Thinking of building...any advice?

Hey everyone...I'm going to be buillding my first computer shortly, and I was wondering if any of you had any specific advice for any of these parts, or if you notice that any of the hardware isn't compatable with eachother. I'm pretty sure it is, but this will be my first build and I want to make sure everything goes smoothly.

Case: Coolermaster Wavemaster
Power Supply: Enermax 460W w/ Copper Shielding
Motherboard: DFI LANPARTY 865PE
Processor: Penitum 4 3.2 GHz, 800 MHz FSB, 512K Cache, and Hypthreading
Video Card: ATI RADEON 9800PRO
Sound Card: Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy 2
Memory: 1 GB Corsair DDR (2 x 512)
Hard Drive: 200 GB Maxtor 7200 RPM
Drives: Plextor 12X DVD+RW/-RW Drive, Samsung Black 52X32X52X16 DVD/CD-RW Combo
Speakers: Logitech Z-2200 2-satellite system
Monitor: Samsung 170N 17" LCD
Keyboard/Mouse: Logitech Cordless MX Duo
Surge Protector: CyberPower 8-Outlet

Thanks for any feedback everyone!

Chuck

 

You ever thought of getting 2 HDDs half the size and raiding them? I *think* that board has built in SATA Raid support (checked the specs, yes it does.. same controller as my board), so it would be good to take advantage of that. Will be a little more hassle to install Windows, but it's worth it for the performance gain.

At a first glance you could get 2 of these : Maxtor 80GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive for about the same, you would get double the speed, but 40GB less space. I'm sure you could get the same space and find another make of drive for the same ammount, if not less.

 

Great idea, that's exactly the kind of thing I was looking for when I posted here I might go with a 40 gb for windows & programs and a 160 for storage! Great idea, thanks!

Any others?

Chuck

 

Happy to be of help

You might find this interesting : http://www.uni-mainz.de/~neuffer/scsi/what_is_raid.html

If you want good drive performance, I would say use 2 identical drives and use RAID-0 on them. That means you get much faster read/write speeds, and you dont loose any room on the HDs. Its treated as if you only have one hard drive.

But then, you can just have two independant SATA drives (which dont have to be identical) and get good data rates, and have the advantage of having the windows swap file on a completley seperate drive to windows itself. With RAID0 it would be on both at the same time.

Also, RAM, can you go with DDR400? that would bring it synchronious with your effective FSB, and your clock divider would all be integers. Running ram asychronious isnt the disadvantage it used to be, but you can run it faster, so why not?

 

That's another thing I missed with the DDR400....exactly the reason I posted here, because I knew that there's no way I missed everything! Thanks again!

Updating the configuration as we speak to:
Memory: Corsair 184 Pin 512MB DDR PC-3200
Hard Drives: 2 x Maxtor 120GB 7200RPM

 

You Bet!

Good Case Choice!

I Have a Coolermaster Wavemaster and besides looking good it's very well built. NO PLASTIC! In 4-5 years from now when it't time for me to build a new computer I'm just going to strip out the Wavemaster and start over.

IMSA

 

You wouldn't have any idea where the differet colored LED lights for the wavemaster can be bought, do you? I've talked to wvemaster and googled it pretty extensively and I couldn't find out where to get them. It's relatively important to me as I find the blue led relatively repulsive compared to the soft blue I saw a while ago.

Also, how well does the cooling systerm actually work in the wavemaster? The video card that I plan on getting is a doozy, and it's got a reputation for running VERY hot. I assumed that that wavemaster should be able to handle it...right?

Thanks!

 

I should think that you could go to any modding shop online and get a LED, the ones they sell would be standard voltage. All you'd need to do is pop the led out the harness inside the front bezel and re write it with a new one. Did it on my case, Ive now got an ultrabrite green LED for power, and an ultrabrite blue for disk activity. Keeps me awake at night!

 

No, I don't know where to get Wavemaster lights but I would think it's a fairly common bulb. My blue looks good and looks great in a dark room. The case cools well and I've had no overheating problems. I did add an additional fan(blue) in the top of the case for insurance. My only very, very minor complaint is since the case is all metal, fan noise is amplified so I'm going to add some sound deadening material to the case cover to absorb noise. I'ld buy the case again in a heartbeat!

IMSA

 

Another thing you can do is put plastic/squishy washers over the points that the fans screw in. It raises them so the large surface area isnt in contact with the metal, and so doesnt vibrate . Personally I would do that to all "noisy" elements (fans, cd drives maybe...) and then if the noise is still to great (air noise rather than mechanical noise) get some eggcrate foam or somthing.

Check it out here. www.foambymail.com accoustic foam. Its pretty expensive stuff, but thats the cheapest ive seen the stuff online.

 

Buggering edit timer

http://www.foambymail.com/VolaraSP.html
couple of square foot one each panel (layered) and you'd be golden. Mind you, the noise would still get out the front and back... but you can minimise that by insulating the parts.

 

Thank's for the tip!!!

I think I'm going to try the rubber washer idea. I put my hand on the side cover and it cuts the noise to a 1/3 of what it was.

IMSA

 

I'm a big fan of the APCBackUPS UPS's. Not just because they let you shut down cleanly in the event of a power outage, but because they can protect from sags as well as surges in the powerline.
Just a thought.