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Old August 10th 03, 04:12 PM
Chris Buckley
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Default Config / Hardware Questions

Alrighty, I'm looking for a little advice on building a new system. So far,
I have the following:

Thermaltake Xaser III Case
420W Purepower PS
Aquarius II Liquid Cooling Kit
MSI K7N2-Delta-ILSR MB

Now, I've had to make some modifications to the cooling kit to get
everything to fit right and not block airflow. (It was originally designed
for a Xaser II, and I had to rig the aluminum chassis steel plates to one of
the fans so that I could mount the pump somewhere away from the drives that
wouldn't block airflow, and wouldn't require the removal of a fan.)

So basically I think I've got the temperature thing under control.

My goal is to purchase a 3200+ XP, or whatever the flavor of the day is in 4
months or so, so I'd like to keep the memory compatable with that. What
modules would you reccomend for this picky board? (I'd like to do 2 512MB
modules) How big a factor is a heat sink on your memory?

Also, I'm trying to decide what processor I should use while I'm waiting for
the price to go down on the next level CPUs that the board supports. What
would you reccomend as a good deal now in the $80-$275 range? I was
thinking a Barton 2500+ if I could find one.

As far as storage, I'm thinking 2 120GB Seagate SATA drives in a RAID 0 to
maximize transfer rates. On my current setup with an ATA100 and an 800Mhz
Duron, my current limitation is disk transfer speed. It sounds odd, but
that's the ONLY thing that ever maxes out.

I'd like to go with three displays, a 19-inch CRT with 2 15" LCDs in a
portrait configuration on each side. I usually work with standard
applications, but would like to have at least one graphics powerhouse for
the CRT for gaming. Any reccomendations on this? Are there any good deals
on vid cards that could be used in the PCI slot just for applications use?
Should I just get something really cheap for the additional two cards,
seeing as I don't expect to be doing much in the way of 3D on them? Should
I match all three vid cards to avoid a driver mess?