I'm no expert when it comes to putting together the best system, but I certainly know some of the better components, so hopefully these thoughts will help.
To start with you have chosen a case that seems OK, but hard core people may suggest a Lian Li one, otherwise that seems OK.
The hard drives are not a wise choice IMHO, the days of the Raptor's being the to die for drives are gone, personally I would get 2 of these Samsung's, you will have more storage space than you will know what to do with, but they are cheaper than your choice and set up in raid0 they should be better performers, but see if others agree. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx…N82E16822152101
Power supply, although I have nothing against your choice, I do suggest getting one of these PCP&C ones should be a far superior unit, and will take anything you throw at it, within reason anyway lol, get the 1200w one and it should last forever near enough, but do be aware, there are 3 versions of this 750w unit they list, and TBH I don't know what the differences are between them (without studying each anyway), so do see which will serve you best, but all of them are cheaper than your choice, and they have a 5 year warranty (I thought it went to 7 years though). http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx…N82E16817703009 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx…N82E16817341011 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx…N82E16817703019
Ram I would look at the following, a bit dearer but they were the one everyone were after not so long back, but TBH I've lost track on which is the hottest one to get these days., but one point to note just incase your not aware, running 4gig of ram (or more) you will need to use a 64bit OS, if you use a 32bit OS it will only see around 3.5gig at best so you know. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx…N82E16820227289
I notice you've opted for an AMD system, is there any reason for that ?
AFAIK the core 2 systems are pretty much the tops still, back in the day AMD were great, no bottle necks etc, but since core 2 came out they are no where near their opposition, the new Phenom chips are bringing them back into the game, but I still don't think they can beat a core 2 yet, obviously there may be things I'm not aware of in this, but thats what I have been led to believe for a few years now.
A mate actually got a new low spec laptop not so long back, I set it up for him and I was quite looking forward to having a play with it to see if they were better, but TBH I felt that my old 3200 xp Barton had more power than this one, obviously the low spec of the system wont of brought out it's full potential, but it still left that feeling that it was lacking, so you may want to see what others think on this, and maybe reconsider there, anyway hope this gets you closer to your goal, and hope it's as good as you hope it will be, good luck with it.
Thanks for the fast and lengthy response, much appreciated.
After some reading and learning, I think I am going to take your advice and try a RAID setup with a couple 7200rpm HDDs. I have never tried RAID before and am interested in learning how it works.
I do know that the extra half GB of RAM will not be supported due to the 32 bit OS I will run, but what can you do. I might pick up a 64bit at some point, so Ill be ready for it.
A major reason for the power supply I chose was because I hate cluttered computer cases. I REALLY like how this one is "plug as you need". Very cool IMHO.
Also, with the quad AMD… its saving me about ~$300 over Intel.
Thanks again. Cheers
NP, hopefully some of the others will chirp in with some tips as well, but raid basically increases the speed of the data transfer as it is strategically placed on the 2 drives, putting drives into raid means they will physically show up as a single drive, this does have 1 danger, should 1 drive fail the data is lost, so you would lose everything if one failed, but that is balanced out by the increase in performance, so an individual has to choose what they're priority's are.
Now there is more than one type of raid, and I by no means understand any of it in any depth, but know of it's existence, anyway for those who wish to have BOTH, performance and security (peace of mind against failures) then you can go for raid0 +1, the +1 is an exact duplicate of the raid0 set up, but this requires more hard drives, 2 is the minimum number of drives to create Raid0, 4 drives is the minimum number of drives for the raid0 +1 (2 for raid0 and 2 to mirror it), so it starts to mount up as you can see, personally I have 3 Raptor's (from when they were worth getting) in raid0, but I have a 1TB (as listed above) as a slave which I store ALL data to be kept on, should the raid fail with a bad drive I at least have the data safe that way, but you do have to be strict with yourself to save to that drive not the default C drive.
As long as your aware about the ram thats fine, running 4gig on xp myself currently without issue, and I appreciate the benefit of a modular PSU, and although this is a very valid area of thought, "clutter" alone should not stop you getting the best choices, but obviously you have to choose what is most important for you.
Ah money, the beast that needs to be slay-ed lol, it's a shame about that, I'm sure you should be happy with the system, but because your getting everything else at the same time it does make it very hard, the beauty is once you have your power, case and drives, further upgrades become more affordable, because you only need to change the board , ram and CPU after that, so you could upgrade when money allows in the future, hope you enjoy your new build anyway.
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