[elsmandino]

Hello everyone,

I am proposing to build the following PC:

Antec P-182
2 X 2GB Corsair PC6400 RAM
E8400
ASUS P5Q-E
HDD X for
1TB Samsung Spinpoint OR 640GB Western Digital Caviar Black (For OS and Programmes)
1TB Samsung Spinpoint (For important Documents and Media)
Corsair TX 750W
Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 - Vapour X
Pioneer DVR-215
XP

By way of background, I shall be buying Windows 7 64-bit, when it comes out and then maxing the Ram.
I am not a big gamer and am unlikely to upgrade the graphics card and will certainly not be adding
a second card - the only likely future upgrades would be a couple more hard drives, perhaps more fans (if needed), a TV Tuner

Card/TV Capture Card and a dedicated sound card. I might upgrade to a Quadcore in the next few years - my current computer is an AMD XP 2500, so you can see I leave quite a while between upgrades. I am also certain I would like to take the Intel rather than AMD route.

Other than the usual, I use my comp for basic video editing and music recording with Cubase and the like.

Have spent quite a while coming up with the above specs and would be really grateful for your comments before I take the

plunge - anything that I should change, recommended alternatives or additions etc.

The only thing that I have noted that is that perhaps the 750W is perhaps overkill, even including head room for upgrades. I

know that having a much more powerful PSU than requested is not bad, but is a waste of cash if a weaker PSU would do. PSUs

are something I know little about and am not entirely sure.

Another thing is the hard drive I should use for my system files. The Caviar is slightly faster than the spinpoint, but the
spinpoint is a whole 320GB extra for little extra cost - what would you choose?

Would also be grateful for any estimates on how much you think this would cost to put together - is it better to buy
separately or get it pre-built by a company (I have read online that getting it done this way can be pretty competitive).

Many thanks

Al

[Carbon]

If you are doing video rendering that is multithreaded then you should go with the X3 720, no contest. The extra core will help quite a bit in those tasks.

That said, I would get 2x 640GB Blacks or a 640GB Black and a 1TB Black (both beat the Spinpoint F1 considerably in speed), a P45-UD3L and either a 520HX (for modularity) or a 400CX (for price). The rest with the above caveat is fine.

Even if you don't build it yourself, having someone put this together locally is going to make much more sense. The fact is, there's no prebuilt company that either doesn't cut corners or offers a reasonable spec machine. You end up paying a price premium for junk (like G31 motherboards and terrible PSUs) or get a very weird spec like Q6600s and no video card.