Hi all,

I'm going to build a new barebone PC MSI Mega PC 865 but I still have to decide whether to buy 1 GB DDRAM PC3200 (instead of 512MB) or spend the money on WDC Raptor 74 GB instead of 36 GB. I read some review that Raptor 74 is improved to its predecessor.

I don't play game much... most of the time will be encoding audio. Please help me to decide.

Thank You!

I'd go for the bigger hard disk. Audio encoding doesn't need much RAM.

I see...

What about upcoming Windows LongHorn or whatever it is, will it need much RAM? I read that it will run on .net environment.

I'm afraid it would be difficult for me to upgrade memory module since there are only 2 memory banks. It means I have to sell those 2 x 256 and buy 2 x 512 to upgrade.

By the time Longhorn actually comes out, PC3200 will probably have dropped in price to the current PC2700 levels, assuming you simply won't be using a different computer entirely (rumor is that they're pushing for 2006?)

Another vote for Hard disk (or maybe something else - quiet fans / psu / case insulation).

Seems there is a mad rush to get a gig of memory nowadays, 512Meg is a massive amount in reality, and honestly fairly hard to use up (cue string of "But I spawn a few Linux boxes from my machine" style posts)

Well... quiet fans and PSU is almost impossible since what I'm going to buy for the case and mobo is an SFF MSI MEGA PC 865

BTW, has anyone here used WDC Raptor 74 GB? I Want to know wether this Harddisk is really speedy and reliable or not Anyhow, Western Digital gives 5 years warranty for this HDD which I think long enough.

another vote for raptor 74 - got one and very happy with it
if you are using XP then 512 should be fine - memory is way too expensive right now anyhow.

If you are going for increased encoding speed, neither ram nor hard drive speed will get you much.
The Pentium 4 really shines in encoding performance. That said, I use the AMD chips and pocketed the extra bucks. I can buy a lot of coffee to sip on while a wait the few extra minutes.
Anandtech is recommending the 2.8C P4. Northwood is outperforming Prescott in the socket 478 right now.
The ASUS and Gigabyte boards are top rated for speed and reliability. The 865PE chipset is a sweet spot.

Thank You for all of your comments and suggestions. My P4 is already 2.8C and I've just put in that WDC Raptor 74 GB to my order list. A bit expensive (€224), but I hope that that one is fast. Let's see in 4 days when I get the things.

the 74gig is certainly very speedy (see here) and it uses a fluid ball bearing (which the 36gig doesn't have), so it should last longer and be quieter.

Another vote for bigger HD. I would double it's size one or two more times before considering more memory... But then again, I might be more wasteful with HD space than you are.

I've got my Raptor WD740GD and yes, it's very fast and quiet when idle but generates quite loud noise when reading/writing. Do you have any suggestion to silent the HD without using additional rack? since it's not possible in my SFF.

I also want to make partition in my Harddrive. What is the best/fastest partition configuration for Windows XP? Usually I put my data (movies, songs, etc) into third partition which is the end partition and program files (installation) into second partition, and XP system in first partition along with page file. Any suggestion?

edit: one other question, why there is no SATA controller in Windows XP Device Manager while I use SATA HDD, instead I see only IDE Controller.

To the best of my knowledge, there is no performance gained by partitioning NTFS. A second physical drive with a page file there could help. If I recall correctly, the built in defrag utility will keep frequently used files on the faster part of the drive.
I keep it simple by making a c:\My Music folder, and subfolders from there. I like to have a 'Workbench' folder to do the misc. stuff.