It's time for me to build a new computer, but I've been out of it for long enough to be confused. I've been reading carefully for a few weeks now, and think I'm getting closer. First some background.
One of my earlier builds is an Abit BP6 running dual 300 mhz celerons overclocked to 450 mhz each. This was quite amazing back then. A Dual celeron board? Who'da thunk it? Anyway, both of those celerons and their heatsinks were lapped to a mirror finish. That box, beleive it or not, is still running today. It's running xubuntu, and serves as a web browser for my wife and kids.
My next builds were on an Abit IC7-Max3 running 2.4ghz pentiums at 3.0 ghz. The reason I say "builds" and "pentiums" is that I built two identical machines. One for the theater, and one as the primary computer for the home. Both of those are still running today, but the primary computer is starting to get a little flakey, and it's due for a replacement anyway.
So, what do I need in a primary machine? I don't game much, since that's mostly happening in the xbox 360 nowadays, but occasionally might like to run something on the PC. It is used for photoshop, and sony vegas, and sonar though. I require RAID support (due to an unfortunate and expensive (to pay to recover) hard drive failure in the past, I now run a RAIDed pair of 300 GIG drives, and also backup the redundant drives to another internal drive monthly). I'd like to keep support for IDE drives in addition to SATA (since I have terrabytes of IDE drives around). I need firewire (for the camcorder). I need gigabit lan (whole house is wired, and I move movies around a lot). My current PCI slots are full of the following things:
1 card for VIA Sata card (used for modding the xbox)
1 card for more USB ports (I suppose I could just move this external)
1 card for an honest to goodness serial port (used for programming old pronto remotes)
1 card for wireless lan card (only used to connect to a wireless piano, that's also wired, but that's a long story...it's a requirement none-the-less)
That brings me to my current plan (built mostly at newegg, but not tied to ordering from them):
Thermaltake Armor Series VA8003BWS Black Full Tower Case w/ 25CM Fan - Retail
ABIT IP35 Pro LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail
Q6600
Antec 650 blue powersupply (already purchased from local CompUSA going-out-of-business sale)
4 gig of memory - need suggestions
video card - need suggestions (although I'll likely grab an 8800 on sale for about $200 A/R as seen on some of the threads here)
cpu cooler - need suggestions (although, this is pretty clear from topics here already)
3x 500 gig drives - 2 raided, one as a backup
Will be keeping current monitor for now.
Planning on running Vista64, XP, and Ubuntu if I can figure out how to triple boot.
Any thoughts on how to change/improve this to better meet my needs? I went with Abit mostly because of my familiarity with them, but open to suggestions.
Thanks in advance.
-Kevin
One of my earlier builds is an Abit BP6 running dual 300 mhz celerons overclocked to 450 mhz each. This was quite amazing back then. A Dual celeron board? Who'da thunk it? Anyway, both of those celerons and their heatsinks were lapped to a mirror finish. That box, beleive it or not, is still running today. It's running xubuntu, and serves as a web browser for my wife and kids.
My next builds were on an Abit IC7-Max3 running 2.4ghz pentiums at 3.0 ghz. The reason I say "builds" and "pentiums" is that I built two identical machines. One for the theater, and one as the primary computer for the home. Both of those are still running today, but the primary computer is starting to get a little flakey, and it's due for a replacement anyway.
So, what do I need in a primary machine? I don't game much, since that's mostly happening in the xbox 360 nowadays, but occasionally might like to run something on the PC. It is used for photoshop, and sony vegas, and sonar though. I require RAID support (due to an unfortunate and expensive (to pay to recover) hard drive failure in the past, I now run a RAIDed pair of 300 GIG drives, and also backup the redundant drives to another internal drive monthly). I'd like to keep support for IDE drives in addition to SATA (since I have terrabytes of IDE drives around). I need firewire (for the camcorder). I need gigabit lan (whole house is wired, and I move movies around a lot). My current PCI slots are full of the following things:
1 card for VIA Sata card (used for modding the xbox)
1 card for more USB ports (I suppose I could just move this external)
1 card for an honest to goodness serial port (used for programming old pronto remotes)
1 card for wireless lan card (only used to connect to a wireless piano, that's also wired, but that's a long story...it's a requirement none-the-less)
That brings me to my current plan (built mostly at newegg, but not tied to ordering from them):
Thermaltake Armor Series VA8003BWS Black Full Tower Case w/ 25CM Fan - Retail
ABIT IP35 Pro LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail
Q6600
Antec 650 blue powersupply (already purchased from local CompUSA going-out-of-business sale)
4 gig of memory - need suggestions
video card - need suggestions (although I'll likely grab an 8800 on sale for about $200 A/R as seen on some of the threads here)
cpu cooler - need suggestions (although, this is pretty clear from topics here already)
3x 500 gig drives - 2 raided, one as a backup
Will be keeping current monitor for now.
Planning on running Vista64, XP, and Ubuntu if I can figure out how to triple boot.
Any thoughts on how to change/improve this to better meet my needs? I went with Abit mostly because of my familiarity with them, but open to suggestions.
Thanks in advance.
-Kevin