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Kristoffer

Limp Gawd
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Apr 14, 2004
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Hey guys, I was wondering if you could go over all of this and tell me if you have any suggestions or concerns maybe, I'd appreciate it.

Board: P5WD2 Premium
CPU: P4 570 3.8
RAM: 4x 512MB Corsair XMS2 PC2 6400
VID: X1800 XT 512mb *going to be adding the crossfire eventually*
HD: 2x WD1500 Raptor 10k - Raid 0
PSU: 420w Antec
CASE: Koolance PC2-601

This would be my first time building a serious setup like this and also my first time using this Koolance case. I've never had a raid setup either, do you think it's appropriate? I've tried to do as much research as I could, I couldn't risk losing any information that's what has me about doing the raid0 but I've never had a HD really die on me unless it was like 7+ years old. Is it more feesable to just setup a raid 0 then have an additional sata drive just for storage? I'm not really sure if that's even possible, I could use some help because I know nothing virtually nothing about Raid and it's possibilities. I'd like to have the performance of the raptors in raid 0 and have safety of large storage basicly. Do you also think that the PSU is suffice even if I was to add a crossfire?

Thanks for reading everything
 
First off what are you using it for. If it is for gaming I would recommend AMD and based the the intel you picked i think you can pry afford the FX-60. Then that would make you change mobo's go for the DFI crossfire board, and I am a fan of hte X1800XT so good choice there.

Also do not go for RAID0 there is very, very little real life performance benefit from it. No matter how many benchmarks you see, it will not improve load times in games (again this is if you are using the computer for gaming). I have tested it out with a stopwatch and SCSI and IDE in RAID0, there was not benefit on either interface. I would recommend getting 1 Raptor 150 and 1 storage drive to save crap on (like a 300 GB).

Cooter
 
Alrighty then...Heres what ya need to do.

First, your gonna want to get 1 of those Raptors and a higer capacity drive. Next, ditch that Intel and get an X2 4800+ and OC it...it will match the FX-60. As for the mobo, go with the Sapphire Innovation PI-A9RX480 Socket 939. We need to get rid of the 4x512MB and go with 2x1 GB. For this, you may want to go with some Cricial Ballistix, OCZ, Corsair, etc. Your going to want to get a more muscular PSU, so go with an Enermax 660. Case is you choice.
Hope that helps :)
 
Wait a couple weeks and see what the X1900 series has to offer before you buy. You may be able to a. get an X1900XTX or b. get the X1800XT cheaper.
 
Going to mainly be using it for production apps but of course the occasional game that's why I choose Intel. Definitely going to take everyones advice and not go raid0. I wanted to go 1gbx2 but I couldn't find any 6400 chips in 1gb. I'm not sure if I'm going to switch to AMD though because I'm pretty attatched to Intel and I think I could use the raw ghz for my production apps. I might wait for x1900 but I'm getting really antsy to just order everything now and I hear the x1900 isn't much of an improvment but I guess people shouldn't really speculate untill it's released and have it hands on. Thanks alot for everyones posts
 
PSU Needs more juice.

Don't go 4x 512mbs sticks if you plan on upgrading.
 
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