Custom-built Computer

[kandrathe]

I figure by the time they die, there'll be something bigger and better out - I personally have only ever had one HD die on me, and I use my computers 24/7. The design will be 2x 250 drives set up for a RAID 1 array, with the 3rd drive being used for backup of system images, and all-around data storage (the whole family are photo-freaks, so there's going to be LOTS of digital pictures to store, and probably digital video eventually).

I think there is already something better. There is a reason that most SATA drive warranties are 1 year, and SCSI drive warranties are 5 years. I guess I would have mixed a hot swappable Ultra 320 SCSI raid 5 array with 3-5 lesser 37.5GB (120GB) 10K rpm drives for data storage ($120x5) + SCSI controller and then tossed on a large capacity (250 GB) $157 SATA drive for OS and Software. You can make a Ghost image of the default OS installation on the SATA drive for easy recovery. For video work, 120GB of higher speed work space might be more useable than double that space at half the speed. I guess they could always use that extra 2GB of RAM as a ram disk for DVD writing cache.

I'm waiting to build my next machine after the brauhaha of PCI Express architecture is stable and affordable (est. Summer 2005). It should more than double the bidirectional video bandwidth of AGP 8x. So, as far as not being obsolete for a long time... I dunno, I think I would have built a good $2500 machine for now, and then another $2500 machine in late 2005 or summer 2006.