Build your own pc - top of the line config
 

Your best option presently for top of the line PC is:

- processor: 3800+ AMD 64bit Processor socket 939 (or 3400+ is a much cheaper alternative)
- Motherboard, Nforce 3, Asus preferably or Soltek or Abit, maybe gigabyte
- ram: 1GB (2x512mb) or 2 GB (2x1GB) ram sticks, running at DDR500 (above 1gb only if you do video editing)
- 2 x Wester Digital Raptors in Raid 0 ... they run at 10k rpm
- 1 x 400 GB sata HDD for storage and backup
- Gainward 6800ultra if you plan to game on the pc, if not ATI 9200 will do just fine
- good case, Chieftec Dragon Full Tower, with 480 W good PSU, antec or enermax truepower
- 2 x 17" or 2 x 19" Samsung LCD displays with 12 or 16ms response time (recommending 174T if you decide to go the 17" route)
- Miro Video video editing card if you do video editing
- 4 x 90mm fans for good cooling of the case
- 1000VA UPS

That's it, isn't cheap but it's fast as hell. It can beat just about anything you can find nowdays bellow 5k.

i'm been building my own for a while now it's always worth more of your money to build your own system i mean going to comp shows alone saves me about 50% on parts. also done a lot of business with www.accessmicro.com

i haven't upgraded in 2 years :thumbsup

RAID is the poor man's SCSI. I thought we were talking about top of the line here.

Keep one of those 250GB as storage and buy one or two 36.7GB 15000RPM U360 SCSI drives.

whats wrong with raid? you never know when a hard drive is gonna die. good to have a replacement with everything ready to go.

RAID is a volume topology. SCSI is a hardware interface.

RAID is no man's SCSI ;)

Most RAID arrays ARE SCSI.


What I would build, while being price conscious:

-AMD 64 3000+ 939 socket, overclock it to 4000+
-Asus Nforce4 motherboard (should be out in a week or two)
-RAM, 1 gig of Winbond BH6 equipped Corsair (can't buy it anymore, I still have some)
-2 73 gig SATA raptors in RAID 0. Anyone that knows about how SCSI and the WinXP/2000 kernel behave know better than to go SCSI (here's a hint: no caching). That's why two SATA raptors in RAID 0 easily outperform 2 15K seagate scsi drives in RAID 0 on MS operating systems.
Radeon 9800XT flashed to X800
Koolance Exos watercooled case
1 Viewsonic 18ms 19" LCD
Enermax 480w PS
Logitech MX1000 mouse
any old keyboard
Dual layer DVD burner
Lightsabre

Mmmm.. depends what ya want a computer for. If you do a load of video editing or do plenty graphics stuff, disk space and some power is useful :-)

I like a lean box designed for a specific purpose with minimum crap, either "features" in hardware terms or unnecessary software.

Hell.. gimme a few $20 text editors, a copy of ActivePerl and any box and I'll be happy auto producing decent websites in under 4 minutes each - simplicity is king! :thumbsup

me too...and I think I won't for another year for sure....I don't play games on my PC (have the PS2 for that) so it is still good for Photoshop and Dreamweaver and some other stuff

This will be it.

Tyan Tiger/Thunder K8W
2x Opetron of any Speed you can afford
2X1GB ECC DDR400 Crucial, OCZ, Corsair, etc


the other parts you can pick your poison.

Rest assured that no matter what you buy, in 6 months it will be outdated.

New Socket 939 (3500+) supports dual channel ram.
Old Socket 754 (3400+) does not. :warning
It would be silly to buy into 754 now... obsolete / dead path.

I'd wait a couple months for the AMD Nforce4 boards with PCI-Express, such as the Abit AN8.

:2 cents: