Check out my first computer rig in 12 years, thoughts?

You what??!?!?!?
No, that's your name, you what.

[looks at the camera] Simpsons.

Please do us a favor and add them up and give us a total, please, oh, master PC builder comic guy? Thanks. I will hang up and listen.

 

Nice system!

I might suggest you add a media card (SDHC) reader to that setup. They're pretty cheap and VERY handy.

 

I'm going the opposite direction. I've built my own PC's for 20 years and, a few months ago, I bought my first HP machine. I just can't get the parts cheap enough any more.

 

I can't suggest this enough to computer builders: put the OS on a solid state drive.

 

Nice rig but should have waited a little longer to see what AMD Bulldozer will offer. You're going to love that Das mechanical keyboard. I have the SteelSeries 7G and it's fantastic. Can't believe people are still wasting money on the crappy $50 to $150 plastic rubber dome keyboard.

 

You've heard wrong unless you're talking striped across many IDE drives. Most people don't want an 8-drive RAID in their box. In other words, to match performance, you're going to need several more than 2.

Also, SSD's don't fragment, consume less energy, less space, and are completely silent.

 

Meh stay away from the SSD drives. Better off getting the 10000rpm raptor. SSD have way higher chances of dying on you. My computer boot up in 30 secs and shut down like 10 seconds with the raptor.

 

Windows 7 is fantastic. If you need XP support there's a virtual XP you can install in Windows 7 64.

 

SSD will still be faster than your 2 drive stripe configuration, this coming from someone who had striped 2 10k Raptors, and the SSD is still faster on load, reads and writes. What I would do is get an SSD for main boot OS drive, then either RAID0+1 your 1TB drives, and use that for storage. Good system you have there.

 

Very nice. The only thing I didn't like was that you're going with ATI for the video cards. Coming from experience (I had two 5870s), ATI's hardware is great but the software (drivers) isn't good. It's very hit or miss, especially with CrossfireX, because they really don't update them all too often. Since they stick with a once a month driver release for the most part, some games may have negative scaling with multiple-GPU setups and will stay that way until a Crossfire profile is released (hopefully) with the next new drivers. Basically, they take ages to fix problems and sometimes end up causing other problems because of it.

In my opinion, nVidia's driver team handles their drivers much better. I never had a problem with the nVidia drivers since before my 5870s (when I had a GTX 260) or after (I currently have a GTX 570).

 

You haven't changed your computer in 12 years? Mind telling us the specs of your previous rig?

 

Good time for memory. 15% off at newegg.com (all desktop memory)

Tax time.....when consumer goods sales sky rocket.