Hi guys,

I'm looking at throwing some money into this box;

- Antec Performance P180 Chassis
- Antec smartpower 500w
- Asus A8N-SLI Premium Motherboard
- AMD Opteron 165 CPU
- 3gb (3 x 1gb) Corsair RAM
- Zalman 9500 Silent Heatsink/Fan
- 2 x Seagate Barracuda 120GB 7200rpm SATA, RAID 0
- 1 x Other storage drive
- Pioneer DVR-110 Black OEM
- 256MB 6800gt soft modded to a quadro
- HDA Digital X-Mystique 7.1 Gold

It's largely for 3d work, after effects motion graphics, and dealing with large scale vector/print work. So it's gotta be as swift as possible in shifting shit around.

All i'm suss on are the hard drives, and video card. I'm curious as to whether having the OS on a WD 10k RPM raptor, and working files in a 2 x 120gig SATA II RAID 0 array is worth it, or just the raid array, and an additional storage drive.

Regarding the video card, I have a mate of whom soft-modded his 6 series geForce to a Quadro - again, i'm unsure if I should spend less on the 6 series card and do the mod, or if there is a higher-priced card also suited to workstation graphics (ie, not a 7 series, of which can't be modded to my knowledge). It'll be driving a 20" panel at 1600x1200, and a 17" CRT, and soon a 24" or 30" panel instead of the 20.

And another thing, a sound card with a front bay for inputs would be great, for music production.

Any pointers appreciated!

- O

Mmm

Sounds familiar.....

Mine is

Antec P180 (black SE)
Asus32-SLI
Asus EN7800GTX 256
AMD opteron 146bn
2gb (2x1gb) Corsair twinXMS (CL2)
Seasonic S12-600W PSU
1 x Seagate 200GB 7200.9 3g Sata
Sony DVD/rw
Viewsonic VP930b 19LCd

I find it handles everythign that gets through at it... thoguh if my cpu was dual core be better. Supposed to be FX-55 downclocked and labled as opteron.


Your system looks good. 3d wise.. im sure one of our gurus will pop in shortly

Looks solid, though if your modding video cards, two SLI'd 6600s is probably cheaper than a 6800. Im probably wrong though

Also if you go two vidcards I dont know how much voltage you need. XD

Thanks guys - sounds good. I'm also looking at some 2nd hand quadro cards.