time for an upgrade

[danpa]

It's time to start building a new computer system, thanks to some previously mentioned friends who gifted me a new motherboard, processor, RAM and video card.

Comments

[thndr]

Any particular reason you want a RAID 1? It's probably cheaper, in terms of electricity bill, to go for an external drive (eSata or network) and backup to that every month or so, and turn it off the rest of the time.

For a case, make sure you get one that has good cable management/routing. My P180 is a huge case, but you route the cables behind the mobo, so most of the space above the mobo is clear for airflow.

Sound card, you can look at their X-Fi line, but most new on-board mobo sound cards are usually good enough if all you do is play sounds (no recording etc).

For speakers, I have the Logitech Z-5500, which I think are great computer 5.1 speakers. But they're probably not as good as your JBL Pros.

[danpa]

That's a good suggestion on the external. I'll still have to get an eSATA port and 2 identical SATA drives, since I'll directly clone the drives each month using Norton Ghost. But it'll save electricity.

The case... I'm pretty happy with the airflow in my current case, so I'll probably stick with it.

I do some recording, but not really all that much... so I'll consider the X-Fi cards after I do some testing.

My JBL Pros are pretty damn old though. I've had them for 10 years, I think. I'll see if I can check out the Z-5500s at Fry's.