Suggestions for building a system -- Drives, ECC v. non-ECC, etc

Although my PC still has another year in its four-year cycle, I will be building

a replacement in the next month or so, primarily because soon XP Pro won't be

sold officially, and I want to put off VISTA as long as possible. I've never

built one, but have installed boards, drives, and Linux (on machines that aleady

had Windows.) I want to keep costs reasonable.

 

The computer will be used for processing images (Capture NX, Photoshop, etc.) as

well as my work in speech processing. My speech work requires a very quiet

computer. In Photoshop, I often process 120 MB files from my old, scanned 35mm

trannies and negs. I run dual-boot, Windows and Linux. I will use an Intel CPU

because I've had better luck installing Linux with Intel.

 

Questions:

 

1. I'm tempted to get an ECC compatible board and ECC memory to avoid the rare

corrupted file. It is a more expensive set-up, and difficult to find

ECC-compatible boards that are not designed for servers. Is it worth it?

 

2. What's an ideal disk-drive configuration for Photoshop and Capture NX? I want

to avoid a RAID array if I can. I am open to multiple drives.

 

3. What is the minimum DVI graphics card that I can away with? I don't use the

computer for games. I now have a 19-inch Samsung SyncMaster monitor, but I'll be

upgrading sometime in the next couple of years.

 

4. Are boards for the new BTX standard very rare? I saw none on my last Fry's

visit. Any reason not to go with the ATX standard?

 

5. How can I tell what components are reliable?

 

I will also appreciate any other advice on this topic. If anyone has built a PC

recently and wants to list their components, that would be great. (I might only

have to change, say, the case and the cooling system.)

Your system is really more likely to blue screen because of a bad bit in RAM than to corrupt a file. And if you aren't working with multiple stages of an image in seperate files (source and processed) by now you really should. ECC is a low demand technology meant mostly for servers and would reduce your selection of motherboards to an expensive trickle (Can you say "enterprise"?).

 

While I've gone so far as to build a system with 5 partitions across 4 drives and while I have been able to keep it healthier longer than other configurations it's really overboard. It's probably best to have two drives, one programs, the other data. If you want to get more complicated there are very reliable hacks that will allow you to make the "documents and settings" folder actually a seperate partition, probably on the data drive, this slows the spread of file fragmentation from the Internet browsing cache to the rest of the file system which can be a real problem with NTFS and XP. If you want to get real quirky you can give the swap file it's own partition too but I'm not convinced that's any better than just setting it to a fixed 4096MB after installation.

 

Just in case Vista starts getting extra support I'd get a 3d accelerator in at least the $50 range or a motherboard with an NVidia or AMD/ATI chipset and therefore better integrated graphics to offload the user interface onto.

 

Get ATX, it IS the standard. Unless you want small of course.

Make that 5 partitions on 2 drives, even quikier.

Intel CPU and quiet computer, buy the newest 45nm models, which are more energy efficient. Google reviews for newest silent PSUs and CPU coolers.

 

3. If you're going to upgrade to a 30" monitor make sure the graphics card has dual-dvi to support displays very high resolution. I think most modern ones are ok but check.

 

4. ATX is still the norm.

 

5. Google user comments and reviews for any specific issues. That's pretty much the only way. I wouldn't worry too much.

ECC - I don't see any use for it in a normal desktop system. How many times have you encountered a corrupt file because of memory error? It's one of these things that look nice on the paper but real world use is a different matter.

5. Just stick with the top couple of brands. Motherboards: Asus and Intel. HDDs: Seagate and Western Digital. Optical drives: Lite-On and Sony/NEC. RAM: Corsair and Crucial. Cases: Antec and Thermaltake (not as critical as electronic components). PSUs: PC Power and Cooling, Seasonic, Corsair, FSP Group. GPU: ATI, Sapphire.

I wouldn't bother with ECC either. For disks I really like the new WD 640 gig drive that I got. It's fast, quiet and runs pretty cool. Get two: that way you can run the system virtual memory on one drive and the PS scratch disk on the other. I just got a Gigabyte 8600GT video card (GV-NX86T256H). It's passively cooled so no fan noise. ATX boards based on the P35 Intel chipset are the best bang for the buck. I put together a system for my son with a Gigabyte MB (GA-P35-DS3L) board works great with a E3110 (E8400) running at 3.6 Ghz. If you want eSATA, I would get the GA-EP35-DS3R. (I've used a number of Gigabyte MB's and video cards with zero problems.) The current motherboards can control the fan speeds based on the temp of the CPU, and this makes of a very quiet computer. We've used the Arctic Cooling 7 Pro cooler on a couple of builds and they cool well and are very quiet. Two cases I would suggest for a quiet PC would be the Antec Solo, or the LIAN LI Lancool PC-K7B.

Thank you very much, everyone!