Need more advice..........

[Fritz44]

OK.........so I checked out Sharky Extreme and alot of reviews.......but I'm still not sure what I should spend my money on.

I want to build a super fast system comparable to Sharky's Extreme Gaming PC but their latest guide is from February's hardware. If there's one thing for certain, its that February's hardware has already been replaced by faster components.

If you know of any recent guides or recommendations for "Dream Machine" configurations, please let me know.

Also, I'm thinking of going SCSI......preferrably SCSI Ultra 160 since I hate waiting for my H/D, but I have also heard that IDE RAID leaves something to be desired. Any good suggestions??????

Thanks, Fritz

[Holodoc]

my recommendation for a nice system:

MSI KT3Ultra KT333 mobo, Athlon XP 2000+ (but the Palomino one)
2 IBM Deskstar 120 GXP drives
in RAID 2+0 stripe mode, GF4 TI 4600 (i.e. Gainward)
SB audigy or Hercules Fortissimo 2 soundcard,
pioneer 106s slot in dvd rom, a cd writer such as a ricoh, yamaha
or pleXtor.

the whole thing in an aluminium case, CPU fan i recommend
Cooler Master Heat Pipe copper with a silver spacer.

would be a fine system, if i had the money for it :-))

remark to scsi: scsi is fine and fast, but it's also loud,
the drives may need to be cooled, and
it's expensive. i think, it's not worth the
money. you better use raid level 0

regards
Holodoc

[BipolarBill]

You should really stay in the same thread, Fritz, but I have an idea.

Since you obviously have too much money and a need to spend it, buy an Alienware:

http://www.alienware.com

or a Falcon.

http://www.falcon-nw.com/

They build untouchable systems. You can read about them in the latest issue of CPU magazine (real paper):

http://www.computerpoweruser.com/

[Fritz44]

Looked at Falcon and Alienware......its gonna take at least $4500 to build one to their specs.........not an option.

Anyone have those independent reviews for the latest and greatest??????

Thanks, Fritz

[BipolarBill]

IDE RAID 0, while faster than single-drive is not 2x as fast. It also carries the burden of being very fragile. One boo-boo and you have no OS, no data and no way to retrieve it. RAID 1 has faster read performance, but there's no improvement in writes. Ultra 160 single-drive is the way to go for reliable speed, but it's not cheap. Our own Otheos recommends the Tekram controller and any 10,000RPM Seagate Cheetah - at a minimum. Faster drives are better, naturally.

Sharky's Feb. choices are still quite valid except for perhaps memory and CPU choices. Those are easily researched from Sharky's CPU and memory buying guides.