New member; New (First) build; Questions

[jchurchwell]

I'm about to start building my system this week as soon as I recieve the last few items hopefully tomorrow. What I will have: CoolerMaster Stacker 830 with 1000W PS; MSI P7N Diamond MB; Intel Core 2 Duo E8400; 4Gig Kingston Hyper-X PC2 8500 1066Mhz RAM; MS Vista Home Premium 64bit; 2x IDE optical drives; 2x 36Gig WD Raptors SATA and 1x WD 360Gig 7200 SATA hard drives; 2x EVGA GeForce 8800GT Superclocked 512MB; Zalman 6ch fan controler; Rosewill CPU Cooler; Card reader; 6 case fans plus a CoolerMaster Crossflow fan.
Questions:
1. Can (should) I set up my Raptors in Raid 0 for gaming and have the 320Gig for music, photos, etc?
2. I know the raid 0 drives will count as 1 drive. Should I set them up as the C or D drive?
3. Which drive should I install the OS?
4. Or should I scrap the idea all together and do someyhing completely different with the drives????

I will mainly use the system for Games (I don't play online), Burning CDs, Some digital photos, Internet, Maybe a word doc once in a blue moon.

Any advice I can get would be greatly appreciated! Thanks, jchurchwell

[chunkylover53]

I'd like to hear one of our mods chime in on this one. But my answers would be... Yes, C, C, no.

That's gonna be a beefy rig.

[Jamie Nixx]

Seeing as its sounds like you have ordered all or most of your parts theres no point highlighting the mistakes you have made.....

Anyways, Raptors would fly in RAID 0, use the 320GB for storage of media and the Raptors for the OS and Gaming.

Set them as C.

[jchurchwell]

Well, I know I messed up not getting SATA Optical drives. I ordered the wrong ones and didn't want to have to return them and pay restocking fees and all that. I was told it wouldn't make a big difference, so I decided to just go with the IDE.
So where else did I go wrong?????
Also, thank you both very much for the replys. I really appreciate the advise!

[Jamie Nixx]

For a start, SLI sucks, waste of time, waste of money.

I am speaking from a TON of experience btw, i currently have two SLI setups where SLI is not even being used.

Also the motherboard, it has an Nvidia chipset, Intel currently make the best chipsets so thats another mistake.

Memory is pretty lame.......

Zalman fan controller is pretty....well useless.

Sorry if you think i am pissing all over your build, i am not saying it won't be very powerful, because it will be.

I am saying you could have been a bit wiser in some of your choices, you WILL run into problems with SLI.

You went overboard with the fans as well.

[jchurchwell]

Boy, you can sure tell this is my first build! I just hope it will last me awhile and suit my needs. I appreciate your thoughts on it. We all have to start somewhere. Thanks again, jchurchwell

[RickyTick]

Here's sort of the basics that you should research.

Case (Antec is popular, but so is the Stacker)
P35 motherboard
E8400
DDR2 800 ram
500 -600 watt psu (we like the Corsair HX series)
8800GT 512 or 8800GTS 512 (depending on your budget)
Hard drive
Optical drive
OS
Monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers.

[Jamie Nixx]

Dude don't take it to heart, that will still be a kick ass gaming rig ;)