UPDATE: NEW DESKTOP COMPONENTS PURCHASED

[wildhawker]

Here's the final specs, ordered today:

1 x DVD BURNER LITE-ON | IHAS424-98 R

1 x HD 1T|WEST DIGITAL WD1002FBYS

1 x CARD READER AFT XM-35U BLACK

1 x CPU THERMPASTE|AS5-3.5G

1 x CPU COOLER NOCTUA|NH-U12P SE2

1 x CASE ANTEC|TWELVE HUNDRED BK

1 x MB MSI P55-GD80 1156

1 x PSU CORSAIR|CMPSU-750TX 750W

1 x CPU INTEL|CORE I7 860 2.8G

1 x MEM 2Gx4|CORSAIR CMD8GX3M4A1600C8

1 x XFX RADEON HD 5850 1 GB DDR5 PCI Express Card HD585AZNFC

[Eric Mayer]

Is he building this for you, or is it a pre-built system from Newegg?

Eric

[wildhawker]

I'll probably assemble it myself, but it's just components. This was his take on 3-4 years of hardware relevance.

[TaxAnnihilator]

Good deal. As for the choice of processors - good luck getting a straight answer on that. Some will tell you the 920 is overkill for home users, others will not. Same price on Newegg, the 920 is more popular...

I would personally ditch the 750gb drive and go for 2 500gb (edit: or 2 of the 750s, seeing how cheap they are!) in raid 1 for security (of course there are many options, but I like the redundancy of this setup).

Then you can get into the whole SSD for the OS! Talk about fast...

Don't forget that MS products such as Word 07 and Win7 are cheaper for students! $50 for Word, $30(?) for Win7. Just has to use school email addy to sign up.

[wildhawker]

Geesh, makes me want to just get a preconfig.

Thanks for a heads-up on the MS student pricing. $30 for Win 7 Pro and $60 for Office 2007 Ultimate.

[Eric Mayer]

I was just asking, as I'm about to buy at least one, maybe two new computers for the business. I was thinking "group buy"!!

I think it's a decent deal and saves you from having to remove all the crap-ware they load onto a built system (Dell, HP, etc).

Thanks for the info.

Eric

[JDay]

I would personally ditch the 750gb drive and go for 2 500gb (edit: or 2 of the 750s, seeing how cheap they are!) in raid 1 for security (of course there are many options, but I like the redundancy of this setup).

RAID is not a replacement for regular backups. You shouldn't trust your data to RAID since the drives are the same make/model and will likely fail at the same time.

[JDay]

Geesh, makes me want to just get a preconfig.

Thanks for a heads-up on the MS student pricing. $30 for Win 7 Pro and $60 for Office 2007 Ultimate.

Free if your school is part of MSDNAA.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/academic/default.aspx

[choprzrul]

Food for thought: I installed W7 on a P4 D system with 2GB DDR. Removed HDD that had XP installed and did a clean W7 install on a 2nd drive. I swear that W7 runs better on that old hardware than what XP does.

If W7 will run good on old hardware, why spend a bunch of $$ for today's higher end hardware?

[wildhawker]

Free if your school is part of MSDNAA.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/academic/default.aspx

Looks like hers isn't (Sonoma State). Dang.

[G17GUY]

Why nas, with a 750Gb HD and 6Gb memory just set up file sharing lol.

[wildhawker]

We don't want to keep the computers on and want to be able to grab/use files remotely but stored on the home net.

[TaxAnnihilator]

Sure that regular backups goes without saying. Thanks for pointing out the obvious. It's like saying, no need to wear a seatbelt because you have airbags, sure some people do it, but he is building a box on his own so why state the obvious.

How many actual instance of simultaneous failure you ever personally seen for a home PC when properly set up? How many have you heard of when properly set up? Each drive should be on it's own channel and you should in most situations have no problem. If you set them up on the same channel it will necessarily cause both to fail, if you do it right the odds are extremely low. Or if your comp is still showing a problem, flop the BIOS so the surviving drive can be "seen." Further, based on the information previously discussed, these drives will not be running write intensive apps.

Oh, and others have previously done the math for me:

RAID 1 failure rate

As a trivial example, consider a RAID 1 with two identical models of a disk drive with a 5% probability that the disk would fail within three years. Provided that the failures are statistically independent, then the probability of both disks failing during the three year lifetime is

P(\mathrm{bothfail}) = \left(0.05\right)^2 = 0.0025 = 0.25\,\%.

Thus, the probability of losing all data is 0.25% if the first failed disk is never replaced. If only one of the disks fails, no data would be lost, assuming the failed disk is replaced before the second disk fails.

However, since two identical disks are used and since their usage patterns are also identical, their failures cannot be assumed to be independent. Thus, the probability of losing all data, if the first failed disk is not replaced, is considerably higher than 0.25% but still below 5%.

As a practical matter, in a well managed system the above is irrelevant because the failed hard drive will not be ignored. It will be replaced. The reliability of the overall system is determined by the probability the remaining drive will continue to operate through the repair period, that is the total time it takes to detect a failure, replace the failed hard drive, and for that drive to be rebuilt. If, for example, it takes one hour to replace the failed drive, the overall system reliability is defined by the probability the remaining drive will operate for one hour without failure.

RAID is not a replacement for regular backups. You shouldn't trust your data to RAID since the drives are the same make/model and will likely fail at the same time.

[jarhead995]

very nice comp should last you quite a while

[JDay]

Sure that regular backups goes without saying. Thanks for pointing out the obvious. It's like saying, no need to wear a seatbelt because you have airbags, sure some people do it, but he is building a box on his own so why state the obvious.

How many actual instance of simultaneous failure you ever personally seen for a home PC when properly set up? How many have you heard of when properly set up? Each drive should be on it's own channel and you should in most situations have no problem. If you set them up on the same channel it will necessarily cause both to fail, if you do it right the odds are extremely low. Or if your comp is still showing a problem, flop the BIOS so the surviving drive can be "seen." Further, based on the information previously discussed, these drives will not be running write intensive apps.

Oh, and others have previously done the math for me:

You don't take into account the drives are rated to last the same amount of time. This is why failure of all discs at the same time is probable. The drives will also get mechanical wear at the exact same rate. RAID is good when you need speed but to rely on it to save your data in case of a failure is foolish.