New pc time...

[Macrune]

damn mac, that avatar is the 'baddest' i've ever seen 

for some reason Metallicas "Ride the Lightning" springs to mind when i see it

Def Leppard  - Gods of War... 

[Goatboy]

Tis a most curious avatar. xD

Currently playing around with this setup:

 AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition € 155,-   
 Bon Chic F3102ZW Cardreader 12 in 1 (3,5" Bay, USB, Zwart) € 10,71 
 Cooler Master Elite 330 Zwart € 27,95 
 Cooler Master Real Power M520 € 61,90 
 Gigabyte GA-MA790XT-UD4P € 113,90
 OCZ OCZ3G13334GK € 49,95 
 Samsung SH-S223F € 17,68
 Samsung Spinpoint F1 DT HD103UJ, 1TB € 69,95   
 Sapphire HD 4890 1GB GDDR5 PCI-E € 204,- 
 Scythe Mugen 2 - SCMG-2000 € 32,24 
 Totaal € 743,28

Anyone able and willing can tinker with the contents through this url:
http://tweakers.net/ext/pricewatch/?Action=Winkelkar&Koekje=231275%2F1%2C231813%2F1%2C229938%2F1%2C214331%2F1%2C223727%2F1%2C209921%2F1%2C236698%2F1%2C161414%2F1%2C153089%2F1%2C149294%2F1

Need to find a more budgety graphics card that works with this setup, but costs a lot less.
Gf said she'd get me the monitor for my bday. <3 So the new budget for just the pc is 600 max.

My cousin advised an Intel based pc:
Bon Chic Card Reader 12 in 1 Extern USB (zwart) € 13.50
Club3D Videokaart PCI-e Radeon HD4650 512MB DVI/HDMI Silent € 67.00
Cooler Master Midi Tower Elite 330 ATX No PSU (zwart-zilver) € 31.50
Cooler Master Voeding Real Power M520 520W Modular € 65.50
Corsair 2x2GB DDR2 SDRAM PC6400 CL4.0 XMS2 Pro € 67.00
Intel DQ45CB iQ45, SATA2 RAID, DVI, GLAN Retail € 110.50
Intel Core 2 Duo E7500 2.93GHz 1066 3MB Box € 135.50
Samsung DVD-/+/RAM SH-S223Q 22x/22x/12x Bulk (zwart) € 24.00
 Western Digital 1TB SATA300 32MB, WD10EADS € 79.00

Any advice on the whole AMD vs Intel debacle? So far I've heard all the gamers say AMD because they get you more power for your money?
I think the ETA for this machine is going to be mid June.

[Gunnarr]

Personally I went for an Intel machine for max compatibility, but differences should be small anyway.
I love the hd you chose by the way. I bought it a few months back, and it's really quiet (and really big)

[Warcold]

Going for a 4850 GPU would substract about 100 EUR from the price. You can add another one at a later time (crossfire) to get more performance if you got the bucks and the need.
http://tweakers.net/pricewatch/213940/sapphire-hd-4850-512mb-gddr3-pci-e.html#tab:info

Two things to look into:
- tweakers.net gives the best price for all shops in holland, but remember that ordering from multiple shops give multiple postal costs. -> ordering at one shop can seem more expensive, but might be cheaper in the end. Also, for this reason, add 5-10% to the price tweakers.net is giving.
- check if the Mugen is compatible with the mobo (should be on their website somewhere iirc). At my board, it is blocking one of the internal memory slots, but as i am only using 2/4 (like you atm) it is no major prob. If you want to extend to 4*2Gb, this can get a problem though

[Goatboy]

Which one Gunnarr, the WD or Samsung?

I think I'll be ordering everything in one go from either 4Launch or Azerty.
I'll add that video card into the cart and check if the mobo works!

[Macrune]

One other thing to consider. Instead of going for a 1 Tb Hd why not go for 2 x 500 Gb HD. or 1 x 250 GB and 1 x 750GB. (itll cost the same but gives you more flexibility)

Theres a number of advantages in doing it this way.
you can use one as a boot disc with just your OP , drivers and other non changing bits on and use the other for all your games etc. This will keep your OP and boot clean so in the event of issues you can just wipe the second drive without having to do a full re-install.  (this works well with the 250gb & 750GB setup)

You can have this discs mirrored (raid 1). This means you have exactly the same on both discs hence if one gives up the ghost youve lost nothing as its all on the second disc.
or you can have it set up in raid 0. Which means all the data is split across the two drives. You'll be supprised how much faster you'll be uploading info from your drives doing it this way.

or you can just use one as your backup (similar to raid 1 but you'd do it yourself as and when you wish to rather than have it running all the time.
( these work well with 2 x 500gb)


And as a final note, lets be honest. Are you honestly going to make full use of a 1 TB HD? that 100000 photo's (with a 10 megapix camera) or 250000 music tracks (averaging 4 mb for a 3 - 5 min track).   

[Goatboy]

I think the 1TB is just in there because they cost less and less these days and it's good value for money? From what I've seen, getting two smaller drives is a smidge more expensive.

And I will be running some websites soon which require a lot of images to be edited and saved. So even though 1TB is a lot. I don't think it can hurt. I currently have 300GB usable storage space in total and it's jam packed. Had to clean out my entire Steam folder to get WoW installed.

[Gunnarr]

I meant the samsung. Like with the hd you mentioned before, it has big(ger) platters which reduce noise and heat.
The only noise my pc makes at the moment, is when a dvd-rom starts spinning.
Loving it!

[Goatboy]

Yeah... real silence will have to wait a while longer I'm afraid.
Who knows... maybe I should wait until my actual birthday to scrounge some extra dosh from the folks.