Two Plus Two Older Archives - Parts list...how does this look?

i will generally tend to ignore 'what should i build?' cookbook posts for a variety of reasons but here are the basics on how i roll.

on cases i dislike noise. it's a pain in the ass to replace fans that eventually fail, and they usually have much more space than i actually want/need (which means they also take up more space in the room or desk or whatever). i've been using shuttle xpcs for a long time now and i don't expect that to change. my home computer is an sb81p. if i were to buy a case/psu separately i would probably default to a sonata with an overkill fortron/sparkle psu.

since i buy shuttles i also don't worry about motherboards, but asus would be at the top of my safe list as well. i would certainly entertain stuff like abit, msi, etc. almost every one of my personal systems i've built in the pre-shuttle era has been with an abit motherboard.

for ram i'll just get whatever i should get in the value segment with a reasonable brand name. kingston, corsair, pny, geil, whatever. people really overestimate how much ram they need. even with multitasking on top of 8-tabling i still don't hit the 1GB usage mark on my system, it's only running virtual machines (emulating multiple computers within my computer) when i get into trouble. 1GB is enough for almost everyone. the low latency/ultra stuff is a complete waste of money.

storage i use 74g raptors for performance-oriented stuff. i use one as my boot/main drive, and maxtor maxline iiis for storage. they're maxtor's 'enterprise-grade' sata offerings with higher build quality, longer mtbf, 5yr warranty, etc. the diamondmax 10 is its consumer analog, they've been in the higher ranks of 7200rpm drives for a while now. raid is basically a waste of money for most people, including me. it doesn't impact single user performance in a meaningful way, yes even when multitasking, and the failure suggestions/data risk should be obvious.

for dvd burners i just get the most recent nec model.

audio i'm happy with onboard. i use sony mdr-7506 studio headphones at work and klipsch 2.1 speakers at home. i hate surround wiring and i think it's lame for computers.

for video i tend to keep up on the best bang for the buck $200-ish type thing. it was the ati x800 gto2 that could be modded to an x850 very recently, but the prices have shot up since then. if ati and nvidia are near equal in price/performance i'll go toward nvidia, one of the cheaper but still biggger name brands like evga, msi, etc. NOT xfx for reliability reasons, documentation of this on their own forums.

monitors i still just pick up 2001fps when they're cheap. i use kensington expert trackballs (the ones with a ball the size of a pool ball) and happy hacker lite2 usb keyboards.