" I say get 5 200GB hard drives and set them up in a RAID 5 array. "
- And this addresses my question how?
"You would get much more of a performance increase if you upgraded your CPU or something than if you bought 3 more Raptors... "
- I wanted the additional drives for security.
" Alright well to start you should kinda stop saying how stupid everyone's ideas are. "
- I'm getting tired of all these threads with STUPID comments. Look 2 posts up where someone doesn't even respond to my question.
"still say if you don't like their suggestion and leave it at that. "
- Nah, after awhile people will get upset that they are being treated as they are stupid, and either not reply with stupid comments, or learn from their mistakes.
"its only about $30 cheaper and the wires look to be covered for you"
- Its $25 more expensive, and I was going to cap off my limit at $100. But if this is the only one found, and the others who said my previous choice was crappy, think this one would work great, then I will just settle for paying an extra $25. I would prefer colored covers, but that isn't too bad.
"I hope I was some help..."
- Yup
"2. as far as psu, take a look at these - Forton, or this OCZ model. either one should be good for you. "
- The Fortron looks great. I don't know why it didn't come up when I was searching it over at Newegg
" i have seen dual channel lsi (0,1) raid cards for $100 used, and 74GB hdds (10-15krpm u320, 1gen old) for ~$100/ea. "
- I'll have to do some reasearch about used SCSI drives, I already feel a bit weird about using used drives/cpus.
"as far as the scsi card"
- What about if I get an SATA card,that should bring that 15% increase, correct? It would take a load off the cpu from what I understand.
" Why aren't you listening to everyone's suggestions and just shooting them down?"
- I ignored the stupid ones, people who are actually taking the time to give a solution and explain why, I am returning with questions. What reasonable suggestion did I just shoot down?
WOW OSUBeaver is another who actually read my question. Thanks.
"yes they do, that case looks like the best one on the market."
- I was thinking the case, along with the 6 fans, would be enough for the raptors.
"That power supply is real nice, especially with the sleeved cables, it will make a total difference compared to a better one without sleeves since you case has a window and you'll probably be looking in it a lot. "
- A few "experts" on here think otherwise, they say the PSU is a piece of crap. bob4432 linked over to the Fortran PSU which has the sleeved cable, for a similar price, I see no reason why I would NOT take his suggestion. Seems like the Fortran one would be best, it has the cool look, covered wires, decent price, and a good name.
"You bet it will be good enough, I would suggest replacing the fans with 4 vantec tornados. "
- Would I want the 80mm or the 92mm? If budget allows, I might replace my fans with those. Most likely, I will have a 6600gt, 2 dvd drives, a floppy, and a fan controller. So there will be quite a bit of heat.
"The bottom line is everyone will approach your situation differently, so just go with what you decided. You don't need to convince us with what you are going to do with your own computer. Nobody on this board will provide you a better solution for what you want than yourself. "
- Well, I am not an expert, and I need to know what exactly I need to do for having something like what I was thinking would be best. But you are right, I know what I need the end result to be, but it is kind of hard to explain it to some people.
"You keep saying its only $480, but when somebody mentions a SCSI solution you say well that's waayyy too much. If 480 is nothing, how is 1000 something?"
- I did a quick calculation on what it would cost to get the same performance of the raptors, and it came out to be around $1400.
"If your career really depends on how secure your data is I'm sure you could justify spending 10k on a computer to provide yourself with a living"
- I have too many other expenses right now to spend 10k.
"I know graphic designers and video editors that spend over 5k on Mac setups every couple years. "
- My friend just spent 5k on the new G series. The dual processor one, with like 4gb of ram. Makes my setup look like a piece of crap. The nice thing too, is that there were benchmarks showing how the mac dominated other cpus.
BTW, you are the only other person I know (besides myself), that uses quotes instead of [ q ] to quote someone