Building my first custom PC

Hey,

I've been saving up and watching prices for quite a while now, and I finally think that I'm ready to try to build my first PC.

I plan on using this PC for gaming, photo-editing, music, DVDs, everyday things like internet and email, and multitasking (like doing all of the previous at the same time ). Here is what I have planned out for that:

***SPECS UPDATED***

CASE - Antec Performance I P180
No more questions/I believe I'm all good here.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811129154

***REVISED*** POWER SUPPLY
These two look to be adequate and then some. Any advice on which one I should get considering CrossFire (in the future), 5 HDDs, 2 DVD Burners, and a dual core CPU?:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817153036
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817341002

***REVISED*** MOTHERBOARD - Asus P5W DH Deluxe
Look good?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131025

CPU - Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 Conroe
This or the 6600, but the decision doesn't have anything depending on it, so I'm all good here.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819115002

MEMORY - Corsair XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 800
No more questions/I believe I'm all good here.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820145034

***REVISED*** VIDEO CARD - ATI Radeon X1900XT
Look good?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814195002

***REVISED*** HARD DRIVE #1 - Western Digital Raptor WD1500 150GB in RAID 1
Look good?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822136012

HARD DRIVE (RAID) #2 - 2 Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB in RAID 0
I'm also pretty sure that these will work fine in my setup. I want two in RAID 0 to hold large amounts of easily replacable data (games, downloaded files, programs).
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148140

***ADDED*** HARD DRIVE (RAID) #3 - 2 SAMSUNG SpinPoint P 250GB in RAID 1
Turns out that two of these are cheaper than one WD 10,000 RPM drive, and since speed isn't important with these being backup drives I suppose they'll suit me fine.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822152025

DVD BURNER #1 - SAMSUNG Black DVD Burner
No more questions/I believe I'm all good here.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16827151118

DVD BURNER #2 - LITE-ON Black External DVD Burner
No more questions/I believe I'm all good here.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16827106011

And this is what I can spare from other computers:

Creative Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS
I'll use this if the onboard sound isn't good enough.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16829102178

Logitech Z-5500 5.1 Speakers
No more questions/I believe I'm all good here.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16836121120

Dell UltraSharp 2407WFP 24-inch LCD Monitor
No more questions/I believe I'm all good here.
http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19&sku=320-4335

And of course I've got a mouse and keyboard too.



Well, I believe that I've covered everything needed, but if I haven't please let me know.

Thanks for your time and sorry for such a long post!

P.S. (unrelated) Does anyone have a recommendation on a HD duplication/transfer utility?

so youll need at least 4 sata connectors for your pc. so ive found a nice psu for you.
OCZ GameXStream 600watts with 4 18 amps +12v rails.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...N82E16817341001

well that sounds pretty good, for a powersupply you should go to here (and yes everyone im pluggin this site again)


http://www.journeysystems.com/power..._calculator.php

and punch in all your info and itl calc what kind of psu you will need, but personally i think anything over 500w should be fine for a modern gaming pc nowadays, except you have alot of hdds in there, so maybe something a little more than that.

BUT if you are willing to wait , you can see when AMD comes out with their quad core cpus, and if they do that would be pretty badass machine.

BUT regardless sounds like you got a pretty good handle on things and id have ot say thats a pretty good machine, but you might not need that second raid set of hdds in there, but i geuss its just personall preference

Well I don't know why you have your raids set up like you do, you are putting the 2 high performance drives is raid 1 to make copies of the same data on both harddrives, while you have the two mass storages drives in RAID 0 to make it faster. You should make those the other way, then you raptors will be even higher performance and you will be backing up all your important data on the big hdd's.

Thats a great psu that theblackmages suggested, should suit you fine, but the rest of your comp is sweet, it will be extremely fast.

@ theblackmages: Thanks for the link! The PSU you pointed out will most likely be what I will get; it looks way better than anything I had scouted out earlier.

As for SATA connectors, I think the motherboard has 7, but they're all SATA 3.0 Gb/s. Hmm, will they work with the Western Digital Raptor 150GB drives? They are only SATA150.

@ ssjaken: Thanks for the link and info! The calculator seems to verify that the PSU theblackmages linked to will work for me, so that's good.

@ bball4ever39: Regarding the hard drives, I've thought about what you mentioned before but never really came to a conclusion on which I should do. What your saying will probably be better than what I wrote in my first post, so I might end up striping the Raptors and mirroring the 320s.

One thing I don't quite understand is the difference RPM and interface make. Is it better to have striped 3.0 Gb/s @ 7200 RPM, or one/mirrored SATA 150 @ 10,000 RPM? I plan to put the OS and a select few HD-intense games (Oblivion, for example) on the Raptors and my less important files + other games on the slower 320s (but stripe to speed them up). But my understanding isn't too great here, so my reasoning could be completely off.

Thanks for your thoughts!

Its really up to you, either way you do it you will have the same amount of hard drive space. Its just the raptors are high performance drives, so putting them in raid 0 is the best option for performance, and they should be compatible with teh sata 2 on your mobo. As well no hdd can tranfer 3GB/s of data yet, so I believe the raptors are still faster. I would put the stuff you want loaded fast on the raptors in raid 0 and then back it all up on your Barracuda's to be safe.

That clears things up a great deal, thanks!

With my new understanding, I've decided to go to 5 HDDs, but only 1 Raptor and 2 other slower Samsung drives (in addition to the Seagate 320's) for backup purposes.

I've changed a bunch from the original, and have it updated in the first post. I believe that pretty much everything is worked out now, except for the PSU, for which I have two possibilities.

Wouldn't mind having that build. I would go with the OCZ power supply, they have had very good reviews from various sources and I have heard lots of good things about them.

The OCZ it is then

I'm feeling pretty good with the system then; I guess that all I have to do now is order it. I'll be back to tell how it works!

Thanks for the help and advice everyone!

seriously id rethink your whole raid striping thing, it doesnt realling increase speed that much....but i guess its personal preference

i just listened to the podcast version of leo laporte the tech guy on am 640 kfi in LA www.leo.am

and a guy called in with a raid striping problem and he talked about how its not really a good increase in speed or anything.

OCZ makes quality, efficient, stable, realiable PSU's.

OCZ makes quality, fast, overclockable, extreme memories.

I haven't seen any RAM's specified, which one you're gonna buy? I'd suggest OCZ Gold 2x1GB XTC...

As for the motherboard... Asus P5W DH Deluxe is one of the best Core 2 duo motherboards, if not the best... so great choice.

Your build looks awesome, and will work, if you choose DDR2 memories too.

Just as a note, do not get high frequency ram with. That mobo will not run your PC-800 ram at 1:1 so don't expect to even get to the rated speed. The best it will do is run is somewhere over or around 600, there is a problem with that boards memory controler and dividers. Just stick to some ram with decent timings.

Also the 1950 comes out in ~2 weeks if you are going to go with ATI. You might wanna think about waiting for that series.

For the DVD drives, look for blue-light technology. The will have all the nomal features but also DVD-ROM and some other perks. The run for very close to the same price. Samsung makes some nice ones.

Hmm, about the ram: So going with a PC5400 (DDR2667) with timing like 3-3-3-8 would be better than PC6400 (DDR2800) with timings like 4-4-4-12?

I just looked into this and it's coming out the 14th of September. I think I'll go with this, since from what I've heard the GDDR4 is faster and the card is less power-hungry/noisy than the older ones. One question though: I do plan on getting Crossfire in the future, just not when I buy my rig to start off with. What do I need for Crossfire? Two X1950 Crossfire Editions? If so, can I start with one X1950 CE and then a few months later get another and do them in CF?

I'll look into that.

Thanks for the info!

For crossfire you need 1 regular ati crossfire compatible card (so like a regular x1950xt) and 1 crossfire edition card, and of course a crossfire compatible motherboard.

Hmm, I was thinking that you could do two Crossfire Edition cards with the X1950s:

Source: http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2821

I don't exactly understand what they mean, but would I be correct to assume that I can use one Crossfire edition by itself, then later on get another and use two Crossfire editions in Crossfire mode?