Thinking of getting this

[Jammrock]

Originally posted by DentyCracker
Maxtor is my HD manufacturer of choice (never had one fail on me) will consider the 250GB

Unfortunately, it's the exact opposite for me. Maxtor drives in my experience either fail after 3 weeks, or work forever, but after a year or two start getting really noisey.

I've also started to dislike Hitachi (a.k.a. IBM) drives. We keep getting Hitachi laptop drives in multiple different batches that fail. Had one today that failed. The HDD only worked when it was at around a 45 degree angle.

WD drives are also very quiet these days, but they are pricier than Seagate. My next WD drive will be a Raptor. Otherwise I've become a big Seagate fan.

Jammrock

[Paddy]

I'll take seagate first then WD second.

[Jammrock]

Would be the same for me if it weren't for the Raptor. Raptor's are still considered enterprise workstations drives, and thus have a 5-year warranty as well My friend got one and says they are also very, very quiet (I suppose as quiet as a 10k RPM drive can be).

[Novdid]

Originally posted by DentyCracker
...Maxtor is my HD manufacturer of choice...

You need to change that to Seagate my friend.

[Taz]

IIRC Foxconn bought Leadtek, which is why their boards use the WinFast name

[UtwigMU]

Re: Thinking of getting this

Originally posted by DentyCracker
Thermaltake VA3000 Dream Tower Tsunami VA3400BNA Black Mid Tower Case With 400W PSU -RETAIL

They should be going cheaply after what happened in Asia. Otherwise TT is solid, pricey and overly glitzy or blingish for my taste.

Lite-On 16X DVD Dual Drive, Model SOHW-1633S Black, Retail

OK, though some might have other preferences here.

ZALMAN Copper CPU Cooler for Socket 775/478/754/939/940, Model "CNPS7700-CU" -RETAIL

Zalman is overpriced. If you want better cooling go Thermalright or go Arctic Cooling or somesuch to save a bit.

Maxtor DiamondMax 10 200GB 7200RPM P-ATA/133 Hard Drive, Model 6B200P0, OEM Drive Only

Seagate has 5-year warranty, WD has 3-year warranty. Like others have said consider other drive.

Logitech Cordless Desktop MX(tm) for Bluetooth -RETAIL

Great choice.

OCZ Enhanced Latency Series 184 Pin 512MB PC-3200 Platinum Edition - Retail X2

In the past there were numerous reports about OCZ remarking chips, their products not working as test samples sent to reviewers, etc... Supposedly they got their act together now, but with other manufacturers such as Corsair, Micron/Crucial, Kingston, Mushkin, Twinmos,... I'd stay away from OCZ.

SONY SDM-S93 19" LCD Monitor –RETAIL

Not expert on LCDs

FOXCONN "755FXK8AA-8EKRS" SiS 755FX Chipset Motherboard For Socket 939 CPU -RETAIL

Had good experience with SiS. If board has more than 1-year warranty or you had positive experience with brand it's OK. For instance friend got 20 Matsonic (PCChips/ECS) boards for computer classroom out of which only one has failed within 2-3 years, system was under warranty and the failure was just onboard floppy controller.

AMD Athlon 64 3200+ 2.0GHz, 512KB L2 Cache 939-Pin 64-bit Processor - OEM

Good.

Sapphire ATI Radeon X800 SE Video Card, 256MB DDR, 256-Bit, DVI/TV-Out, 8X AGP, Model "102-A26126-00-AT" -OEM

Matrox < nVidia < Ati in my experience. Since Matrox doesn't have any gamer cards I'd personally go with nVidia.

[Jammrock]

Another option for DVD burner is NuTech. They've been building a good rep lately among reviewers and are very inexpensive. Though I'm a Plextor guy personally. My Plextor drives have never failed on me, even my ooooooold 8X CD-RW.

[DentyCracker]

not _buying_nv
I'll stick with me Maxtor thank you very much only last year i had a seagate fail on me
I really want a quiet case
Zalman is probably overpriced. Will go with a heatpipe.
Hardly have time for Linux nowadays
Hardly have time to use me computer for that matter

[windigo]

maxtor good drives I would suggest the pioneer A08 tho for a burner, shikatronics memory also instead of ocz, lastly that Zalman is a huge mofo of a fan make sure you'll have room to mount it otherwise a thermalright120
and anything with SE in its name from ATI is complete crap!
but looks like its shaping up to a nice comp tho

[Marshmallowman]

NV is not *that* evil, and ATI certainly are no angels either. (ATI has pissed me off with there BS)

But your choice is'nt bad either

[Jammrock]

Since you won't budge on the Maxtor thing, at least make sure you grab a MaXLine III. It's currently first on the StorageReview.com leaderboard for desktop hard drives (the Raptor is noted as the fastest, but because it has such a higher price-tag, it is considered the top high-end workstation/desktop drive). Their review is here:

http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200410/200410087B300S0-2_1.html

Jammrock

[Evildead666]

All looks good to me.
Would rather pair a AMD with a Nv mobo for best performance, but SiS isn't bad either.
For memory, i would recommend corsair. Havent had any fail on me, and i've been buying them for years. very stable.
I also agree with a chobbing great heatpipe cpu rad and large slow fan for cooling if you are after silent, and wont be clocking. out of aluminium would be good for the weight issue...
PSU's...get what youre happy with. The computer will only use the power it needs, the larger the wattage capacity of you psu, the cooler it will run.
Any SE card from ATi is a non gamers card. Unless you are planning on trying to unlock the other 8 pipes (if there are any)
Should be a good performer anyway, and pretty stable.

[Evildead666]

Oh, and maxtor isnt as bad as that, just format them properly when you get them. I quick formatted 3 drives i got, and they all failed within the year. After a 'proper' format, all is good, and they are still in use.
FYI i just bought 6 200Gb Maxtor 10 series drives. They are quiet, and pretty cool. when formatting they took about 15mins at least on my epia 1ghz, all 6 formatting at the same time. got pretty hot then, but since, all cool.

[agallag]

I had the same problem with a 160GB Maxtor drive. I quick formatted it, and then when it got to about 80% full, it died. Since then I've fully formatted all my drives and all has been well. That's the first hard drive I've ever lost too. I've been pretty lucky over the years...

[Jammrock]

I've only ever quick formatted my drives and never had problems. One more reason I don't buy Maxtor