Building My Computer

[Fuzzeh_Panda]

So for christmas, my parents are going to start me off (at my advice) for my computer. So far, I have them buying a case and a power supply. And I was thinking of asking for the motherboard/RAM too. Seeing as I have no idea about motherboard, what's a good choice? For a Quad Core, and 4 RAM slots?

Basically I'm going to wait until the new year to buy the things which could potentially drop in price.
So I could get a HD, DVD Drive, Mobo, RAM. Suggestions? Soon would be better, thanks .

EVGA 650i or Gigabyte P35. That is the question.

[Jedakiah]

This is going to be a matter of opinion.   

I have built many computers with a gigabyte board in them, and I'd highly recommend the brand. 

[Fuzzeh_Panda]

From what I can find, there's not enough compatible RAM. I'll go with the EVGA I suppose. And some nice 2gb of Corsair RAM.

[halloween]

I just built two systems with eVGA boards with Intel quad-cores.  they're running vista with 4 gigs of G.Skill ram, no problems so far.  I usually use Western Digital for hard drives, love the raptor.

[Jedakiah]

I owned a raptor, that is a NICE hard drive.  But I now own 3 Barracudas that perform better, each one offer 5 times the space, have a longer life span and at a cheaper price.  Hands down a better deal.  The only Raptor that out performs them is a Raptor X which costs twice as much and offers half the space.  At that price you can run dual Barracudas in Raid 0 and kick the Raptor X's ass in performance.  With the only draw back being you're doubling your chance for a HD fail costing you all of your data.  Which is what Raid 5 is for... 

IMO the raptor was once an awesome HD.  But anymore it's performance/size doesn't even come close to matching it's cost. 

[Labyrinthine]

IMO the raptor was once an awesome HD.  But anymore it's performance/size doesn't even come close to matching it's cost. 

No, it still is.

I want the HD that I keep my OS on to be around 40-50GB max, then I keep all my other files on other drives. Meaning, I want about 1 drive that is insanely fast and then others that can be as slow as mud. Raid 0, while it may boost yer speeds significantly, makes your system so unstable at the slightest problem that I shy away from it. It gave me nothing but headaches for the 6 months I used it. With Raid 0 it doesn't even take a HD crash to FUBAR your data. All I had to do was crash while running CSS and BAM! instant corruption of the whole two drives.

[Jedakiah]

I see your logic in regards to keeping your OS on one drive. 

But are you sure about Raid 0 causing instability?  I have not read much complaining about Raid 0 instability.  Many servers even run Raid 0.  The only recent negative thing people have to say about it is you're twice as likely to fail.  Which is why you make backups.  And also why you buy Hard drives with good warranties and only put new ones in Raid 0.  And to me that seems like flawed reasoning anyways, it's like saying don't buy a dual core because it's twice as likely to die!  How often do CPUs/Hard drives die from something other than old age or user error?  Having two verse one isn't going to make the problem go away. 

To me it seems like your system was unstable, whether hardware or otherwise.  And that is what caused your apparent failure.  Windows has been known to report corrupted data when there is none.  In addition so long as your HD is not dead you can generally recover all your data with no problems. In other words it seems to me like your problem was an isolated incident and could have easily been recovered from. 

Please let me know if you feel I'm mistaken.  I'm in the process of installing a few OS on my raid 0 array.  If you have more to say on the matter I'd love to hear it.  I'll probably halt my installs and reconsider. 

[Jedakiah]

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2101&p=10
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2974&p=5

VERY interesting articles for me.  As far as games go RAID 0 is a complete waste of time.  The only time I see RAID 0 being worth the risk is if you are compressing/extracting files or encoding movies.  Other than that it seems to have minor gains and losses. 

I was previously under the impression that RAID 0 would speed up anything to do with your Hard Drive by 100%.  Theoretically I guess it can but it never comes close in the real world.   

I'm now going to run Dual Barracudas with no RAID on my system.  I guess I'm going to have to buy a couple more or something for redundancy.  Any recommendations?  Finding this out wholly shattered my Hard Drive plans.  At least I hadn't gotten my RAID 0 OS completely setup. 

I (clearly) know nothing about RAID.  Can I still have my OS and stuff on a couple of striped 320s that have a redundant "array?" with a single 700?  Would that be a good or bad idea?