New Build

[OG]

Hi, im thinking of building a new pc, for gaming and just basic things! i have a budget of about £1000 and this needs too include monitor and keyboard/mouse. I'd like too have a fairly good soundcard too as i have a nice Eltax 5.1 system set up! I've been looking around on the overclockers website and have a basic idea of what i want:
Asus P5N-E SLi nForce 650 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
Samsung SH-S182D 18x18 DVD±RW ReWriter (Black) - OEM
Intel Core 2 DUO E4300 "LGA775 Allendale" 1.80GHz (800FSB) - Retail
OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) PC2-6400 Dual Channel Platinum Revision 2 XTC Series DDR2
BFG GeForce 8800 GTS OC 320MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail
Hitachi Deskstar T7K500 NCQ 320GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (0A33435)
Scythe Ninja Plus Rev.B Heatpipe CPU Cooler
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music 7.1 Soundcard - OEM
Antec Nine Hundred Ultimate Gaming case
Hiper HPU-4M580 Type R 580W ATX2.2 PSU - Black
Logitech Cordless Desktop EX-110 - Retail
OcUK Value Hanns-G HW191D 19" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Silver
Total: £936


Ill also take this chance to introduce myself as it is my first post! I am owen aged 16 from england, I have a basic idea of computers and what too have a go at overclocking etc!
Thanks for your helpx

 

[semi-pro waster]

Welcome to the forums, that looks like a pretty good specification as it is fairly well balanced. However I'd probably pick a another PSU instead of the Hiper as they have had some reliability problems (mainly the modular versions) although you may be lucky, out of preference I'd pick the Corsair 520w which is unfortunately currently out of stock (they are popular for a reason) unless you have an urgent timescale on the build, if you do then look at the Enermax Liberty 500w or the Seasonic M12 500w.

 

[OG]

Hi! thanks very much for your advice. I just have a couple of questions.
1. is it essential that i have 2 hard drives running in Raid0 or if i just run one hard drive what raid will i need too run it in (sorry im a bit confused about this whole raid thing!)
2. and also what exactly do ram timings mean, and how do they affect performnace ?

Thank you for your help, im sure they are very easy answers im just a bit confused!

 

[semi-pro waster]

Raid stands for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Devices so as the name suggests you need 2+ drives for Raid. The most common types of Raid you are likely to come across in the home market are Raid0, Raid1 and now Raid0+1.

Raid0 is striping of the data across two hard drives, it increases the read and write speeds and is best used for large contiguous (single solid block) files however it offers no redundancy because the data is split between the two drives so if one drive fails the other half is useless so I'd only advise it for non-vital data or if you have a good backup strategy in mind, don't kid yourself on this issue as it can be very painful to lose a lot of files. You do get the full capacity of both drives though minus any file system overheads of course.
Raid1 is mirroring of the data, as the name suggests it means that one drive is an exact mirror of the other. It improves read speeds due to having two copies of the data to look from but does nothing for write speeds - it may even cause a miniscule performance loss due to the controller but it really would be tiny. This method is true Raid and is good for data security but you do only get the space of one of the drives as usable as the mirrored drive is in essence a backup copy.
Raid0+1 is an amalgum of the two but you'd need 4 disks to try it and I don't think it is really worth it for you at this stage. Hopefully that little potted summary helps a little and if I've made any glaring errors I'm sure someone will clear them up.

Have a look in the Memory sub-forum for more information on Ram timings, they know a whole lot more than me, my very basic understanding would be that the timings (e.g. 4-4-4-12 or similar) only really start to matter when overclocking, as long as you pick the correct type (e.g. DDR2) and rated at the correct speed (e.g. PC5300 or PC6400) then you should be fine.

 

[tinners]

spec looks good. like semi-pro waster says go for the corsair psu, and also would recommend a Western Digital or Samsung Spinpoint drive.