Building new machine, does config look good?

[Dejas]

Am building a new machine for college. Just wanted to put the specs up for advice before shelling out the $$$. Do you see any problems with:

Proc: Athalon 750
Mobo: Asus K7V
Mem: 256 MB PC-133 SDRAM
HDD: 2x IBM Deskstar 45's
3dax: Hercules 3d Prophet II GTS 32
Sound: Sound Blaster Live Plat.
SCSI Ad: Adaptec AHA-2930 (50 pin)
CD-ROM: SCSI Kenwood 52x
CDR/W: SCSI Plexwriter 12/4/32

Just wanted some advice...
Thanks a bunch
--Dejas

 

[Wizkid]

Looks good, the only other thing you may want to consider is using RAID. Since you already are getting 2 hard drives you could just get either a hardware raid card or use the raid software that is built-in to windows 2000

Also, if you don't need the live drive, you can get the live value/mp3+/x-gamer and save yourself some money...

 

[Czar]

Looks very nice

But I'd go with the Abit KA7-100 instead

 

[Dejas]

Wizkid..

I've never understood the merit of a RAID device for a home system. The way I understand RAID, one must divide a systems HDD resources into equal parts, and then sacrifice one of those parts in order to protect the rest of the data. Why in the world would I sacrifice half of my drive space just to feel more secure about my data...?

--Dejas

 

[cobain]

I'd wait a week and get the Asud A7V board with a 750 T-bird. I wouldnt personally go with an Abit board as there have beenn problems with their high point controllers and they don't perform as good as others.

Also I've heard a lot of bad reports about the kenwood drives, I'd get a pioneer Scsi DVD myself instead. I got one and its great.

 

[Wizkid]

RAID 0 = Striping (ie, data is spread evenly across both disks) which gives you much better read and write throughput plus you don't lose any space. 2 45 GB's in RAID gives you one REALLY FAST 90 GB drive that you can partition any way that you want...

 

[023RIL]

Well apparently u have not read much on raid since u only seem to think there is only one raid setup.. u r refering to cloning(raid 1).. there is also stripping(raid 0) which boost performance...

 

[Dejas]

Can someone point me to some RAID articles then? If you think it will help I certainly will look into it...

Thx
Dejas

 

[Robor]

Is this a basic description...

RAID 0 = Striping w/o parity (very fast and no wasted space but no data security)
RAID 1 = Mirroring (a little faster and data security but 50% wasted space)
RAID 5 = Striping w/ parity (fast and data security but lose 1 HD worth of space in array)

Rob

 

[tom3]

Here's a pretty good RAID article:
http://arstechnica.com/paedia/r/raid-1.html

 

[sov05]

PROC: Get a T-Bird
Mobo: Wait 2 weeks for Asus A7V
Mem: make sure it is good quality. Corsair, Micron, Infineon, Or Mosel
HDD: IBM 75GXP
vid: nice
sound: nice
cd-rom: nice
cd-r: nice


no offense but SCSI CD-ROM is really not a great performance increaser. But whatever

 

[Prodigy^]

it's "Athlon", there's no extra a

 

[KarlHungus]

Looks good, but go with RAID, and swap out that Kenwood 52x for a Plextor 40x. Check out the SCSI optical roundup at http://www.storagereview.com/

 

[Rellik]

If you are going for that plextor burner, get a plextor SCSI CD-ROM
like the Ultraplex 40. There is nothing that can beat it(except the UWplextor....)

 

[Quickfingerz]

CPU choice isn't that great. You might want to consider getting a Athlon 850. These babies overclock pretty darn high. You'll guarantee yourself 1ghz and you can wait longer for your next CPU upgrade. Just a thought.