Topic: New computer specs

[Steve]

Welp heres the soon-to-be system in my home. I'm shelling out some cash, but it will be worth it.

Athlon 64 3000+ Winchester 939
MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum socket 939
BFG 6800 256MB PCI-X 16
Corsair PC4200 1GIG
Maxtor 200GIG HDD
Antex Dual fan 700W PSU
Chenming Black Dragon case
DVD writer, 16X
Thermaltake Silent Tower
Cold Cathode's, misc dress up

and for viewing pleasure:

TWO 19in LCD (NEC)

I fell into some money, this is where i chose to spend it    

[ober]

Damn... that'll be a nice setup... although I'm surprised you didn't go a little higher on the CPU... and get to HDs and use RAID.  You also wouldn't need quite that big of a CPU.  I can suggest a commercial grade that is getting rave reviews if you want.  I had one on my case for about 2 days before I took it out for being too loud (it wasn't that bad really)... but then I was going for almost complete silence at the time.

[Steve]

Well i chose this specific processor because at the moment it is the best for gaming. The core is the top notch for tweaking and overclocking, and theres tons of benifits with the 939 socket. If i had the money i was hoping, i would be going dual FX or opteron lol.

As for the HDD's, i only need one because that will be a slave drive. The 40G i currently have now will be the primary, i needed a bigger hd for the music/download/ftp files because i already have 20 sumthing gigs of mp3s on it. Its got like 2gigs left lol. And i didnt go with raid because honestly i dont know that much about it, and i can get more GIG for the money on EIDE.

[ober]

You're not even using SATA?????  Are you out of your mind?

[VBprogrammer]

You guys are such tech whores...man the only benifit of SATA is those silly looking thin cables, we haven't reached the limit of current IDE technology yet and many hard-drives are still naitive IDE with an adapter interface. Hence..no benefit what-so-ever unless you follow that line of it makes cooling better within the case, but from what i know those round IDE cables are probably better!! Plus don't even start on future proofing...when was the last time you actually managed to save anything other than your 5" 1/2" inch drives and maybe using your old hard-drive is a secondry when upgrading.

[Steve]

I use the round ide cables and the custom methods i do on my cases make cooling not so big an issue. Hell the only reason im not watercooling it is because im still building the custom WC box, taking my sweet time. So at some point it will be h2o anyway.

I'm using EIDE because i cannot see any reason not to do so at this time.

[ober]

They ARE faster, cables are smaller (even more so that rounded IDE), they're jumperless, and most motherboard support at least 4 SATA devices which reduces the chance of using RAID just to add more drives.  And believe it or not, it IS the future.

I'm actually surprised that modern mobos aren't pushing the issue and backing off to 1 IDE slot (for optical drives).

[Steve]

I still see no reason why i should go to this "future" before its forced on me. SATA/RAID is more expensive for less space then IDE. This is why mobo companies arent pushing the issue, its not worth the extra cost to the majority of people.

[ober]

???  Have you even looked at the cost comparisons?  The cost differences are negligable at best.

[Steve]

20.00 diff, i stand corrected sir. Its been a while since i looked into it....something to think of.

[ober]

Look... I don't mean to sound like I'm bashing your setup... it looks like it's going to be awesome... and I do mean that.  I just wanted to check to make sure that you looked at all the options.  

And BTW, if you look around enough, you'll find them for less than a $20 difference.

[Steve]

No i posted this for that reason, im pretty good with what i do but theres alot of things i miss sometimes, i like the input.

I'm definitly doing to look into the SATA situation, and ill probably end up using it now that im seeing some prices. Is it difficult to setup? I've never used it, also, is it the same as RAID or is that just the way its implemented?

[ober]

It's a lot easier than IDE.  RAID is implemented the same way with SATA as it is with IDE.  I honestly don't know of any differences.  It's just that some mobo manufacturer's build RAID support into the new mobos that support SATA.

[Steve]

So basically you just wire it up SATA instead of IDE and thats it? Or do i need to do configurations? Also, when formatting and all its just like any other IDE HDD correct?

[ober]

Correct on both accounts.