Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit (OEM) $109.99
Thermaltake SpinQ CL-P0466 CPU Cooler for Intel Socket 1366/1156/775 & AMD Socket AM3/AM2+/AM2/939 $68.99
x2 Cooler Master 200mm Red LED Silent MegaFlow Case Fan (R4-LUS-07AR-GP) $19.99
Cooler Master 80mm Ball Bearing Case Fan (SAF-B83-E1) $5.99
Cooler Master 120mm Red LED SickleFlow 2000 RPM Long Life Case Fan (R4-L2R-20CR-GP) $9.99
Sub-Total: $3,290.83 This is Pre-Tax and Pre_price checking with other suppliers. ALSO , I can get many of these parts cheaper by going OEM. (Out Of Box) Just couldn't select the option for this online. If anyone see's anything you can think of I should change , post away. This price is in CANADIAN Dollars.
I think the setup is a bit on the extreme side. I would go Windows 7 Pro, stick with SATA2 drives as you get more storage for the money, throw in a SSD as the OS drive, go with a cheaper i7 and OC, get a MOBO with onboard so you can get rid of the Sound Card (a super duper card isn't needed if you play with headphones anyway).
All in all, there really isn't a point in upgrading your system if your internet is only slightly better than that of 3rd world countries.
This system or one equivalent won't be purchased till I sell this house. In which case, I will be on Cable or DSL and thus have faster internet then 3rd world countries.
As for extreme , its what I do. Then I do not have to upgrade for a long long time. I upgrade/rebuild every 2 years or so. Instead of small upgrades here n there.
Repo: Why Windows 7 pro? HDD .. thats 2 for the price listed. Sorry forgot the x2. Was gonna run them on raid 0. As for a SSD as my OS drive .. I cannot figure out why Id do that on a desktop that never moves anyways.... The MOBO has built in sound. I wanna upgrade simply because I plan on using it to watch TV with also , maybe some BD/DVD so I will hook up my logitech surround system to the comp. 6 speakers , 1 woofer. The CPU , I was thinking of going with a cheaper chip and OC'ing it .. but I was reading up on the I7 and others and found the heat builds up exponentially. So without spending another $1000 on a water cooling system, I thought keep a higher end CPU don't OC it till next year so it feels like an upgrade.
I also mentioned this system was NON OEM priced. I estimated almost $800 less by going OEM on a few key components that I could not purchse online , but rather I can get by going into the store. I am also doing some price comparisons, but for now its kinda waste of time. I will wait till I am going to build this/equivalent then do price comparisons and order parts from the cheaper stores.
Mainly for the added addition of Windows XP mode in case there is a program you can't run in Windows 7. As an IT professional, Home has never been a choice of mine. You can only do workgroups, not domains in Home. That wouldn't really apply to your application, but it's nice to have just in case. Home has just been too watered down for my taste.
RAID 0 is only good for HDD performance. It's not good for any type of redundancy. If you lose 1 drive, you lose your data. You're better off running RAID 1 if you're looking for data protection.
SSD as an OS drive would drastically reduce your read/write times compared to even the fastest HDD. If I had the money to build a new rig, it would definitely include a SSD as an OS drive and a gaming drive. I would stick with HDD for storage.
Good Points... I think I will upgrade to Windows 7 Pro for the XP , and maybe see how much I can save on other things get an SSD drive OS. Still a work in progress though.
