New System Advice

[NumberCruncher]

I'm looking to get a new system (have a 3 yr old PII-400/384MB/18Gig 7200rpm hard drive, scsi 4x sony CDR) and am seeking advice. I don't want to build it myself (but could do some stuff myself) so I am also seeking advice on a vendor that could put something together that meets my needs at a reasonable price.

I'm not a gamer so I don't care much about sound card or 3D video performance. I mostly do heavy duty number crunching (datasets often reach 200MB) using a statistics package (Stata) that works with data all in RAM -- it is quite fast. Therefore, I want a processor with great floating point performance and lots of fast RAM. Hard disk performance matters somewhat less because I am working in RAM, but still opening and saving files can be slow when they're so big. I also may have occassional need for video editing and capture. My current plan is:

Athlon 1.33 GHz
512MB DDR RAM (PC2100) to start
Motherboard ? - I want expansion room above 512MB, so at least 3 DIMM slots
SCSI card (type?)
18 or 36 GB 10,000 rpm Ultra 160 SCSI drive: brand ?(for OS and current files)
60 GB 7200 rpm IDE HD (IBM) for fast-access archiving
12/10/32 CDRW (Plextor) IDE or SCSI?, 16X? for archiving and moving files
ATI Radeon All-in-Wonder
basic level: NIC (for DSL), sound card, speakers (don't really care)
Case : at least 3 ext 5.25 bays, 2 3.5 bays, 3 int bays for HDs
Monitor: keeping my current Hitachi 751
Windows 2000

Any advice would be appreciated..

 

[Zach]

If you have the money, make it all SCSI. It's tough though, SCSI can be confusing. Other then that, ask around the motherboard forum or make a specific thread. Search for info though. I'm surprised to see so many people using the Ali chipset, I'd favor the AMD 761 myself but have done no real research.

Search storagereview.com for hard drive info, I'd just get any name brand at a good price. IBM, seagate, fujitsu, WD. I've used fujitsu and seagate SCSI drives, both are still chugging along (they are first generation 9.1gig 7200rom disks), and of course Quantum is nice too.

For the SCSi controller, adaptec is always a sure shot. I have a lesser (or un?) known advansys card, and it's great. Lots of OS's have drivrers built in.. Tekram is a good brand also though.

Oh, and get a good NIC! They can give headaches. Better to spend $20 or $30 on a good one then $10 on a maybe. I like the FA-310TX (not the 311's, though I use one and it seems fine, I have some problems but it's plugged into a failing SS7 motherboard). Intel's are good, and like I said that particular Netgear is on my good list.

And, for that HDD, get the 60GXP or whatever the newer one is, there's lots of people with problems with thier 75GXP's (or whatever they are called).

 

[Zach]

Also, enable your PM's and PM me, I might be able to help you out with getting some pre-assembled stuff.

Edit: It's "Private messgages", the little golden lock icon in a user's little button bar or whatever that is called next to thier messages.