New System Spec

[d032sh]

Oh Wise ones. Just putting together a spec for a new rig, I have masses of external storage and am going to use my current audio interface so I'm not worried about sound. Is there anything here you guys would change?

Thanks :-)

[kalniel]

I would go down to a 320gb hard drive - either a 16mb cache one or any other high density platter. 400mb drives tend to be 4x100mb or 3x133 platters, 320 can be 2x160 which is faster. Plus they might be cheaper.

[d032sh]

Hmm, I was considering a raptor until I saw a few posts saying it was noisy. Do you think it would be worth running a couple of smaller drives in raid 0 as my system drive then? Would this be as fast/faster than the raptor? I'd really like to keep noise down if possible, I'll be replacing the stock cooler with a tuniq tower or maybe a ninja scythe too I think.

[kalniel]

RAID also increases noise - and it only increases speed in a few special circumstances, wheras raptors are fast for general usage.

I'd stick with a single 320gb drive - they are now not all that far behind raptors.

[DratUK]

Hmm, I was considering a raptor until I saw a few posts saying it was noisy. Do you think it would be worth running a couple of smaller drives in raid 0 as my system drive then? Would this be as fast/faster than the raptor? I'd really like to keep noise down if possible, I'll be replacing the stock cooler with a tuniq tower or maybe a ninja scythe too I think.

I have a Raptor 150 and its no more noisy than a Maxtor standard drive. TBH if you mount the drive with some rubber strips or gromets this will dampen the vibration and therefore sound. The Raptor is worth it its damn quick for loading. Regards the Abit board, if you want to go Abit then I would look at getting the Abit AB9 Quad GT, this appears to be a revision of the AB9 Pro.
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=535318

Gilgamesh is doing a review of the GT on the AbitCare section of the Hexus forum
http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=98403

Have a look at the rest of that section and you will see there were and are some issues with the AB9 Pro.
A full review
http://anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2911

[Clunk]

I have a single raptor, and also a maxtor drive, and the raptor is in a scythe quiet drive box and it is the loudest thing in my system by a long way.

If the rest of your system is noisy, you wont notice it so much, but if you value a quiet system, it may get on your tits.