Advice on upgrade path

[Dra]

In short, I need help on deciding how best to approach upgrading my current rig. As of right now, I'm quite happy with it (i7-920 OC'd, 6GB RAM, RIIE, yada, yada), but the two areas I'm lacking desperately in are Storage and a good Display.

Currently, I'm using a single WD 640GB AAKS drive, and while it's good, I would really prefer to separate the OS/Apps and my data. I was thinking something along the lines of an SSD for the OS, and probably a hardware-controlled RAID array. Redundancy is a must, since I do a lot of important schoolwork and such on this computer, and I currently don't have an external/off-site backup solution).

As for the display, currently I'm using a teeny 17" TN panel from about 4-5 years ago, and while it's okay for most things, the extra desktop space will be a blessing to my productivity. This time around, I'm looking for a very nice 24in, PVA panel at the least. I also currently don't have a TV in my room, so it will also do double duty for movie-watching and console gaming.

To me, either one of these options will be a a great help, but sadly, I can't get both at the same time, (although I eventually will).

Any input is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

[lt_shiro]

2 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 ST3500418AS 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive - OEM $110

x58 have a 10R southbridge and supports Raid 5. Which should give you about 1 TB of usable space for storage with your currunt 640 GB.

OCZ Vertex Series OCZSSD2-1VTX60G 2.5" 60GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid state disk (SSD) - Retail $230

Simple ghost over of your OS from the 640 GB and then re-size the 640 GB with 500 GB for the raid 5 and another 140 GB for weekly full backups of the SSD.

 

[tiraides]

Your best bet on the monitor here is to go to the Displays forum. But beware, as there are some highly opinionated people lurking around there.

If you can afford three separate hard drives, then you need to get an external drive to use as dedicated off-site storage. There's no reason to not have some sort of backup solution -- and RAID doesn't count, regardless of your rationale.

Instead of replacing your WD6400AAKS with an SSD (as lt_shiro suggested), get an external HDD along with your two RAID drives. Or, get a large-capacity internal drive and a decent external enclosure with an eSATA connection (your motherboard should have at least one eSATA slot, and it's much faster than USB 2.0 or FireWire 400).