Building a Gaming PC...Suggestions on what to change?

[TopAce]

Hello all. I finally got the word from my parents that they are willing to pay half of the total price of my gaming computer. Now that i got this, i plan to start building when all the parts are out. Anyway, i'm thinking of building, here are the parts, what do you think?

Case Antec Performence Plus Metallic Gray SOHO File Server Case w/o Power Supply.
Power Supply Fortron 530W Power Supply
Procesor AMD Athlon 64 3500+, 2.2 GHz, Winchester core, socket 939
Memory Corsair Value Select 2x512MB DDR PC-3200
Hard Drive Western Digital 120GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive
CD-ROM Lite-on 52x CD-ROM
DVD Burner Lite-on 16x DVD Dual Drive
Graphics Card eVGA GeForce 6800 GT PCI Express 256MB DDR3 Video Card
Motherboard Asus nForce4 SLI Board
Operating System Windows XP Home

The total price of this unit is around $1500 with out the motherboard. I'd say $800 is a pretty good deal to pay for this, since my parents are paying the other half. What should i fix? Also, how long should i wait for the motherboard to be out before i buy it? I don't want one that is buggy!

Thanks,
Ace

[PLOBBY]

I like just about everything, if i were to do anything id change the psu to something mabe a little more powerful...unless your not going to oc, but thats a pretty decent cpu...im not real familiar with mobos for the new 939 so ill let someone take a stab at that.

[9mmCensor]

looks good. the psu should be good.

remember to get some good cooling

[-Superman]

get a 74gig raptor :attn: , if my parents were payin for it, id go for it.

umm those Lite Ons are preety loud and make somewhat of a squeeking sound from what ive read in reviews.

[TopAce]

remember to get some good cooling

I don't plan to overclock. Is the stock cooling good if I don't plan to overclock?

get a 74gig raptor

I would, but there to much money. Plus, I think i'll upgrade to it later down the road.

umm those Lite Ons are preety loud and make somewhat of a squeeking sound from what ive read in reviews.

What brand would be better? Would the run around the same price?

Thanks,
Ace

[ajrettke]

Stock cooling is good if you don't plan on OCing....
But I urge you to reconsider getting a raptor.

Also not sure about Lite-ons being loud...but get a 16x DVD-ROM with your DVD burner, burners do not read as fast as strait up ROM's

[TopAce]

What are the advantages of getting a Rapter?

[ajrettke]

Well HDD's are the slowest part of any system (except optical drives), and with a raptor you'll notifce everything will open faster, games will load quicker, windows will load faster, writes to your HDD will be done quicker....it just has more bandwidth and lower seek times than any current IDE HDD available.
They're around 150-175 if you look hard...which isn't all that bad. Just run a search for raptors and you'll see what people have to say about them.

[-Superman]

someone had pointed me towards this when i was searching to purchase a dvd burner, http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2260&p=1

after reading that i went with the NEC in my sig, and its only like 2bucks more than the Lite On @ newegg.

[TopAce]

Ok i added a NEC Dvd Burner, and a Sony DVD-Drive. I also added a 76GB Rapter. Is a 120GB 7200RPM and a 76GB RApter too much? Can i bump it down to an 80GB 7200 RPM?

Thanks,
Ace

[Thanatos_2005]

Ok i added a NEC Dvd Burner, and a Sony DVD-Drive. I also added a 76GB Rapter. Is a 120GB 7200RPM and a 76GB RApter too much? Can i bump it down to an 80GB 7200 RPM?

Thanks,
Ace

you can easily bump it down to an 80gig 7200 rpm and a 76 gig raptor- unless you download movies and mp3 en masse you'll know long before you need to purchase another HDD

also, good choice on the optical drive- I have a Lite-On drive and a hate it more than anything else in the world

[TopAce]

Ok, so now my Computer will consist of...

Antec Performence Plus Metallic Gray SOHO File Server Case w/o power supply
Fortron 530W Power Supply
AMD Athlon 64 3500+ Winchester (Socket 939)
Corsair Value Select 2x512MB DDR PC-3200
Western Digital 80GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive
Western Digital 76GB 10,000RPM SATA Hard Drive
Sony 16x DVD-Drive
NEC 16x Dual Layer DVD-Burner
Microsoft Windows XP HOME
6800 GT
nForce4 SLI motherboard!

Total price= Around $1700

Anything else i should get rid of/ add?

Ace

[Silmatharien]

I'd say you should get two SATA drives of equal capacity/speed, etc. Basically two of the same drive. That way, if you wanted to RAID them, you could do so without any loss of hard drive space. By RAIDing them, you'll get faster load times in games and such.

I don't know how much you're paying for the drives individually but you can get a 120 GB hard drive here in Canada for $105 - not very expensive!!!

[ajrettke]

I would not get into RAID, it's performance in real world apps is negligable and you have twice the chance for array failure than a drive failure. Also one 74gb raptor is much much quicker than 2 80gb IDE drives RAID 0'd.
IMO RAID should be left at RAID 1 for home users who want data security and RAID 5 for server enviornments. RAID 0 is great for benchmarking and massive files, but your better off going with SCSI then....and if you can afford it, RAID 0 some SCSI drives if you need that much speed.

[9mmCensor]

I'd say you should get two SATA drives of equal capacity/speed, etc. Basically two of the same drive. That way, if you wanted to RAID them, you could do so without any loss of hard drive space. By RAIDing them, you'll get faster load times in games and such.

I don't know how much you're paying for the drives individually but you can get a 120 GB hard drive here in Canada for $105 - not very expensive!!!
Raptors are better than raid