A little build advice, please?

[xDescent]

Hey guys..

First thing, just wanna say I'm really not a newbie to this forum, for some reason my old account got wiped out so I had to create a new one :\

Anyway...A few months ago I lost my computer (along with everything else) in a house fire. I'm now ready to hop back on the bandwagon and build another one. The old one was a beast, 3.0ghz C2D, evga 680i, dual 8800gtx. I'm trying to keep the budget down on this one. Though, it looks like you can get some remarkably good parts for a decent price nowadays.

Here's a link to the build-

http: //secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=8400771&WishListTitle=Mine

(Grr, can't post the url cause of my post count )

Now, 2 things I'm not sure about..

HDD...I'm not sure which way to go for Hard drives. This computer is going to be mainly for gaming, but I don't want a RAID setup. I'm thinking a smaller drive for the OS, and a larger one for data, but I really don't want to pay for a (overpriced, IMO) Raptor. As nice as it is, I still think a decent 7200rpm drive is good enough for my needs. Same thing with the larger drive for data...7200 rpm, 500 gigs or so. And everything is going to be SATA. Just wondering if anyone had any suggestions. There's so much to choose from...

And second..the operating system.

XP or Vista. I've vowed many a time to not use Vista. I know XP like the back of my hand, and for what I'm using it for - gaming - I know XP still offers better performance than Vista, even though I hear with Vista's updates and SP1 that gap has closed considerably. Whether I go with XP or Vista, I'm also not sure if I should go 32 or 64 bit. Ahhh I think I'm actually losing sleep over this..

So, any suggestions or criticism would be appreciated

[Descent]

Ah ha! I can get into my account again!

Edit- Need to change my sig

[polonyc2]

can't go wrong with Western Digital for your hard drive...I have a WD 500 GB RE 2 drive (WD5001ABYS) but they recently came out with the RE 3 drives which have the 32MB cache (but they only come in 750 GB and 1 TB models)...but I'm sure the RE 3 16 MB cache drives are plenty good

WD RE3 500 GB SATA Hard Drives ( WD5002ABYS )

as far as the OS---go with Vista 64-bit if you're building a new rig...Vista has caught up to XP in terms of gaming performance since SP1 and subsequent patches have fixed a lot of its early issues

[Descent]

Thanks man, I'll check out the WDs...

And with Vista 64... I seem to see a lot of people going with 8 gigs of memory? Seems a little bit like overkill to me, and would most likely have voltage problems on a lot of boards. Is 4 gigs sufficient? Also, what kind of Vista is recommended? (Home, Ultimate, blah blah)

[polonyc2]

4 GB is more then fine...I'm a big time gamer and I'm happy with 4 GB and Vista 64-bit...but with DDR2 memory being so cheap nowadays, now is a good time to buy memory so that's why some people are going with 8 GB...if you can afford to get 8 GB there is nothing wrong with a bit of future proofing

I'm using Vista Business 64-bit but that is because I wanted the fax capabilities...Ultimate is a bit of overkill for my needs...look into the features of each version and choose the one that best serves your needs

Windows Vista: Compare editions

[Descent]

Thanks for the help

I ended up going with Vista Ultimate 64 bit...the price difference between that and Home Premium isn't all that much, and the price isn't bad with the OEM version anyway.

And I got 2 WDs for my HDDs. Always had good luck with them in the past also.

And I think I'll stick with the 4 gigs of memory for now. Seems like it would be good enough for me..

Anyway, here's the final lineup-

Intel C2D E8500 3.16GHz
Asus Rampage Formula X48
4 gigs OCZ Platinum 1066
Visiontek 4870 HD (My first ATI card, hope it works out well)
WD Caviar RE2 160 Gb for OS
WD Caviar Black 750 Gb for whatever else
Antec Truepower 1000W
Antec Twelve Hundred Case
Samsung DVD Burner
Arctic Cooling Freezer Pro 7
Windows Vista Ultimate 64 bit

I think I'm gonna stick with onboard sound for now, and I'll get speakers and monitor at best buy or whatever. Really don't like ordering my monitors online...I really liked my 24" LG

[PeterT]

Nice build. Good luck with it. I have both of those drives and am very happy with them. Especially the 160GB RE2. It's cool, quiet and from what I hear, very reliable. And for the price, you can't go wrong.