August 23, 200718 yr Well I am getting a new PC and have some questions... I put together my lass PC and I finally got tried of fixing all the stupid problems so I am getting a new Dell. I would like to try to get price down $400 with out losing to much if I can, but if it matters I will spend the extra money. XPS 720 What Processor? IntelÃÆââ¬Å¡Ãâî CoreÃÆââââ¬Ã¾Ãââ2 Duo Processor E6600 (4MB L2 Cache,2.4GHz,1066 FSB) IntelÃÆââ¬Å¡Ãâî CoreÃÆââââ¬Ã¾Ãââ2 Duo Processor E6700 (4MB L2 Cache,2.66GHz,1066 FSB) Can I get dual 360gb drives not in any raid, then set up PC to be Raid 0 and put XP Home on it? Should I give up on Raid and just get one Raptor? Will I see a differnce between XP Home and Media? Will any programs not work? My Components IntelÃÆââ¬Å¡Ãâî CoreÃÆââââ¬Ã¾Ãââ2 Duo Processor E6700 (4MB L2 Cache,2.66GHz,1066 FSB) Genuine WindowsÃÆââ¬Å¡Ãâî XP Media Center 2005 Edition with re-installation CD 2GB Corsair Dominator DDR2 SDRAM 800MHz OC'd to 1066MHz-2 DIMMs 320GB - Seagate 7200RPM, SATA 3.0Gb/s, 16MB Cache 320GB - Seagate 7200RPM, SATA 3.0Gb/s, 16MB Cache Single Drive: 16X CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW) w/double layer write capability No Monitor 768MB Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX Integrated 7.1 Channel Audio Dell USB Keyboard Dell Optical USB Mouse 3.5 in Floppy Drive No Modem Requested My Software & Accessories No speakers (Speakers are required to hear audio from your system) No Security software pre-installed No Productivity software pre-installed 1Yr In-Home Service, Parts + Labor, 24x7 Phone Support Free 10GB DataSafe Online Backup for 1Year No ISP requested ALSO INCLUDED WITH YOUR SYSTEM Windows XPÃÆââââ¬Ã¾Ãââ AdobeÃÆââ¬Å¡Ãâî AcrobatÃÆââ¬Å¡Ãâî Reader 7.0 No Entertainment software pre-installed
August 23, 200718 yr Windows XP MCE is normally OEM'ed with systems that have some form of TV card, and the requirements for MCE are a little stricter as regards having WHQL drivers and so on - all the components in an MCE system have to be fully logo compliant and so on. For most tasks, unless fully optimized for multitheading, a faster Duo should beat the Quad. 8600 GTS versus 8800 GTX - this is midrange graphics versus high end, if you want to game at high resolutions, filtering and so on, there is no substitute for the 8800 GTX. If you are happy to turn the options down a bit (a lot), maybe the 8600 would do. They usually have a PCI slot or two, but DELL can be awkward, they do things like leaving out AGP slots, so I wouldn't trust them to have PCI slot even if you would expect it. The other thing I'd look at, would be the disks, unless you need 1TB, maybe there is a slightly less exotic set, maybe a pair of 320GB instead. Another thing, if I was getting Windows XP now, I'd be making sure it came with a Vista upgrade option.
August 23, 200718 yr They usually have a PCI slot or two, but DELL can be awkward, they do things like leaving out AGP slots, so I wouldn't trust them to have PCI slot even if you would expect it. Dell computers all have pci slots. It's the graphics ports they sometimes leave out like the AGP or pci-e. Dell would be shooting themselves in the foot if they didn't include atleast 1 pci slot.
August 23, 200718 yr Author Dell likes to shoot them selfs in the foot a lot though... 1TB was the cheapest Raid 0 they had... They had dual 360gb Raptors but that was way more money.
August 23, 200718 yr i would go for the geforce 8800 GTS, get the 640mb superclocked version, you will lose very little performance wise, and it will save you $100+ in my opinion you are too focused on your graphics card....u have the best graphics card available selected(except the ultra), and yet only a e6700. I would say chop off the graphics just a little, and put in another gig of ram, and go one more up on your processor. my brother just bought a new comp, he has the e6850 with 4 gigs of ram, but only a geforce 7900 GS. His was only $1200 canadian. I think if you build yours with more processing and memory, and less graphics, it will be a good choice. Remember too, a graphics card is much easier to upgrade then a processor is. EDIT: every motherboard you buy will have a pci slot. pci slots are used for sooo many things right now. Any new motherboard will have a pci-e slot now. And very, very, very few motherboards will have an AGP slot anymore. Those were only used for graphics, and pci-e has been around long enough for them to become out-dated. I was goona put something really cool here...but then I put this :(
August 23, 200718 yr Author Um, this is a Dell PC... Please read... Can't get superclocked... 3Gigs of Ram... Hum... :-s
August 24, 200718 yr Author Last PC I made the [cabbage] hit the fan... I have so many problems with it, and it took so long to get working in the first place. First it took me like a week to get the 3rd Party RAID stuff working; when I did RAID on it it was harder then it is now. Video jumps every 5 seconds for like 2frames. In the last 5 years I have blown 16 Fans. The USB surges sometimes and blows up what is ever in the USB at the time; Ipod Mini, Mouse, and so on. I messed up and got a Abit MotherBoard that is crap. The case fan is a 5inch that runs at 1090rpm, the alarm goes off at 1000rpm so my PC randomly beeps... That is enough ranting on my PC. Dells have really nice cases, and they work the first time.
August 24, 200718 yr Author Back to the questions, can I get dual SATA 360GB drives not in RAID and put them into RAID?
August 24, 200718 yr Last PC I made the [cabbage] hit the fan... I have so many problems with it, and it took so long to get working in the first place. First it took me like a week to get the 3rd Party RAID stuff working; when I did RAID on it it was harder then it is now. Video jumps every 5 seconds for like 2frames. In the last 5 years I have blown 16 Fans. The USB surges sometimes and blows up what is ever in the USB at the time; Ipod Mini, Mouse, and so on. I messed up and got a Abit MotherBoard that is crap. The case fan is a 5inch that runs at 1090rpm, the alarm goes off at 1000rpm so my PC randomly beeps... That is enough ranting on my PC. Dells have really nice cases, and they work the first time. Yopu obviously had no idea what you were doing and bought probably the cheapest parts you could find. It sounds to me that you cheaped out on the power supply. How the hell you blow out that many fans? I can honestly say I have never blown out a fan, even using stock fans. That alarm probably turns off in the bios very easily, look under pc health. Now for a tip for your future computer and your old. Why do you want raid so much? Raid doesn't give that much performance anymore. Raptors either. You are much better just getting one large 7200rpm drive. The Western Digital Caviar is very fast.
August 24, 200718 yr Author My PC was top of the line for like a month, 5 years ago. I spent around $2000 total for all the parts, I wasn't cheap. I have problems blowing barrings in these cheap PC Fans. All the voltages read good on the Fluke... You might not know Abit but they use a Windows Program "Abit EQ" to change bios, so most options are locked in bios. I got a 500Watt PS that was over $100 in 2002, 500 Watt was really high back then. I am attached to Raid 0... Should I really not make such a big deal trying to get it? Should I just get one Raptor? *EDIT* I am going to end up putting XP Home on it anyway so I might as well just set up Raid. Please don't ask for a ScreenShot of my Bios...
August 24, 200718 yr When I looked at the options, sure I saw other RAID... 500GB and 640GB performance RAID (2x 250 & 2x 320) But I couldn't find any Duo CPU options Was it Dell US, and a 720 Red?
August 24, 200718 yr Author Dell 720 Black BaseModel. Anything but Base you need to get a monitor and that is just more money to raise..
August 24, 200718 yr Author I got a PC that is overclocked to 2.8ghz atm. Does a 2.66 Duo count as 2.66 / 2 or 2.66 * 2?
August 24, 200718 yr I got a PC that is overclocked to 2.8ghz atm. Does a 2.66 Duo count as 2.66 / 2 or 2.66 * 2? The gigahertz war is over. A core 2 duo at 2.8ghz beats a pentium D at 2.8 by a long way. Hell, a 1.8ghz core 2 duo would be a 3ghz pentium. Each core of the core 2 duo would operate at the rated speed, for example, a 1.8ghz duo would have 2 cores working at 1.8ghz each. You can not add them up to get more speed, it doesn't work like that. P.S. You said your usb craps out on your old computer, ever think it's because your computer is overclocked?
August 25, 200718 yr Author I was just saying is a 2.66 2 Cores working at 2.66 each, or 2 working at 1.33each. All the Voltages are good though...
August 25, 200718 yr I was just saying is a 2.66 2 Cores working at 2.66 each, or 2 working at 1.33each. All the Voltages are good though... If you don't know why it could not be working other than voltages, I'm going to say thank god you are buying a pre-built. When you overclock you need to raise the fsb. On some motherboards when you raise the fsb too high onboard stuff can go temporally until you lower the fsb into working range. This would include sound, lan, usb ect. For instance on my old motherboard my sound would not work over 330fsb so I would need to keep it at 329fsb to use sound. Sorry if I'm coming off as flaming you in the last few posts, I'm not trying to.
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