I am about to order parts for building a new PC and I am a bit confused as to which set up would benefit me the most.
I am looking to buy on of the following motherboards (I've not made up my mind what one yet):
ASUS P5WD2/premium Skt 775 i955X or
ASUS P5ND2-SLI/Deluxe nForce 4 Skt 775 or
Gigabyte GA-8I955X Royal, i955X or
Gigabyte GA-8N-SLI Royal, nForce4
Intel Pentium® 4 650 3.4GHz 800FSB LGA 775 CPU EM64T
Corsair® 1024MB TwinX XMS2 5400 Ultra Low Latency DDR2 Memory Kit (2 x 512MB)
As far as I know the above should all be compatible? My main concern is what type of hard drive configuration I should run.
I am going to purchase a Western Digital Hard Drive however I am unsure about what SATA and RAID configurations I need to configure (I will be mainly using my PC for gaming and making/playing music - I need a large amount of storage for music).
I know that the motherboards I have listed above will allow me to run a variety of SATA/RAID configurations. I would be grateful for advice on what I really need to buy and how I should set it up.
e.g: Should I just buy a single 400GB drive or is it preferable to run two 200GB drives with one as a back up/mirror drive?
Could you explain more about RAID configuration etc... please?
Any help/info would be really appreciated and will help get me on my way.
Many thanks.
