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Help with my rig

C

cloud171

Member
THERMALTAKE SHARK VA7000BWA $156.00
DFI LANPARTY UT nF4 Ultra-D $136.50
Ultra X-Connect 400Watt $30.00
mushkin Redline XP4000 1GB $224.00
THERMALTAKE Big Typhoon $56.00
CREATIVE Sound Blaster Audigy2 $172.00
AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Venice $153.99
NEC Black IDE DVD Burner $47.00
____________
Total $1007.59


Now I'm not really sure what hard drive should I get. Orignally it was going to be a 74gb Raptor but then I saw a few reviews for the Hitachi SATA II 250gb and found two of them in RAID0 out performs a 74gb raptor. Is this true? because two Hitachi are about a price of a single raptor and has way more space.

Other issue is the video card, originally I had my eyes set on a x800xt All-in-Wonder but then I there are no agp slots in this mobo mostly because of the $300 price tag that I hope will come back in the future. I really don't want to lose overclocking capablities or the pci-express but then I don't think I've found motherboards with both agp and pci-express. Any recommendations on another video card that could be overclock and not overly expensive?

I'm planning to overclock this system, might just choose another case because originally intended on water cooling but since I'm in college, going to be a pain to move it. I am probably going to wait for a good deal on the sound card but for now this is a high estimate for the total rig. For the heat sink and fan I wasn't really to sure on what to pick, is there a better heatsink you guys can recommend? My budget is around $1500 dollars for this rig. If you have any other recommendations feel free to mention them. Thanks.
 
Originally posted by: PeteRoy
Hitachi and Maxtor are the worst hard drive makers. Go for Seagate or Western Digital.
Click to expand...

well thats a nice oppinion...but what do you have to back it up. Maxtor and hitachi both make some of the fastest 7200rpm hard drives. though personally i don't like maxtor since i have seen many of their drives fail, but i wouldn't say they are the worst.


Originally posted by: cloud171
THERMALTAKE SHARK VA7000BWA $156.00
DFI LANPARTY UT nF4 Ultra-D $136.50
Ultra X-Connect 400Watt $30.00
mushkin Redline XP4000 1GB $224.00
THERMALTAKE Big Typhoon $56.00
CREATIVE Sound Blaster Audigy2 $172.00
AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Venice $153.99
NEC Black IDE DVD Burner $47.00
____________
Total $1007.59
Click to expand...
you are spending WAY to much on a gig of ram. get some ocz value vx and crank up the voltage and you'll probably get around ddr600 for a hundred less. i'd also get a better PSU if your planning to overclock...the reviews i've seen on the ultra are very mixed with some failing completely in the process of the review. get the x800xl pci-e it will perform about as good as the x800xt and costs about $280.

oh i haven't seen any reviews for that heatsink but i've heard a good deal of good things for zalman heatsink thats alot cheaper.
 
OC'ing capabilities are not effected by the type of HD you have, unless you get into data corruption. ANyway that is BS that two Hitachi's or Seagates are as fast or faster than a raptor in RAID 0. Go for the raptor if you have the money becuase
1. RAID 0 offers no performance in desktop uses in the real world
2. Even in RAID 0 theoritically a Raptor would still outpreform with its seek times.

If you want space go with a 250gb seagate drive


One more important thing!

YOUR PSU IS CRAP!!
if you are going to overclock and even if you are not, you cannot have a POS PSU like you selected, the PSU if one of the most important components of a build, especially if you are building for OC'ing! you need a good solid PSU that will stay stable and have enough juice....i recomend the OCZ powerstream which has great options for OC'ing, or a PC&P PSU...as for the AIW card...i believe PCI-E ones are out now?
 
dfi recommends 480 watts at least and native 24 pin . do what son of a noob suggested as far as power supply. dfi nforce 4 boards are picky about ram go to dfi-street.com if you want ram suggestions. though i like the one you picked.
 
Originally posted by: Son of a N00b
OC'ing capabilities are not effected by the type of HD you have, unless you get into data corruption. ANyway that is BS that two Hitachi's or Seagates are as fast or faster than a raptor in RAID 0. Go for the raptor if you have the money becuase
1. RAID 0 offers no performance in desktop uses in the real world
2. Even in RAID 0 theoritically a Raptor would still outpreform with its seek times.

If you want space go with a 250gb seagate drive


One more important thing!

YOUR PSU IS CRAP!!
if you are going to overclock and even if you are not, you cannot have a POS PSU like you selected, the PSU if one of the most important components of a build, especially if you are building for OC'ing! you need a good solid PSU that will stay stable and have enough juice....i recomend the OCZ powerstream which has great options for OC'ing, or a PC&P PSU...as for the AIW card...i believe PCI-E ones are out now?
Click to expand...

LoL man I do know power supply extremley important. I thought my psu was good because of the reviews I've read it has recieved good ratings. Yeah I'm confused about the hard drives because of this andthis.
The first link shows that the raptor getting creamed but then there are other conflicting reviews too :S. I'm not really looking for space or extra OC performance out of it, I just don't want my hard drive to be the bottleneck of my system.

Hmmm I remeber when I built the rig I have now no one complained about my $200 mushkin for OCing :S. What would you guys recommend for good value ram?
 
Here's proof that Maxtor sucks:
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=27&threadid=1585164&enterthread=y

Definitely buy Seagate with the 5 yr warranty or WD. I haven't had any problems with either and I have run a lot of them. I wouldn't spend over 150 bucks on a case and 30 bucks for a psu. You're much better off sticking with Antec, Fortron, OCZ, Sparkle, Seasonic, etc. I've heard both good and bad things about those Ultra psus. 30 bucks looks like a nice find until it becomes unstable and can't power your system.
 
Originally posted by: nick1985
1 anectdotal case != proof
Click to expand...

You're right.

Here's my take on it: A harddrive is mechanical, it can fail at any given moment. Some drives like to fail more than others. I have a 2 maxtor drives that haven't failed (running for a year) and I've had 2 that have failed (running for 2 years).

If you're unsure, go for Seagate. You hear _less_ reports about harddrives failing from Seagate......and you can't beat a 5 year warantee 🙂.
 
I hate Thermaltake cases. It is personal preference, but you may want to look at cases from Lian Li and Coller Master. Both have very nice higher end cases. Such as the CM Stacker or PC-75.

Also do not get an Ultra PSU. They are complete junk. Get yourself an OCZ Powerstream 520w or look at this guide for other suggestions if you want to save a bit of money.
http://forums.extremeoverclocking.com/showpost.php?p=1721731&postcount=401

Get the XP-90 with Panaflo high CFM fan from sidewinder. It is the onyl site I ahve seen to qahve that exact fan.

Just get a 74G Raptor. RAID-0 will giuve you no real world performance gain at all.

For video I would get a 6800GT.
 
Originally posted by: cloud171
LoL man I do know power supply extremley important. I thought my psu was good because of the reviews I've read it has recieved good ratings. Yeah I'm confused about the hard drives because of this andthis.
The first link shows that the raptor getting creamed but then there are other conflicting reviews too :S. I'm not really looking for space or extra OC performance out of it, I just don't want my hard drive to be the bottleneck of my system.

Hmmm I remeber when I built the rig I have now no one complained about my $200 mushkin for OCing :S. What would you guys recommend for good value ram?
Click to expand...

If preventing hard drive bottlenecking is all you're looking for, a 7200 RPM drive with 8MB of cache should be more than enough. 10,000 RPM is a luxery, not a "necessity" for a computer. It's a waste of money, and you should only think about buying a Raptor if your budget is like $3000+ and you just want to get THE BEST of everything.

*EDIT*
Oh yeah, and don't get that RAM. It's waaaay too expensive. I would recommend 2x512MB Corsair Value Select RAM, or some of that OCZ value stuff. Run a divider, and you'll be set.
 
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