I originally guessed I'd just wait for Vista then get a pre-installed machine from Dell. However, once Vista had arrived, with all the included ho-ha of problems, missing drivers and the like, I decided to stick with XP for a while longer.
But I still needed something a little better.
The start was a mention on Scan.co.uk of a CPU/Memory combo with a little bit of a discount. From there I searched for a compatible Motherboard (I've always liked ASUS mobo's myself) then from there it all spiralled out of control!
Anyway, here's what I ordered:
- Intel Core 2 Duo E6600, Socket 775 £219.00
- ASUS P5B-E iP965, S775, PCI-E (x16), Gb LAN £66.99
- 320MB Palit 8800GTS PCI-E (x16) £157.94
- 600W CoolerMaster iGreen Power SLi £53.39
- Coolermaster Centurion RC-534 Black £28.99
- 320 Gb Samsung HD321KJ Spinpoint x4 £175.00
- NEC AD-5170A Black x18 DVD±RW Dual £15.59
- Icy Dock MB-455SPF 5-Bay Internal SATA Drive Enclosure £67.99
I'd originally wanted to build a NAS storage drive to run my Showcenter. But now I'm thinking it'd be better to use this machine to do both. The noise of the new PC will dictate whether I end up doing that as whatever machine I use for the Showcenter will most likely be on 24x7.
As the Asus mobo has built in RAID (in fact two raid controllers, although only one running RAID 5) I though now was a good time to try and run a RAID 5 set-up. The 4 x 320Gb hard drives should give me about 960Gb free once it has been build. That's almost the same as I currently have over two machines!
Graphics card is not top notch, I grant you, but the high-end cards are over £300 now and that's just too much for a single component on a computer!
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