I am custom-building a system here. Although I have built several machines before, it has been more than 7 years and the technology changes quick enough that I wanted some advive. Now, let me say first off that the following system will not be a screamer by any means. I am not a gamer -- but on occasion I will transfer video (via Firewire) from my camcorder and edit home movies. Not the hardest thing to do, but on my current machine it can be tedious (the editing that is). With the above said, let's also say that I am budget-minded and would like to keep this under $450. (items listed below total $448.92 without tax) Case: Cooler Master Elite 330 Black ATX Mid-Tower Case ($39.99 at tigerdirect) Motherboard and CPU: EVGA nForce 650i Ultra Motherboard - T1 Version, Intel Core 2 Duo E4500 Processor 2.20GHz I like the fact that my current hard drive, which uses Ultra DMA 133, can be used in this system. Plus I will buy a SATA drive. ($189.99 bundle at Tigerdirect) Video: XFX GeForce 7200 GS Video Card (PCIe)- 256MB DDR2 ($27.99 at NewEgg) DVD: Lite-On PLDS DVD-ROM/CD-RW Retail Combo Drive - 52x32x CD-R/RW, 16x DVD-ROM ($24.99) Inexpensive internal. I have an external DVD burner that I bought for the LightScribe ability, so I don't need a second DVD burner. SATA drive: Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3250310AS 250GB(price=$65.99 at NewEgg) RAM: Buffalo Select 1024MB PC5400 DDR2 (2 sticks for 2 GB) ($29.99x2) OK, to be honest here I haven't kept up with memory and can't even be positive that this memory will work in this machine. If you have any advice on the RAM, please let me know. http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/Se...p?EdpNo=3053834 Power: Thermaltake PurePower 430Watt ($39.99 at Tigerdirect). It provides connectors for PCI-E and 2 for SATA. 9 Molex connectors. Additional items: I will install two items that I already own: a firewire card and a PATA hard drive. It is possible that in another year I would decide to add a 3rd hard drive (if I get a new one it would be SATA). These are in addition to the Seagate SATA drive I am purchasing at NewEgg. -- Question 1) Let's assume that I don't plan to overclock this machine. Do I need additional cooling for the CPU? I would assume yes, but as I said, I haven't built a system in 7 years. Question 2) Let's say that I do want to overclock the Intel E4500 a bit. What is a safe speed? And what type of cooling? [i don't need to max it out, but another 10% speed increase would help with certain computing tasks]. Question 3) Is 430 Watt enough power? Based on previous experience it is, but I don't know about modern motherboards and the power consumption. Question 4) As I said above, does this RAM seem adequate (PC5400)? Question 5) I see that the EVGA nForce board provides for RAID 1 and other RAID support. Anyone know if this support can include 1 drive on PATA and 1 drive on SATA in a RAID 1 array? Question 6) Has anyone had a had experience that they would like to share with one of the above components? Thanks for any advice! BTW, If anyone has a question about the OS I will use, I am going to stick with 32-bit. I plan to have XP Professional on 1 disk and Vista 32-bit on another (probably Home Premium but I am not sure yet).
