrive will be the bottleneck of the system. Is that accurate?

Thanks for any advice.

 

[jack_attack]

If you're looking for the most for your money, you'd be best to build it yourself. You get exactly what you want, and nothing you don't.

As far as two disks go, the traditional disk as we know it is a huge bottleneck. Processors are being held up by 7200RPM drives, but there are two remedies. Most effective, and priciest, is an SSD. It has no moving parts. A second option is to run your disks in RAID0, which is also known as striping. Everything is split in two, and each half goes to each drive. The problem with that solution is, if one drive fails, all data is lost. If you'd really like to see what your 1k will buy you, use the "How to ask for new build advice" form, you'll be please to see what these guys can come up with

 

[socratitties]

Really appreciate the info. I'll check that out for sure. Let me know if anyone else has thoughts.