Building a new PC Help Appreciated

[grogo21]

Hello I am putting a new pc together which will be used for web development/design. I just wanted to share the config I came up with and was hoping people would share their thoughts... its my first build in years and much has changed. My target budget is $2000 but really it is unlimited as long as the parts will benefit me. I am going for a raid 10 config.

Here is my proposed config:

COOLER MASTER COSMOS S RC
x4 Western Digital Caviar Black WD7501AALS 750GB
Samsung PX2370 23"
XFX HD-567X-ZNF3 Radeon HD 5670
CORSAIR CMPSU-650TX 650W
CyberPower CP1500AVRLCD
Kingston HyperX 8GB (4 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600
3ware 9650SE-4LPML
COOLER MASTER V6 GT
AMD Phenom II X4 970 Black Edition Deneb 3.5GHz
ASUS M4A79XTD EVO
WD Green backup drive(not sure which yet)

Firstly I want to make sure all of the parts are compatible and also if I have better options within the price range of the parts above. Again, I am not worried about price but would like to get good value for performance.

Also, the memory is Quad channel. Is this good? bad? I have no idea.

Thanks for helping a first time poster!

[glc]

I would recommend a 4gb x2 dual channel ram kit instead. I would also recommend RAID 5, not RAID 10 - and use WD RE drives, not Blacks. Either way, the array is over 2tb and will NOT be bootable, you will need a separate boot drive. I also recommend a dedicated RAID card for the RAID 5, not the motherboard controller. Adaptec and LSI are the 2 best brands.

[grogo21]

Thanks for replying... you just proved to me that I do not know as much as I should. I was not aware of the 2TB limit. I am doing more research on this right now.

Also, I accidentally posted the wrong hard drive. My original plan was to get 4x Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX 1TB. Still that was before I knew about the 2tb limit.

Why would you recommend the RE drives? Looks like they are made for a raid configuration but WD also states that the Black drives make for a good consumer level raid setup. I'm just curious of the RE drives benefits.

I do have a dedicated raid card picked out:
3ware 9650SE-4LPML
Newegg.com - 3ware 9650SE-4LPML PCI Express Lanes: 4 SATA II Controller Card RAID Levels 0, 1, 5, 10, Single Disk, JBOD, KIT

Other sites stated that the raid controller should have at least its own dedicated memory so that's what I went for.

Also, why go for the RAID 5? What are the benefits? I did do some research on raid levels and thought RAID 10 would suit me the best but I'm just wondering from your experience why you chose RAID 5 instead.

Thanks for your response... you have already saved me a lot of future frustration.

[grogo21]

So, would the easiest way to be able to get Win 7 Ultimate running on my config be to limit each drives size to 500GB? I don't really need the space... I was just looking for performance and value.

Thx

[glc]

I don't really need the space... I was just looking for performance and value.

Then what you want is 4 of these on that 3Ware RAID card in RAID 5. That will give you 1.5 TB effective storage. A RAID 10 would only be 1 TB. RAID 5 uses both striping and parity for fault tolerance, where RAID 10 simply mirrors 2 RAID 0 stripes. RE drives and a hardware RAID 5 controller will give you the best speed and reliability. If a drive fails in RAID 5, the array still works, and it will rebuild itself when you replace the failed drive. RAID 10 has been known to fail to rebuild.

[David M]

glc, I'm curious why you did not suggest an external drive as a more secure backup than a RAID array? How about a NAS box with two mirrored drives?

[glc]

From the original post:

WD Green backup drive(not sure which yet)

[David M]

Woops...missed that.