Need input for my new PC

ASUS P4PE Pentium 4, Socket 478, ATX, 3GB DDR-DRAM, 533Mhz FSB

Pentium 4 (2.53GHz 512KB, 533MHz, Socket 478)

Chieftec midtower

Verto GeForce4 Ti4200 64MB DDR 2D/3D Video w/TV Support

These parts I have pretty much decided for sure that I want them.
I could get a better video card I'm sure, but I use a Nvidia GeForce 2 now, and Im happy enough with it to stick with one I know.

Here is what I want input on.

Power Supply
Antec 450w ATX
Hard drive
(2)Maxtor 30GB (EIDE, UDMA/133, 7200 RPM)

Should I go with 2 seperate, or 1 big one. Is there an advantage to having 2?

512Mb DDR RAM, but PC2100 or higher? Who makes the best memory right now?

This is gonna be my first build, so any help would be great

Thanks

 

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The power supply is great

I would go with a 40GB, or 80GB Western Digital Special Edition drive. The WD-400-JB, and WD800JB respectively. 8MB cache at ATA-100 will perform better than 2MB at ATA-133. They are standard parallel and 7200 RPM

40GB if you can live with 32K cluster sizes. 80GB if you want 64KB clusters Don't bother with anything else. If you are willing to settle for 60 gigs total, you wouldn't need more than 80GB. Western Digital's current data density for those drives is 40GB per platter, you want your platters full to get the maximum benefit without having to add another (which is why I don't recommend their 60GB model, you also wouldn't be able to get 64K clusters with that)

I don't deal with RAID, so I'd say a single drive over 2 seperate ones half the size.

Corsair makes the best RAM in the world

http://www.corsairmicro.com/

The fastest memory is currently DDR 433, but there are no chipsets that support this memory bus right now (the highest any current interfaces will suport is DDR 400, which is PC 3200).

DDR 266 is PC 2100

 

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Headcheese,

With two drives, you can use one as a backup. That way, if one hard drive fails, all your porn won't be lost.

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By the way, welcome to sciforums!!!

Tom

 

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Thanks for the welcome!

Is there any other good reason for 2 HDs? Is the system faster with one for system and program files, and a seperate one for MP3s and the like?

 

Actually that is not a good idea for backup.

Now, you said if one fails. Well what if your house is struck by lightning and it fries all of the parts in your PC, including both harddrives? Or what if your case is stolen?

A better idea is to have a seperate backup that is not part of your PC. Which is why I recommend CD-RW discs

 

I back up on CD-RW.

Im talking about if having system files, and program .exe files seperate from the documents and such would help keep the system runnung smother, or if it makes no difference. Do you think it is helpful to do that?

 

You can't span the same file system for 1 partition off multiple harddrives.

If you don't have a harddrive that is at least 70GB in size, you won't be able to have 64K clusters, period (you couldn't achieve this if you had 2 harddrives 60GB a piece) Assuming you are using FAT32 anyway (you can assign the cluster size for NTFS if you use the advanced logical disk manager in Windows 2000)

Having 1 drive will result in better performance unless you plan on using RAID (which, as I said, I personally don't deal with).

Not only that, but you won't have to share a cable if you are using the IDE channels built into your motherboard (master and slave configuration). Alot of people say it is a good idea to only use one of the cable connectors.

The best idea for achieving maximum performance is to have a good partition setup. I have a 2.1GB partition for my operating system, a 532MB partition for my virtual memory, and everything else goes into my 3rd parition which is for games, proggies, etc.... No matter how big it gets (as long as it does go over 125GB anyway, but I only have a 40 gig, and a 20 gig drive, just an example).

Putting you SWAP file in its own dedicated partition will give you the fastest access to it due to the seek times (it won't have to sift through any other info).

 

Headcheese,

There is no difference in the speed of the system whether you have one or two drives. However, if you only have one hard drive, and it's almost full, your system will run slower.

I used to use CD-R's and CD-RW's for backup too, but it was too time consuming. Every six month, I format my hard drive and reinstall my operating system in order to keep my computer "in shape". I find it much easier to transfer files back to the hardrive using a backup hard disk than a whole lot of CD-RW's.

If the files on your computer are very important, I would recommend using a detachable firewire or USB 2.0 hard drive as backup instead of CD-RW's or an internal hard drive.

Tom

 

i use the NTFS in Win2K

Im trying to achieve just this, but Im not sure about assigning things to seperate partitions. Can you give me a link or some text about how to do this? I wanna learn as much as I can, so I don't have to keep fixing my probs with fdisk

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Thanks again