Spec Questions

[RSR]

Hi Chaps,


I am looking to replace my Asus Striker Extreme MB as has started to play up over the past few months. I've spec'ed this lot out but i have a few questions.

Are there any parts of this setup you would change? Also how good is the on board raid on the Asus board. If its any thing like the Asus 680i, thats shockly bad.


Asus Maximus II Formula Intel P45 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard

Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 LGA775 'Wolfdale' 3.16GHz

Asus ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB GDDR5 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI

OCZ Core 128GB 2.5" SATA-II Solid State Hard Drive

G.Skill 4GB DDR2 PK PC2-8500C5 (2x2GB) CAS5 Dual Channel Kit

Pioneer BDR-202BK 4x BD-R/RE Blu-Ray Serial ATA Dual Layer DVD Writer

Adaptec RAID Controller 5405

Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 750GB SATA-II 32MB Cache X 3


Parts i am going to keep from my old build are:

Enermax Galaxy 850W EGX850EWL - would this need upgrading?
Dell 2407 WFP
Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme CPU Cooler

If recomendations are welcome.

Thanks

Andy

 

[mp260767]

any reason you're going with the solid state drive ?

if it was me i'd drop that, change the 3 seagate drives to the samsung f1 1tb's and go x38 with crossfire 4870's.

 

[lamboman]

Drop the SSD. It is about a few tenths of a second quicker to load games, and around a second quicker to load Windows, compared to the VelociRaptor., and costs four times more.

So, drop the RAID controller, and get some Samsung Spinpoint 750GB or the 1TB hard drives instead. You might want to go with a VelociRaptor, but it REALLY isn't worth it. Just stick with a fourth Samsung, or a WD6400AAKS, which is a bit faster, and a bit cheaper, but, as the name suggests, 640GB of space.

Get an X48 motherboard, the Rampage Formula is a great choice. Drop the processor to a Q6600 or E8400, preferably the former if you don't want to upgrade really soon. You might want to change the memory to some GeIL Black Dragon, which have turned out to be pretty well priced and good overclockers.

You'll find that the problem isn't Asus, it is the 680i chipset.

Finally, the parts you have right now are great. The power supply you have is still among the best that you can buy, and of course, you cooler is still the best on the market