Workstation buying time

[Animeishon]

Hello everybody, somebody told me to come here to get advice for a new workstation I want to build. I work mainly with maya, photoshop, after effects and reason.

You guys are beasts when it comes to hardware so here it goes:

AMD Athlon64 X2 4400+
MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum
Antec True Power II 550W EPS12V
GeForce 7800GTX PCI-E
Creative Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS 7.1
74GB Western Digital WD740GD
320GB Western Digital WD3200SD
DVD-Writer NEC ND-3540A +/-RW/DL
DVD-ROM LiteOn SOHD
2GB RAM

What do you guys think?

Since it's the first time I'm going to build one myself I have no idea if I'm going to OC it (how hard is it anyway?) but one thing I know is that it should be ultra quiet on air cooling only. I rather compromise speed than silence.

On top of that system I have another 3 hdd I want to put in unless I can fix my old workstation (one day it shut down and it won't power up anymore) could be the psu or the motherboard that's fried right?

What case and what cooling system works best together if I want it as quiet as possible with the ability to OC it still without breaking anything?

What kinda ram should I use?

I have a budget of around 3000$

Anybody knows good online shops in Europe who ship around Europe?

Thanks

 

[ProviaFan]

For CPU cooling, the Zalman 7000 or 7700 series, or a Thermalright XP-90 or XP-120 with appropriately chosen quiet fan, would make an excellent solution. For your case, I think that something with large fans (120mm) and not a ton of flashy-ness would be preferred. Antec makes some nice models (Sonata, Sonata II, and SLK3000B - not sure on the spelling of the last one) which would have good noise performance.

The rest of the system looks fine to me; I have the same CPU and amount of RAM (2x1GB sticks is better than 4x512MB, FYI) but a different mainboard and much cheaper nvidia 6600 video card - this thing flies in Photoshop, and I am confident that it would work very well in 3d modeling apps if I threw a better video card in it.

 

[CrispyFried]

If its a workstation why the audigy? On board sound will be fine. Also the 7800 gtx is overkill, thats a gaming card. A workstation style card will probably be better. At any rate make sure the vid card you select can do dual displays in the format you choose, you can keep your tools and such on the second monitor while the main display is dedicated to the image.

Consider going RAID 1 for your data drive at least (100% redundant, so if a drive goes west, you just keep trucking and replace it at your leisure)


If youre gonna game too then go for it

 

[Animeishon]

Will a mid-tower be enough to fit in 5 hdd?

I forgot to add that I might play a game or two in the after hours so I'll go all out on the graphic card .
A workstation card is 3x as much as a gaming card, that would kill my budget


What brand of ram should I use? This here OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM Unbuffered DDR 400 (PC 3200) or TWINX2048-3200C2 - 2x 1024MB, PC3200, 400MHz?
Are the ram timings important?

Is the 7800GTX loud and should I place a Zalman on that too?

What sound card should I use? I dabble in music for fun I'm not a pro yet but I want the latency to be as low as possible when I play with Reason

Cheers guys