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jesus, they're down to $210. maybe I should get another one.

http://www.mwave.com/mwave/SKUSearch.asp?px=NT&scriteria=AA98799

... is to simply put the extra disks on it.

My main desktop at home has been running Ubuntu Linux for the last 6+ years, and for the last 3 years I migrated the functions of my NAS (which used to run on a separate linux box) to it, so I have one box less to administer, to consume power, or to break down.

I have currently 10TB of total disk space using 5 2TB disks (8TB usable, when you account for the RAID5 redundancy overhead), but could easily migrate to 20TB on 10 2TB disks (16TB usable, and gaining extra redundancy by moving from RAID5 to RAID6). The result is:
- Very upgradeable (starting with 250GB disks back in 2004, I've migrated all the way to 2TB disks, and will continue doing so; the old disks are simply replaced with the newer/bigger ones and re-purposed as off-line storage, being plugged on a eSATA dock when I need them
- very fast (as the disks are on the machine itself, it's much faster than acessing the files on a NAS over the network);
- very usable (it's all mapped on a couple of ReiserFS filesystems, created on top of LVM volumes, directly accessible without needing to mount anything or configure anything over the network);
- very reliable (I'm protected against any one of the five disks failing, thanks to RAID5 configured on top of Linux MD, through for more disks RAID6 is really recommended, and ReiserFS in my experience is very reliable against crashes and power outages, at least *much* more reliable than EXT3 and XFS).
- very cheap: I've used the SATA controller already available on my motherboard, providing for 6 SATA disks, and apart from the disks I only had to spend money on a multi-disk internal rack: these are great, they fit 5 SATA disks on 3 x 5.25" bays on the front of your desktop, are very cheap (around $75) and give you hot-swapping and great ventilation (via a large, low-noise fan in the back) to boot. Just be sure to use a computer case that has no "rails" or other protuberances between each 5.25" bay, or else you won't be able to insert the rack as it spans 3 bays.

You could use a SATA RAID controller (or even SAS disks and a SAS controller), but I found that it's quite expensive, and unnecessary as the above setup gave me all the speed I needed, and them some.

In short, I'm very satisfied with my setup, and I recommend it to anyone who has large disk space requirement at home.

Some pointers to the hardware I'm using:
- Motherboard: Asus M4A78-EM which is reasonably cheap, very stable and has 6 SATA ports (5 internal and 1 external), fitting the bill perfectly;
- Disks: Seagate SATA 2TB 5900RPM Retail kits : The retail kit (instead of the bare OEM drive) gets you a disk with FIVE years of warranty (instead of just 3 years) and comes much better packaged (so reducing the chances of early death due to shocks during transportation).
- 5-disks-on-3-bays internal SATA enclosure: NORCO SS-500 : great little bay, as described above. - External eSata dock: Startech SATADOCKU2E: with it, when I replace my old (smaller) disks with new big ones, I can re-purpose the old ones immediately as off-line storage,very efficiently (my motherboard already has an eSata connector) and very cheaply (I store the disks on plastic storage cases when they are not docked, very cheap and compact.

Hope the above is of help.

If the point is to re-use the old P4, then get a low power PCI video card. If the point is to have a low power server to play with, get something like this: http://www.mwave.com/mwave/skusearch_v3.asp?scriteria=BA25456. Can be found else were, not giving props to MWave. Or if a dual core system is wanted, get this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856167037.

Just need to add memory (SO-DIMM DDR2) and a HD. I went with the first as the single core Atom uses about 3.5 watts less than the dual core. I also went with two WD "green" HDs. It should pull about 50 watts when up and running.

I challenge you to find a similar PC that is cheaper:

This person did it a year ago. (Wonderful what a little google search can do, isn't it?)

I just threw one together with similar specs for $350 plus shipping, and it even has wireless (g, not n, but who has an n router?). Throw Ubuntu on there and you're good to go. The case measures 11.8" x 5.1" x 8.7", so it's a little bit bigger, but I think that's worth $250 in savings :P

Case (larger than the mac mini)
Motherboard (lacks firewire and wireless n, and has an older video chipset)
Processor (much faster, 2.8GHz vs the mini's 2.0GHz)
RAM (2GB vs the mini's 1GB, but only 800MHz)
Hard drive (500GB vs the mini's 120GB)
DVD-RW (24x vs the mini's 8x)

(None of those are affiliate links, don't worry :P)

Now if you spend a little more time searching than I did, you could certainly get better parts and still stay well below the mac mini's $599 price level. One thing I would suggest is using a smaller case that includes a slimline DVD-RW, as did the person in the ubuntu forums link I started this post with. The case used by the guy in ubuntu's forums measures 6.5"x6.5"x2", the same size as the mac mini.

I challenge you to find a similar PC that is cheaper:

This person did it a year ago. (Wonderful what a little google search can do, isn't it?)

I just threw one together with similar specs for $350 plus shipping, and it even has wireless (g, not n, but who has an n router?). Throw Ubuntu on there and you're good to go. The case measures 11.8" x 5.1" x 8.7", so it's a little bit bigger, but I think that's worth $250 in savings :P

Case (larger than the mac mini)
Motherboard (lacks firewire and wireless n, and has an older video chipset)
Processor (much faster, 2.8GHz vs the mini's 2.0GHz)
RAM (2GB vs the mini's 1GB, but only 800MHz)
Hard drive (500GB vs the mini's 120GB)
DVD-RW (24x vs the mini's 8x)

(None of those are affiliate links, don't worry :P)

Now if you spend a little more time searching than I did, you could certainly get better parts and still stay well below the mac mini's $599 price level. One thing I would suggest is using a smaller case that includes a slimline DVD-RW, as did the person in the ubuntu forums link I started this post with. The case used by the guy in ubuntu's forums measures 6.5"x6.5"x2", the same size as the mac mini.

It's not just Apple that charges such a large amount for better parts. Dell (whose computers you can easily upgrade on your own) has prices on upgrade parts that are much higher than retail.

For example, a base model Vostro desktop lists the Core 2 Duo E8600 as an upgrade (over the Celeron 450) for $330; the E8600 can be bought for $267.99 with free shipping. Dell lists their 21.5" HD monitors for $260; I recently bought two Samsung 21.5" HD monitors for $189.99 each (with free shipping, and there are rebates available). Dell will upgrade your baseline Vostro from 1GB to 4GB of 800MHz DDR2 for $112; it's not hard to find 4GB kits for anywhere between $40.99 and $76.99, depending on what brand you prefer. On the same machine Dell will upgrade your 80GB hard drive to a 1TB 7200RPM hard drive for $330; Seagate 1TB drives can be had for as little as $89.99.

(Those aren't affiliate links, don't worry :P)

If you were to get those upgrades, Dell's markup over retail prices is as much as $400, and they pay OEM price, not retail. (To be fair, the hard drive I linked above to is OEM, not retail.)

These days, I see very little reason to buy a desktop from Dell (or Apple or whoever) unless you're buying a laptop - and even then, you shouldn't have the vendor upgrade your RAM. I bought 4GB RAM for my laptop for $20 (after rebate), where Dell would have charged me $200. (Ironically, the RAM was marketed as "for Macs", despite being standard DDR2 SODIMM.)

As a humorous side note, if you want Dell to preconfigure RAID on a pair of 1TB drives, they'll do RAID-0 for $350 or RAID-1 for $250... same hardware, different price. Fun fun fun.

It's not just Apple that charges such a large amount for better parts. Dell (whose computers you can easily upgrade on your own) has prices on upgrade parts that are much higher than retail.

For example, a base model Vostro desktop lists the Core 2 Duo E8600 as an upgrade (over the Celeron 450) for $330; the E8600 can be bought for $267.99 with free shipping. Dell lists their 21.5" HD monitors for $260; I recently bought two Samsung 21.5" HD monitors for $189.99 each (with free shipping, and there are rebates available). Dell will upgrade your baseline Vostro from 1GB to 4GB of 800MHz DDR2 for $112; it's not hard to find 4GB kits for anywhere between $40.99 and $76.99, depending on what brand you prefer. On the same machine Dell will upgrade your 80GB hard drive to a 1TB 7200RPM hard drive for $330; Seagate 1TB drives can be had for as little as $89.99.

(Those aren't affiliate links, don't worry :P)

If you were to get those upgrades, Dell's markup over retail prices is as much as $400, and they pay OEM price, not retail. (To be fair, the hard drive I linked above to is OEM, not retail.)

These days, I see very little reason to buy a desktop from Dell (or Apple or whoever) unless you're buying a laptop - and even then, you shouldn't have the vendor upgrade your RAM. I bought 4GB RAM for my laptop for $20 (after rebate), where Dell would have charged me $200. (Ironically, the RAM was marketed as "for Macs", despite being standard DDR2 SODIMM.)

As a humorous side note, if you want Dell to preconfigure RAID on a pair of 1TB drives, they'll do RAID-0 for $350 or RAID-1 for $250... same hardware, different price. Fun fun fun.

It's not just Apple that charges such a large amount for better parts. Dell (whose computers you can easily upgrade on your own) has prices on upgrade parts that are much higher than retail.

For example, a base model Vostro desktop lists the Core 2 Duo E8600 as an upgrade (over the Celeron 450) for $330; the E8600 can be bought for $267.99 with free shipping. Dell lists their 21.5" HD monitors for $260; I recently bought two Samsung 21.5" HD monitors for $189.99 each (with free shipping, and there are rebates available). Dell will upgrade your baseline Vostro from 1GB to 4GB of 800MHz DDR2 for $112; it's not hard to find 4GB kits for anywhere between $40.99 and $76.99, depending on what brand you prefer. On the same machine Dell will upgrade your 80GB hard drive to a 1TB 7200RPM hard drive for $330; Seagate 1TB drives can be had for as little as $89.99.

(Those aren't affiliate links, don't worry :P)

If you were to get those upgrades, Dell's markup over retail prices is as much as $400, and they pay OEM price, not retail. (To be fair, the hard drive I linked above to is OEM, not retail.)

These days, I see very little reason to buy a desktop from Dell (or Apple or whoever) unless you're buying a laptop - and even then, you shouldn't have the vendor upgrade your RAM. I bought 4GB RAM for my laptop for $20 (after rebate), where Dell would have charged me $200. (Ironically, the RAM was marketed as "for Macs", despite being standard DDR2 SODIMM.)

As a humorous side note, if you want Dell to preconfigure RAID on a pair of 1TB drives, they'll do RAID-0 for $350 or RAID-1 for $250... same hardware, different price. Fun fun fun.

MWave is a nice NewEgg alternative.

I worked on a project that simply had a long-term storage requirement. Given the amount of data and the retention they wanted, we went with a series of TB drives. We used this Hot swappable drive bay, it worked great and doesn't even require a sled to mount the drive in.

I wonder if there would be any merit to a class action law suit on this. I recently took advantage of the FCC decision http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-238850A1.pdf to require IEEE-1394 / FireWire out from the cable boxes, to find out the 160$ package I bought could not be watched on my FireWire enabled DVR & display.

So I went out and bought a HDMI to DVI cable http://www.mwave.com/mwave/SkuSearch_v2.asp?SCriteria=BA22631 to watch on my projector & DVI flat panel to get an overlay from the cable box that says "this output is not authorized" and my show in the background for every channel.

Wow, I was asleep writing this, left out the f for If

If I don't purchase from newegg, most my purchases are then through mwave, http://www.mwave.com/

I've used them before I found newegg for years. I find it is hard to beat newegg on overall price when ordering several parts, but mwave is really close, and some things are actually cheaper.

There are few other places I get stuff through, but not high end computer parts like geeks.com

I I don't purchase from newegg, most my purchases are then through mwave, http://www.mwave.com/

I've used them before I found newegg for years. I find it is hard to beat newegg on overall price when ordering several parts, but mwave is really close, and some things are actually cheaper.

There are few other places I get stuff through, but not high end computer parts like geeks.com

MWave and ZipZoomFly are both very good alternatives to NewEgg.

As a fellow Tennessean, I'd first like to point out that Neweeg is still a great choice. I order from them regularly because:
1) They are usually still nearly the cheapest
2) They ship quick
3) If it ships from their TN center, I have it the next day
4) Their customer service ROCKS
5) Their website is the best of any I've used.

If I don't use them, I will use either mwave, ZipZoomFly, or (if you don't mind open-box items) Tech For Less (just remember to leave a comment when ordering that you know wtf you are doing, else they will hold your order until they get ahold of you).

I've also used ProVantage a time or two, but really only when they had a good deal.

We don't buy hardware that doesn't have open specifications. It's a winning strategy. You should try it.

If you think wireless is a pain to get working on a Ubuntu laptop you should try getting Vista to install on an eee 2G. Fun times.

An old PC full of hard drives looks cheap, but it will cost you in watts. An old PC server can easily pull 250-400 watts continuously. And don't forget this summer, when you will have to pay twice for the waste heat.

A better solution is a VIA PC1 board, plus a couple of new drives.

The "$60 PC 1" will only pull 20 watts at max. Combine this with 2 "$250 terabyte drives" mirrored, and a small low wattage "$35 case" and the "(Free) Linux" of your choice,

You will have a reliable Terabyte server for less than $700, that only pulls as much power as a small appliance bulb.

The q6600 is $272 (275 CAD). The e6600 is $228 (231 CAD).

http://www.mwave.com/mwave/DeepSearch.hmx?scriteria=q6600&ALL=y&TP=6
http://www.mwave.com/mwave/DeepSearch.hmx?scriteria=e6600&ALL=y&TP=9

Perhaps you are talking about the Xeons which are a little more expensive, but I doubt you are. You are probably just misinformed. I can understand not wanting to spend $272 to upgrade, but if you are building a whole new system, why not spend the $44 for a whole extra e6600 even if you don't need it.

Also, when I got my q6600 a little bit before the GOs came out, evidence suggested that they were slightly better overclockers than their e6600 counterparts. There were rummors that Intel was putting the better 2.4GHz rated chips in the q6600's (perhaps since overclockability is limited by the weakest core, and with 4 cores this might be a problem). Although to overclock a q6600 you probably need water, whereas you don't with the e6600. I suppose this is one disadvantage.

"If the chip was $150 I'd be more willing to shell out for it on a whim just for kicks. But 316 plus tax is around $360 or so."

If you buy it online you don't have to pay tax, and it will be cheaper than 316 CAD. Then you can sell your e6600 on Ebay. In the end it will cost you less than $150, which is your "whim" price. So why don't you put your money where your mouth is (but first make sure your motherboard supports the q6600).

The q6600 is $272 (275 CAD). The e6600 is $228 (231 CAD).

http://www.mwave.com/mwave/DeepSearch.hmx?scriteria=q6600&ALL=y&TP=6
http://www.mwave.com/mwave/DeepSearch.hmx?scriteria=e6600&ALL=y&TP=9

Perhaps you are talking about the Xeons which are a little more expensive, but I doubt you are. You are probably just misinformed. I can understand not wanting to spend $272 to upgrade, but if you are building a whole new system, why not spend the $44 for a whole extra e6600 even if you don't need it.

Also, when I got my q6600 a little bit before the GOs came out, evidence suggested that they were slightly better overclockers than their e6600 counterparts. There were rummors that Intel was putting the better 2.4GHz rated chips in the q6600's (perhaps since overclockability is limited by the weakest core, and with 4 cores this might be a problem). Although to overclock a q6600 you probably need water, whereas you don't with the e6600. I suppose this is one disadvantage.

"If the chip was $150 I'd be more willing to shell out for it on a whim just for kicks. But 316 plus tax is around $360 or so."

If you buy it online you don't have to pay tax, and it will be cheaper than 316 CAD. Then you can sell your e6600 on Ebay. In the end it will cost you less than $150, which is your "whim" price. So why don't you put your money where your mouth is (but first make sure your motherboard supports the q6600).

"They compete: I win"

INTEL CORE 2 EXTREME QX6700 $997 USD>

Years ago, the latest and greatest 386,486, Pentium X, [insert latest CPU], the introduction price of a new CPU was about the same cost as today. I guess you get more CPU for your money when compared to the past and adjustments for inflation but I think you don't win until you have a "I don't pay over $100 for a CPU policy".

• Vista Home Basic DSP (similar to OEM) $88

• Dell bulk OEM price about $50 ?
• Dell incentives from trialware/crapware $50 ? (I hear it's better these days)
• Net $0

• Ubuntu price $0
• Dell incentives from trialware/crapware $0
• Net $0

Windows is NOT that expensive if you go with an OEM copy available at some online retailers such as http://mwave.com./ I picked up business edition for around $130. You are however limited to installing that copy on ONE computer and you cannot move it from one machine to the next.

Sure do
http://www.mwave.com/mwave/DeepSearch.hmx?scriteri a=pc133&ALL=y&TP=7

Not a good idea to do a price/performance comparison when prices and lineup are about to change.

Intel will be releasing a few new CPUs and cutting prices on April 22. The E6320 and E6420 for example, identical to their 6x00 counterparts except with 4mb of L2 cache. They'll go for $163 and $183 respectively.

Benchmarks for next month's processors with price list:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core2 duo-e6420.html

A 20-30% price cut is expected from AMD on April 9.

Even now the prices Techreport lists are outdated! The Athlon X2 4600+ dropped to $122 a week ago - faster and cheaper than the $170 4400+ techreport tested (which is actually more like $159).

No-OS, Computers without Operating System (for those who want to install their own Operating System):

  http://www.abestpc.com/laptop.htm Laptops

  http://www.adamant.com/ Desktops Laptops

  http://www.avadirect.com/ Desktops Laptops
  http://www.com4.nl/ Desktops
  http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/ Desktops Laptops

  http://www.goldenelectronics.co.uk/ Desktops
  http://www.hypersonic-pc.com/ Desktops Laptops

  http://www.ion-technologies.com/ Laptops
  http://store.madtux.org/ Desktops/

  http://www.laptopchoice.com.au/ Laptops
  http://www.mtechlaptops.com/ Laptops

  http://www.mwave.com/ Laptops
  http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/ Desktops Laptops

  http://www.pcsforeveryone.com/ Laptops
  http://www.powernotebooks.com/ Laptops

  http://www.rjtech.com/ Laptops
  http://www.topmicrousa.com/laptops-notebooks.html Laptops

  http://www.unitedmicro.com/ Desktops Laptops
  http://xnbs.com/ Laptops

  http://www.xtremenotebooks.com/ Laptops
  http://www.zepto.com/ Laptops
 
  http://lxer.com/module/forums/t/23168/

How about $480? Yeah, it's $40 more than the target, but it's also has a 160GB HD (whereas the bottom end mac mini only has 60GB unlike the 80GB you quoted), a DVD burner, and it comes with a keyboard and mouse. Add wireless for $20, or $10 after rebate. Either way, you get more computer for less money.

I'm not the GPP, and I'm not saying the bottom end Apple products are a ripoff -- they're a decent value for the money -- but they tend to rapidly escalate in price for minor features. $200 is a lot to pay for a 200MHz increase and 20GB of HD space. They bank on the fact that people don't like to buy bottom end because it will (or they believe it will) be useless in a year.

How about $480? Yeah, it's $40 more than the target, but it's also has a 160GB HD (whereas the bottom end mac mini only has 60GB unlike the 80GB you quoted), a DVD burner, and it comes with a keyboard and mouse. Add wireless for $20, or $10 after rebate. Either way, you get more computer for less money.

I'm not the GPP, and I'm not saying the bottom end Apple products are a ripoff -- they're a decent value for the money -- but they tend to rapidly escalate in price for minor features. $200 is a lot to pay for a 200MHz increase and 20GB of HD space. They bank on the fact that people don't like to buy bottom end because it will (or they believe it will) be useless in a year.

Don't know if the ones I bought were counterfeit, but at least they came from MWave. (Where I'd think it would be unlikely that they'd sell grey-market goodes.)

MWave Taiyo Yuden

I tend to buy the 100/pack, tape-wrap, inkjet printable. As long as you have some empty cake boxes around to transfer them into, the tape-wrap style works fine.

I believe it was a compaq mini-tower case with IDE and 128MB. (At the time, the large corporation that I worked for had a hardware deal with Compaq.)

Even modern designs don't seem to take heat into account. I've seen a few Dell systems where airflow for the hard drive easily becomes sub-optimal and the hard drive will cook itself under moderate load.

I run a few different hardware configurations for cooling drives. The most effective is a bay cooler that takes up (2) 5.25" bays and holds 1-3 3.5" drives. If you only put (2) 3.5" drives in, and keep them slighly apart (about 1/2" between), the 80mm fan will push air over both drives at a hefty clip. Typical temperatures for those drives are 30C idle and 32C active. I suspect those drives are going to last forever because of the low-temperature change. One of those is a WD 10k RPM Raptor.

Some of the Antec cases do an okay job of cooling the drive bays. (Sonata, Sonata II, p160, p180/p180b.) The p180b has the most potential due to the design and the ability to add multiple 120mm fans to the case in various locations.

There's also a 4-in-3 bay cooler design that fits within (3) 5.25" bays and holds 4 drives. I use that on the p160 and p180 Antec cases to fit (4) drives into the upper drive bays.

My Samsung 300GB Drives (in Redundant raid mode) hit 70C at some times (like a simple NTFS defrag)... hot enough to cook an egg. So can these 500GB drives make toast if I slide some bread in the 3.5" bay between them?

At 70C, your drive lifespan is probably going to be measured in weeks...

I'd peg it at a desireable temp is anything under 45C. And anything over 50C will likely kill the hard drive within a matter of weeks or months. Even if you take a drive that was running at 50C for a few weeks and cool it back down to 40C in a new environment, it's still very likely to fail in the short-term. As always, some drives are more susceptible to heat failure then others.

It doesn't take much to cool drives (fortunately). A small amount of airflow across the drive is enough to pull the hot air away from the unit and replace it with cooler air from outside the case.

My personal preference for difficult-to-cool systems are bay coolers where you take up 2 or 3 5.25" bays and install a kit with an 80mm (2 bay) or 120mm (3 bay) fan and put 2-4 hard drives into the unit. The 80mm units work well as a 2-drive cooler because you get a large air channel between the two drives and the fan moves quite a bit of air over the drives. Putting the full 3 drives into the 2-bay cooler results in insta-cooked drives if the fan stops (but with only 2 drives in the cooler, you have some leeway). Bay coolers do make it harder to swap drives after a failure, but most failures I've seen are heat-induced so it's a wash.

Ideally, HD temp should be roughly 5-10C above ambient (30-35C in a 25C room).

Alternately, you can use a good quality case with dedicated fans blowing over the hard drive mounting points. Or simply use a larger case which spreads the components farther apart (so that your CPU isn't heating up your GFX card which is then heating up your hard drives).

I'd buy one if it was $213, but $225 is just too damn expensive!

Yeah.
Or you can just pay $188 and be done with it.

I think we'll see within the decade solid state drivers.

CF memory is now available in 3GB sizs for about $300;

These are already large enough to support a credible laptop computer, although you'd need ten or so to provide storage for a typical desktop.

Depends on what you mean for a budget system. Dual-core does give you a slight performance improvement over single-core, even for single-threaded games because the miscellaneous tasks can be shunted to the 2nd core allowing your game to use 100% of a core rather then just 95%.

That being said, if I was building a budget level game box (using the motherboard bundles at MWave):

Athlon64 3000+ 939pin, 1GB Kingston RAM, $75 MB, Assembled = $264

Which would have reasonable performance, good expandability. The basic Athlon64 CPUs are ~$90. Add on case ($80), power-supply ($60), hard drive ($80), DVD-writer ($40), Gfx card ($150), and WinXP license ($135) and you should be up around $800 for a decent budget system with good upgrade potential.

A slightly more expensive kit would be:

Athlon64 X2 4200+, 2GB Corsair RAM, $75 motherboard, $9 assemble fee = $615

Add on the $545 in miscellaneous parts for a total price of $1160. Which would be a more powerful machine for a still somewhat reasonable price.

The big advantage of DIY is that you can move a lot of the miscellanous parts from one system to another as you upgrade. So you might save $200 because you're not re-buying things like hard drives, GFX cards, DVD-ROM drives, cases, power-supplies.

For Linux... Software RAID. Use any controller that you want, you can even mix/match them to fill available slots. No worries about drivers, compatibility, or having to buy (3) RAID controllers to protect against failure. (One for a hot-spare, the 2nd in an off-site location... both on the off-chance that you can't buy an exact replacement three years from now when the RAID controller dies.)

My current "monster" box is an (8) drive Antec p160 running Gentoo (AMD64, 4GB RAM, 2 300GB RAID1 arrays, 1 200GB JBOD scratch drive, 1 600GB RAID5 array). Four drives below and 4 drives above (taking up 3 5.25" bays using this 4:3 bay cooler). Or I could've ditched the optical drive and used a pair of 3:2 bay coolers to pack (6) drives into the 5.25" bay area. I run PostgreSQL, Apache, SubVersion, rsync backups, Samba, DNS and DHCP services on this box. The RAID5 array is basically a big backup drive for my network (and yes I wish it was larger).

My next home server will probably be based on the Antec p180b case, which I can cram 10 or 12 drives into. Based on the schematics, airflow looks better then the old p160 case. I may even upgrade the existing p160 server to a p180b case.

Antec p160, p180 or p180b. The p160 has an excellent side-panel that flips on/off and has two large easy-to-use rotating thingies that hold it in place on the upper edge. (The thumbscrews along the back edge are optional, the built-in turny-thingies... where's my thesaurus?... hold the panel in place just fine.)

The hard drives down below are tray-mounted, easily removed on the p160 (I have yet to get my hands on the p180 case).

But if you're really concerned about hard-drive cooling, put your hard drives in the 5.25" bays using a 3:2 or 4:3 bay cooler.

My home office also gets up to 85F during the summer months (no insulation in the walls). So I am very conservative when it comes to cooling. I've used the 3:2 unit for many years (1998-ish?) and have never lost a drive due to heat failure. (OTOH, I've killed a few drives that weren't in a cooler block like that.)

It doesn't take much airflow to cool a drive.

I'd suggest (if you have spare 5.25" bays) looking at either:

3:2 bay cooler - allows you to put up to (3) 3.5" drives into a 80mm fan unit that fits into a pair of 5.25" bays

4:3 bay cooler - same idea, takes up (3) bays, holds up to (4) drives, and uses a 120mm fan.

Both of these do a very good job of keeping hot drives cool. Plus, the larger fans are quieter then the tiny 40mm fans. (I've been using the smaller 3:2 product for 8-9 years now and it's never failed. I've seen 5-10C temp changes by using them.)

Even the 'cheap' antec cases are great.

I needed a case that a) Didn't look tacky, b) had room for multiple hard drives, c) had a decent power supply, d) didnt cost a fortune, and most importantly e) had a front door than covered the power button. The only maker I could find that made what I needed was Antec. I bought this one for my wife's machines and this one for mine. I needed one with a door because my toddler likes to push buttons. I bought a baby-proof thingy that is designed for cabinets that wraps around the case and our PCs are now "toddler proof".

Even the 'cheap' antec cases are great.

I needed a case that a) Didn't look tacky, b) had room for multiple hard drives, c) had a decent power supply, d) didnt cost a fortune, and most importantly e) had a front door than covered the power button. The only maker I could find that made what I needed was Antec. I bought this one for my wife's machines and this one for mine. I needed one with a door because my toddler likes to push buttons. I bought a baby-proof thingy that is designed for cabinets that wraps around the case and our PCs are now "toddler proof".

You should be thankful that Nintendo supports any standards whatsoever. This is a company that still expects you to pay $20 for two megabytes of flash memory when we all know you could get 32 MB for that much in an easily-read format.

(Imagine that -- Memory Stick Duo is actually more cost-effective than something!)

http://www.mwave.com/

http://www.mwave.com/

FYI, the NVidia 6600 is a pretty good card and only costs about $135.00. As for the other stuff, my point was that PCI Express systems have backward compatibility with older PCI cards. I certainly have no difficulties with my Leadtek TV Card on the A8N-E board I'm currently using.

Anyway, sorry if I'm being a little pushy. I just like to see people future proof their systems whenever possible. It kept my last machine going strong for nearly five years. I'd probably still be using it if some of the hardware wasn't failing. :-)

FYI, the NVidia 6600 is a pretty good card and only costs about $135.00. As for the other stuff, my point was that PCI Express systems have backward compatibility with older PCI cards. I certainly have no difficulties with my Leadtek TV Card on the A8N-E board I'm currently using.

Anyway, sorry if I'm being a little pushy. I just like to see people future proof their systems whenever possible. It kept my last machine going strong for nearly five years. I'd probably still be using it if some of the hardware wasn't failing. :-)

Base Price: $4,589.00

Holy CRAP that's expensive! And that's (apparently) without the monitor! If I may suggest, you should be able to build the same machine for about half the price, perhaps a bit more.

Asus A8N-SLI Premium nForce4

Sweet! They chose my favorite board! I have the A8N-E board (same thing, but only one Vid card) and I must say that it is a VERY nice board. Practically everything you could ever want is built in. NForce4 chipset, Gigabit ethernet, PCI Express, 8 channel audio, 10 USB ports, hardware firewall, hardware RAID support, 4 SATA-300 (aka SATA-II) connectors, IDE support, nearly all AMD64 chips supported, etc. I haven't found a better board, especially in that price range!

Sound Card: Creative Labs Audigy 2 ZS Platinum INT Drive Sound

Can anyone explain what is up with this? The board comes with 8 channel sound built in. What do you need a separate sound card for? Is the sound quality really that much better?

BTW, if you get the A8N board, don't get the ASUS Star ICE. I've got one of those things and I'm now using it as a desk ornament. I just wanted an extra fan to keep things cool. I had no idea that I'd get a friggin' JET ENGINE! (I'm not kidding either. This thing can barely fit in the case when installed.) It gets great comments from my coworkers though. "What the HELL is that!?" ;-)

If you don't believe me on its size (no one ever does) just look at this pic.

replies. yeah, the psp is a bit expensive and you /could/ just buy a portable dvd player, a video game player, an ipod and the various accessories, or you could have it all in one sleek package.

Yeah, when you consider that the iPod is the PSP of MP3 players. All style, no substance. The simple replacement works wonders.

Portable DVD - 79.99
Zen Xtra 30GB - 184.99
Nintendo DS - 129.99
Backpack - $10.49

Factor in the cost of rebuying all of your movies, enough Memory Stick (or whatever the hell they call it now) space to store ripped movies/music, etc... and it's about neck and neck, in favor of the different parts.

Of course, save more bucks by replacing the DS with a GBA-SP, getting a smaller Mp3 player (or skipping it altogether, the linked DVD plays MP3s), etc.

If you want to play watered down ports and impress the same sort of person that makes up the iPod Fanboy Brigade, get a PSP. (Note: This does not imply that the DS has a great selection itself. There's a reason I've wasted my cash on neither of these dogs)

Couldn't you just feign ignorance and get a free discount?

No need. Those discounts are just their OEM prices. Microsoft has a special OEM program for home built systems, where you can get Windows with any hardware purchase. So next time you're upgrading a component, head over to MWave.com and pick up both the component and discounted copy of Windows.

Support your local computer shop!

I was pretty happy with parts I got at a computer small computer shop in California. All the components were of high quality, and I could reach over the desk and strangle someone if it didn't work. Unfortunately, such shops don't seem to exist here in Chicago. There's big places like MicroCenter, but I don't really trust them. I received suggestions for NewEgg.com, but they didn't carry the parts I wanted. In the end, I ended up getting parts from MWave.com. They had everything I needed, good prices, and the service was fast. I can't speak to complaints (since I didn't have any), but they may be worth checking out. :-)

http://www.mwave.com/ has some decent prices. For hard-to-find items I turn to http://newsite.pagecomputers.com/ like a Tyan S2895 with all the parts, including recommended cases, ram, AMD 675's (yes two)...

There's also http://www.mwave.com/ for your computing needs.

I find myself almost drooling over the upcoming dual core X2 chips.

Not upcoming. They're here and here and here and elsewhere. Yeah, I want one too.