Revised System Specs

[calhoun]

Hey guys! I am back again to ask if my parts are compatable and to see if you can answer a few of my questions. My parts are the links below:

Case: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811117032

PSU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817153006

Motherboard: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813135200

Processor: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819116196

Hard Drive (Master): http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822145088

Hard Drive (Slave): http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822144414

Memory: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820227060

Video Card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814127189

Sound Card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16829102176

Network Card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833332506

Optical Drive: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16827152040


Thats about it. I made some changes, such as the motherboard being a little cheaper and the processor being 3.4 instead of 3.0 and i went with the 2 sticks of 1 GB each, as well as a better video card than before. My questions are this:

1) Will 2 sticks of 1 GB each work as fast or faster than 4 sticks of 512 MB each?

2) Is this network card gonna work with like LAN parties, and is it a good brand with good speed?

3) Is this power supply good enough? Is this a good brand, or should I look for something better?

4) I heard recently that having a master and slave hard drive is better than just one huge hard drive, because the more files you have on a bigger drive, the slower it becomes? Is this true? And could I get more information (if possible) about it?

5) Another HD question. Is SATA II, which are the storage devices on my motherboard, is SATA II compatable with the HD's I listed above?)

6) The memory I have is PC5400 @ 667... is it really much faster than PC3200 @ 400?

7) Final question: Is everything compatable with each other?


Also, in case if people wanna know what I'm gonna be doing with this computer, Ill be playing the latest games (obviously with my sweet graphics card and memory), doing DVD editing (the big hard drives) and burning, music (I'll get the speakers, mouse and keyboard at Circuit City or something), internet surfing, office apps such as Dreamweaver, Fireworks, programming, and Office, and other things may appear.

Any suggestions/recommendations are open, so I'll be happy with some input from some people. Thanks a ton!

[dsio]

1:

2X1GB sticks will be faster in general these days than 512X4. Old 1GB sticks were slow, new ones are just as good as 512s, and having fewer sticks means tighter timings and better performance.

2:

DO NOT BUY an extra network card. The onboard gigabit on the motherboard will always perform better as it is linked directly into the northbridge on those chipsets.

Andy PCI gigabit card will be limited by the PCI bus, and the southbridge, which means it will be slower, with higher latencey. Its a waste of time and money these days, because onboards are always superior now.

3: I dont like that PSU. Thermaltake is ok, but not great, and 420W is at the lower end of the scale. There are only two brands. Seasonic, and Enermax. In your price range, the Enermax Noisetaker 430W 450W 470W is what you should be after.

4: Master and slave only applies to PATA, not SATA. Having a master and slave is stupidity because they share the same PATA connector and only one can work at a time. This creates high latencey, and limits performance. SATA gets around this.

Use one large hard disk, unless you have experience in RAID arrays, which I doubt you do. But thats ok, modern hard disks are fast as hell.

Ditch the small Hitachis and buy a single large MAXTOR 10. A Maxtor 10 300GB is relatively cheap now, and has the 16MB cache, and performs extremely well, while being very quiet.

SATAII is backwards compatible so dont worry. Just get the Maxtor 10 SATA 300GB 16MB cache and everything will be fine and fast.

6: Everything looks good aside from that.

[calhoun]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817103457

is this the one you are talking about?

[dsio]

Thats it exactly. That is about as good as it gets mate.

[calhoun]

and I have to thank you very much for taking the time out to read my essay-like report on my computer parts and giving me some good suggestions. Every bit of help I get on this is appreciated big time

[dsio]

This is the hard disk you want actually. Its the one up from the Maxtor 10, and comes with a 5 year waranty.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822144186

One day special at newegg on it.

[calhoun]

isnt SATA faster than ATA150 though?

[dsio]

that drive IS SATA.

Sata means serial ATA.

That drive is Serial ATA 150, which is SATA I.

Not SATAII.

But that drive cant completely use the bandwidth available to SATA 1 let alone SATA 2.

A fast SATA 150 drive with a big cache is always better than a mediocre SATAII drive.

[calhoun]

so, i think in my motherboard i have like 4 SATA II slots... would that 300 GB hard drive you listed above, would that work in the SATA II slots or would i have to get a different drive/motherboard?

[dsio]

It will be fine, SATA II is completely backwards compatible. Thats definately the drive to have though.

[calhoun]

ok... sry for all the confusion on my part lol. im new to building computers (this will be my first ever build). i want to build my own comp to save about 1k dollars where i would get this else where from like dell or tigerdirect prebuilt, and to see if i really can complete it without damaging anything. know of a good online tutorial that can guide people through how to build it from scratch? i tried pcmech.com, but they are slightly outdated. I want something newer, any suggestioins?

[calhoun]

also, is the GeForce 7800 GTX all that much greater than the GeForce 7800 GT? Is there really a big difference or what?

[QSDT]

Always check to make sure that you put your ram sticks in properly I now check 3 times I lost a mobo and ram when not in all the way.

[dsio]

Read the manual that comes with your motherboard.

Mobo manuals tell you basically how to build the whole computer from scratch.

Run into any issues, just come here.

And the GTX is only slightly better than the GT. The GT is the better buy.