Building from scratchFollow

Build it yourself, but whatever you do, make sure your hard drive is a WD SATA Raptor 10krpm drive. Go for the 74 gig version. That's the level loading performance factor right there. Also, you can never have too much ram.

If you need extra space for your mp3 and ...other... collections, just throw an affordable 200 gig drive in there to hold it. Hell, get a mobo with SATA raid, and put two 200 drive in a mirror array, for data protection. But thrust me, you want the rocket fast drive.

True, you need to know your way around a few text screen.



False, you're thinking of Raid 0 (stripe), I was talking about Raid 1 (mirror). I mentionned data security because if one of his drive goes dead, he can buy another one, toss it in there and the mirrored array rebuilds itself. If your controller is nice it might also allow hotswapping. This is a data security, not a performance thing. Raid 0 (stripe) would be a performance thing, but if one of the drive fails you lose all data, that's not at all what I was suggesting.



False. When hard drive get bigger, they use more heads/platters, higher density platters, or both. Take a look at these benchmarks comparing the Raptor 74GB to the 36GB. Hands down dominance in performance. Bigger is better in this case. Anyways, we both agree that this drive is a hot rod, the only thing up from this baby is a 15k rpm SCSI drive (but those cost 3X the $$$ for the same size, and require a SCSI controller). This drive by itself will make your whole rig feel much faster.



Already adressed in my first paragraph, you're thining of a striped array of drives, I'm talking about a mirrored array of drives. In laymans term his c: drive would be his performance drive where his software is (74 gigs), and his d: drive would actually be two redundant drive where he can store his valuable data, and if one of the drives go kaput, he just throws in a new one and regains redundancy, never losing his data. That's just a convenience/security thing, from the performance side of it having a raptor as a main drive is what he must focus on.

Whatever you do, remember : if EQ2 is installed on a raptor 10krpm drive, you'll be slashing your loading time, which is a good thing(TM).

EDIT : Some points I didn't adress :

Is it true that Intel CPUs are of higher quality

No. Not at all. Intel's Pentium 4 is a CPU engineered for one purpose : get the highest clock speed possible to please the marketing department. Read this article and the second part to enlighten yourself as to why they cost more. AMD has been putting out cpus that give a better performance/price ratio for a long time, but intel has the name. People will spend more because they think it's better because it's more expensive. As far as which one to pick, I wouldn't go beyond an Athlon 64 3400+ for enthusiast right now, no more then Athlon 64 3000+ for the budget buyer tring to get the most bang for the buck.

Get a "Retail Box" CPU from AMD. The included heatsink/fan should be more then enough, I've built four systems in the past two years using the OEM heatsink/fan and have had no problems on that regard. I suggest an Antec Casing (because they're affordable and well built), Antec PSU (480W should be enough), and put a fan at the front and back for cooling. This should be more then enough unless you want to go into overclocking, but you're on your own if you go that route, don't ask for help if you push it too much.

EDIT2 : Forgot about the mobo

If you're taking my advice and going with an Athlon 64, I'd use a motherboard with the n-force 3-250 chipset. I have a strong personnal tilt towards Asus since all of my computers for the last seven years (and all of those I built for family/friends) have been using those motherboards. Others like Abit and MSI, whichever floats your boat. Just don't go for the no-name mobo that shops will be trying to push onto you. If you can wait a little, I'd go with a motherboard using the N-Force 4 chipset, but you can't say for sure when they'll be available. Whatever mobo you're about to buy, try to check out a comparative test from sources like anandtech, hardocp or tomshardware. Anand being my favorite source of info atm.

EDIT3 : Take a look at this motherboard. If you look at the features list, it has 2 SATA connector, and a RAID controller too. You'd plug in your Raptor on the primary SaTA controller, and two drives on the RAID controller, specifying RAID1(MIRROR). I only insist on this being a good feature because the computer of one of my relative is on his third hard drive in the last 4 years, and each time he lost all of his mp3, and a truckload of family pictures he spent hours scanning. I bought him a raid controller and set up a mirrored array, and he's no longer stressed out about losing all his data everytime he boots up his computer.

EDIT4 : Actually, I wouldn't go with the motherboard I linked for one reason : no PCI-express. Since it's only AGP you're cutting out your upgrade path at the next video card generation, if the manufacturers are nice enough to develop an AGP version (otherwise the current generation is your last video card upgrade). However a quick look at recent Anand articles show me that most board don't have PCI-express connectors, so you can't really hold it against it. A little digging around revealed that most manufacturer should be putting out their mobos with PCI-E before the end of the fourth quarter.

Edited, Wed Oct 20 23:17:25 2004 by Euler

Edited, Wed Oct 20 23:21:28 2004 by Euler

Edited, Wed Oct 20 23:28:53 2004 by Euler

Edited, Wed Oct 20 23:36:51 2004 by Euler

I have to say thanks for the info on this thread. I didn't even know what a SATA drive was but after reading here I did my research. The 10k WD Raptor has gotten excellent reviews on ever web page I read.

In case other people are shopping for one, the best price I found was at newegg.com. After a $25 mail in rebate, the drive is only $157 and shipping was only $2.99.

See you in Norrath,
brian

I have very strong opinions about Dell. I purchased an Inspiron 5000 laptop from the several years ago and it stopped working about 45 days or so after I purchased it, 15 days too many for me to return it. I was forced to split my tech calls around my busy work schedule and every time I called I was on hold for an average of 30 minutes before I even spoke to a person. The record was around 45 minutes. After I finally was able to speak to their tech support, we ended up doing the same things and asking the same questions everytime, they did a very poor job of passing information along in my "profile" so that when I called back, they would know where the last guy left off and avoid repeats.

As a Fire Control Systems tech for the US Navy, I am not unfamiliar with troubleshooting "computer" hardware, though I have had very little training in personal computers. I can say with confidence that the various technicians I spoke to in my atttempt to fix the problem, were about average and some I seriously speculated on where they got their certifications.

Eventually "they" decided it was a "software" problem and that under my warranty, the limits of Dell's "support" was phone or internet. I strongly disagreed with their expert opinion and sought the opinion of a Hewlett Packard computer technician who thought their conclusion was ridiculous and said it was a obvious to him it was a hardware problem. I don't know who was right, with certainty, but at the very least, two qualified technicians disagreed on the very nature of the casualty.

I ended up talking to some very high up corporate person, who I had to schedule an appointment to speak with over the phone and she only backed what her technicians said. She even went so far as to claim that I had spent insufficient time with her tech support people.

To this day, I owe Dell $3000 for a computer that does not work. It is currently sitting in a box in a storage unit of one of my old barracks where I tossed a bunch of old junk that I planned on coming back for, when I transferred. After 3 years, I wonder if it is even still there.

What's wierd, is that Dell hasn't even once, tried to contact me about the payments that I stopped sending. After 3 years, not a letter or a phone call. I wonder if they have a note next time my name in the system, "Just write him off as a loss."

My integrity is something that I value highly and I cannot say that I haven't had mixed feelings about my decision, but I do believe I made the right decision in this particular situation. In my strong opinion, Dell failed to uphold their end of the contract and I "bent over backwards," wasting hours of my valuable time, in an attempt to resolve the situation. Had they made even the slightest attempt to meet me halfway, I would have worked with them. I would have been willing to pay for the repairs if it did turn out it was a software problem. To this day, I would still work with them, if they were willing to work with me.

Since I don't have possession of the computer anymore, repairing is no longer an option, but if they were willing to send me a letter of apology, at the very least, and even more desireable, some small form of reconcilliation, not only would I pay the amount in full, but they may actually recover one of their customers and this story that I tell my friends, coworkers, acquiantances, and strangers on the internet, might actually have a happy ending.

Just like the rating label for online games these days, your experience may vary. This has been mine.

Kallirye