Perfect, thanks! Now I see the official site has a "where to buy" page also... sorry about that, I should have spotted it for myself.

Thanks for that. I see there's a fair bit of performance difference between the GT and non GT models... and the fanless Gigabyte 6600GT is US$200... hmm... that could be the one, although I wonder if the airflow in the Antec P180 would be enough. How about video coolers? Since they are seperate, if ...

I found out the type of video card you pick doesn't effect the speed of 3D rendering in programs like Lightwave, 3D Studio Max etc... so that was a huge relief for my wallet, and means I can dream of other things... like an HP L2335 LCD screen (23 inch - 1920 x 1200) at US$1,050... hehe. Having said...

It seems sites like pricegrabber.com and dealtime.com don't list any places stocking the Scythe SCNJ-1000 Ninja... I didn't have much Google luck either. Just wondering where you buy them from? Newegg have it listed but out of stock until (estimated) 9/1/2005. Thanks!! p.s I'm planning on using it o...

Just to check, the Seasonic S12-500 will work with 1GB DDR (500) PC-4000 Mushkin Redline running at 3.5V (using the DFI LanParty UT NF4 Ultra-D motherboard) and a dualcore CPU (AMD Athlon 4400+, hopefully overclocked from 2.2 to 2.7ghz)? From the review it seems like it's all good... and I think the...

LOL! Ouch those are some expensive video cards... :( I think I'll have to stick to the regular Geforce yeah, as it's just 3D rendering on the side. Decided to go without SLI too, which will save a bit. About 2kg? Hmm that's not bad yeah. I have to admit the ability to easily overclock (there's that ...

I'm wondering if SLI is something I need too... I mean I don't play games on the PC, but I want to do lots of 3D rendering... SLI would be a nice future proofing it seems, and it's not much more expensive, but I wonder if I'd actually take my motherboard home to New Zealand with me at the end... are...

Hey, I posted mostly about hard drives earlier this year, preparing to build a new computer for when I go to America for 9 or so months (hey, lol, any excuse to build one... although any really heavy parts that I couldn't take home with me afterwards will be resold later). I've chosen a few more par...

I read some pages of this topic, so I don't think this has been mentioned before but not certain... What about 'bent keyboards'? Those ergonomical ones ? I used to use the Microsoft Natural one. Since I spend almost all day on the computer I thought it was really important to get one where my wrists...

The noise of my old 80gb that was kicked out of it's elastic suspension bay today... that's <i>so</i> loud now it's scary. Oh and DJ Sammy's Heaven sk...sk...sk...sk....skipping on my iPod (the original MP3 file is messed up, but it's still kinda funny to hear an mp3 player skipping like that) Hey s...

That would be (of course) nasty. Looking around though, it does seem to have worked well for some people. I wonder how Diskeeper would react to it. I think when I get the hard drive, while I'm still here in New Zealand... I'll play around testing it. While I still have all the original data here on ...

3 years? Excellent! You decided not to do your Windows drive though?

Ah, interesting idea. I'd be happy to loose some space for the speed. But are there downsides? A quick google and it seemed kinda hard to find information about it, that I could understand at least, lol. For example here: http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2004/09/08/226797.aspx It mentions s...

http://www20.tomshardware.com/cpu/20050405/index.html Toms Hardware had a review of the first Pentium Dual Core CPU's today, starting at $240 (nice!). They are slower than single core for games (because the games aren't programmed to use dual core yet), but with things like video / audio rendering....

That's a really original idea yeah, cool Do you have a digital camera though, for some photos?

I'm curious if it heats up a lot in there too yeah.

Wow... thanks for all your thoughts! That's great to know, and that's what I thought probably happened yeah... they ruined their rep at one point, but have since dug their way out of the hole. I'll put the Seagate 300gb in my next computer.

My friend keeps telling me he hasn't heard anything but bad about Seagate drives, that they are cheap hard drives with bad data retention. I noticed some bad attitudes towards Seagate on some message boards too, but then lots of praise for them also. What do you think of Seagate? Is there a reason a...

I've updated the post above, thanks I think the computer edmil is setting up might be good with a 3rd drive yeah, but for myself Photoshop isn't a major enough part of my computing. I'd say 3D modelling / animation for example is much more used.

My friend here keeps telling me to avoid Seagate, that they are well known as cheap hard drives with bad data retention. It seems there's some Seagate dislike here too? Hitachi? I saw (I think it was them?) announced that 500gb hard drive today... nice! Expensive, haha, but nice. Sounds like I shoul...

Thanks for all the replies so far :) To summarise so far: Raptor 74gb C:\ Contains Windows XP, Program Files & Page File (3gb, min & max set the same to prevent fragmentation) - 30gb (or entire drive, not sure yet) D:\ Empty (perhaps not partitioned after all) Undecided 300gb E:\ Photoshop Scratch D...

As I mentioned in another topic I'm planning at getting the WD740 Raptor drive soon, and was wondering what's the best to put on there to see the most every day improvement? Like Windows XP alone, Windows XP with Program Files, or include the Page File as well? I'll have a 300gb drive too, partition...

Ah thanks, it sounds like the hard drives aren't too bad on the noise levels, being compared to quiet fans, and yeah if I don't like the crunchy "mechanical" noise I could try suspending it or such. Looking at the reviews there, all those numbers seem so close together in many cases... like the Diam...

It's been a while since my last post... in a few months time though, I'm going to the US (I live in NZ right now) to stay with friends for a year. So I'm creating a new PC :) My current one was made with the help of this site and forum to be pretty quiet :) For my next one though, I'm looking at sac...

Yep, I just decided on this one because it supports DVD+/- R&RW, and reads and writes DVD-RAM at 5x. Originally that was because the Panasonic E85 HDD / DVR I was gonna buy used DVD-RAM, but still... I think this drive looks like the best for dual layer burning.

Perfect

Thanks :) Yeah I'd really like to get a dual layer burner, for also a 2nd drive just for reading DVD's if those are quieter than burners. The LG playing a DVD and producing the same noise as burning at 4X? Would you say that's pretty much the same as a regular stand alone DVD player? Can Nero's driv...

Hey, Just curious what owners of the LG GSA-4120B dual format, dual layer DVD writer think of it's noise? I've heard it's fairly quiet while burning, but most importantly... what's it like when just playing a DVD? Or maybe it's best to get a seperate drive just to read DVD's which is much more quiet...

Thanks, yeah I've got a whole list of ideas now. I'll start with the easiest one, swapping my RAM sticks over to different slots.

Just got back online. I decided to try a fresh install of Windows XP, which isn't horribly bad because I have multile partitions, but I still lost all my programs and settings. The bad news... it still hasn't fixed it! The c:\ partition was formatted before installing, so the mup.sys file I'm fairly...

1st: HDD-0 2nd: CD-ROM 3rd: Floppy The Primary IDE Master is my hard drive, the Secondary IDE Slave is my CD-Rom. I also timed and it's 42 seconds between the Windows screen fading in, to the hard drive access begins. Something interesting though, I tried to boot up in Safe Mode: A whole list of fil...