help building pc

[smerko]

im building a new pc (base unit only) budget £600 (not a penny over tbh) and am struggling with the cash. all off ebuyer.com (uk) im stuck with what solution to get for regarding sata and ata. this may sound like a storage qn but it will also determine the motherboard and so what i spend the money on.... the machine needs to run championship manager so a fast hard drive is a must really with plenty ram. the machine will be by brothers who is a complete noob at pcs so i dont want to be having to fix it 24/7. i was thinking the below...

1) wd raptor 36gb sata 8mb cache
2) 40-80gb ide hard drive 8mb cache
3) 2 40gb cheap as i can get drives in raid.

what one would be best/fastest? would the raid drives beat the raptor? so far i have the following components:

Liteon 52x32x52x16x IDE Drive (COMBO) - Retail Box £24.95

Alps Floppy Disk Drive 1.44MB 3.5 inch internal - OEM £3.39

Arctic Cooling VGA Silencer REV3 For The 9500/9600/9700/9800 Series all Pro's And ATI Wonder versions £6.83

Connect3d ATI Radeon 9800 PRO 128MB DDR DVI TV-Out Retail Box £115.99

Microsoft XP Home With Service Pack 1A OEM £51.90

x2 Samsung 512 PC3200 DDR400 184pin Original Memory Module £105.36

Abit NF7-S nForce2 SKT A 400DDR 8xAGP SATA Firewire 5.1 Sound LAN Retail Box £52.49

AMD ATHLON XP2500+ 333MHZ FSB 512 L2 Cache Barton CPU - OEM £42.25

Raidamax Cobra 822 Wr 400w Red Atx Case £38


obviously if i didnt need sata i could get a cheaper board etc. feel free to recommend components etc! all is coming off ebuyer. many thanks in advance

[glebka11]

Well, i'd stay away from M$ Home products , e.g. windows XP home , but thats just my opinion.
I'd use Arctic Silver 5 as the thermal grese (if you never heared this word, go here: http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=304720)
I'd buy a DVD drive too, you never know when you need to read some DVDs.
As a hard disk, Maxtor is the right choice. Look up for their drives.

EDIT:
P.S. Never buy Western Digital hard drives. They really like to die usually.
Actually a WD drive just died on me as you can see in my sig.

[smerko]

i use coolermasters premium thermal grease so thats not a problem. the drive i have chosen is a combo drive with dvd and cdrw in 1. i have no problem with wd drives. my 8mb buffer 100gb was bought a few years back and so far has been faultless (touch wood) so i have no hesitations buying another. all the pcs in my house run wd drives. the 5 year warrenty on the raptor shows the confidence wd must have in it. i am toying around with potential configs as i type.

[Stupid Boy]

1. Get the Raptor; it will be the fastest.
2. Lite-On drives are loud. Get almost any other brand. LG drives are really quiet. My cousin's Dell has Samsung drives. Apple Superdrives are Pioneer drives
3. Get Arctic Silver Ceramique or Arctic Silver 5. Do not use the Coolermaster goo.
4. If the CPU will be overclocked, get a mobile CPU and better RAM.
5. If the CPU will not be overclocked, get a cheaper board.

[shard]

if western digi's die alot what to get then? Maxtor is a cheapo product in my book.

If yu need sata get the asus a7n8x-x it has every thing you need.
Lite-on isnt THAT loud, just a tad bit louder than others

but on the HD part, just get the 80gb, for price for gig, they are in the sweet spot!

[Syx]

EDIT:
P.S. Never buy Western Digital hard drives. They really like to die usually.
Actually a WD drive just died on me as you can see in my sig.

6 WD Drives in 4 years, all still work perfectly.

[glebka11]

6 WD Drives in 4 years, all still work perfectly.

You might be one of the lucky people who got a good model of the drive.
I have 4 friends who's WD drives died. Mine died as well :-/
Now if you do some research, you will find that a LOT of their drives have a very big potential in braking.

Anyways, i belive it is everyones descision what hard disk to chose.
My job here was to recommend.
I recommend Maxtor or Hitachi.

[Syx]

Mine are supposidly "server grade", so I don't know if that makes a difference..
My 100GB one is 3 years old and still runs perfectly, a little noisy though.

[glebka11]

As i told you before, you might have the good model.

There are always good ones and bad once.
Some companys like WD has more bad ones, some companys like Maxtor has more good ones.

Pretty simple IMO

[shard]

oh, hitachi are realy good, I just realized that they are IBM's! yum!

[smerko]

ive heard the excelstor drives are ibm also. very cheap - 40gb for £30.50, 80gb for £37 etc... 3 years warrenty too.