Custom-built Computer

[Taeme]

It's just not worth spending the extra dough on the exact same thing.

Right. Exactly.

I'm confused as to what this machine is intended for. At it's specs, it looks designed for either high end photoshop work, or video encoding. And more towards the latter. It also looks like they're on dial up, and the HDDs look kinda slow. I'm shocked at the lack of WD Raptors, or hell, just going to the wall with a SCSI drive, which makes me feel this isn't for encoding.

So what's it for?

Lian-Li PC-61 USB 12-Bay Aluminum Case - $99
Thermaltake Jungle512 LGA775 CPU Cooler - $40

This is fine. Can't complain. I'm spending 175 or so on the the cooler / case / psu

Thermaltake Silent PurePower 560W PSU w/ PFC - $106

Ok, if you're going to blow money on a 560W PSU, I gotta ask you -- did you check the rails? Does this thing rate at any where near the power load you're expecting to hit? Or did you just buy something based on wattage? 560W is usually overkill in normal systems. A normal system - and granted, this is no normal system - can do fine on 350W.

Did you check the rails? Estimate consumption? Is this one 80% of peak estimated load?

Gigabyte GA-8ANXP-D LGA775 Motherboard - $249
Intel LGA775 Pentium 4 550 (3.4 GHz) CPU - $315

Why aren't you buying an Athlon 64? I'd expect if you're going to drop five grand on a machine, you'd at least look at the benchmarks. Are they doing video encoding? I think that's the only thing that an Athlon loses to a pentium too. And it doesn't need DDR2 ram.

Speaking of which ...

Corsair DDR2 533 PC2-4200 1GB RAM (x4) - $305 apiece, $1220 total

What justifies this level of investment when it comes to RAM? I honestly can't think of anything that is going to hurt at two gigs, at this level I'm completely confused. That's an extra $600 on RAM that doesn't even add a performance boost. (DDR2, I mean - the extra 2 gigs is, well, the extra 2 gigs?)

Connect3D Ati Radeon X800 XT 256MB vid card - $580

Well, this is top of the line, and well, that's top of line. Moving on.

Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy ES sound card - $44

This actually really confuses me. What speaker setup are you using? It seems like this is a little low end for a top of the line system. I mean, maybe I'm crazy, but wouldn't cutting out a gig of RAM and going for the top of the line sound card be a bit better? I mean neither are going to mean anything performancewise, but at least you could have that neat-o front bay thingie.

Innocom V.92 56Kbps Fax / Data / Voice modem - $8

They ... Need ... a ... modem ...

Onboard LAN via the motherboard

Amen. Does it have gigabit lan on chip alongside a hardware firewall? I don't pay attention to Intel's chipsets, them being over priced et al.

Hitachi HDS722525 Serial ATA 250GB HD (x3) - $168 apiece, $504 total

What's the warranties on these? I mean, uh ... Seriously is this thing for video encoding? 750 gigs seems so ... High ... Like are they really on dial up? Anyway I would have gone for three Seagate drives at 200 each, but well, actually I'm going for a WD Raptor coupled with Seagate. Only 237 gigs, but admittely, a lot faster.

Well, unless you're making a RAID 5 array? Or something?

Mitsumi 1.44MB 3.5" Floppy drive - $12

The NEC was $9 wasn't it? Oh well, maybe it was on sale before.

Lite-On 16x DVD 48xCD-ROM drive - 28
Plextor 12x DVD+/-RW Black drive - $155

I don't really get the double optical drive thing, that's cool with me, but I don't really get it. Other thing is the NEC 3500 A - which, I've been told is a better model than the plextor - is $85. But I don't think that's SATA.

Logitech Elite Keyboard - $27
Logitech Marble Mouse Optical Trackball - $18

No cordless? The MX's are supposedly awesome. As for the trackball ... I ... Trackball?

ViewSonic VX900 19" LCD FLatpanel Monitor - $570

It sure is.

Windows XP Professional - $141
Office 2003 Professional Edition (Academic Price) - $162
Norton Drive Image 7.0 - $65
Norton Partition Magic 8.0 - $62
Photoshop CS 8.0 (Academic Price) - $314

Software is software, yes. Those are well priced.

If it's for video encoding, it's perfect. Except I think they sell 3.6ghz pentiums, and well, a Raptor would have helped a lot. On the other hand, if it's not, it's about two grand more than it should be. Even Doom 3 isn't going to notice the difference between 2 and 4 gigs of RAM. I can't figure out what would.