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Pastimes : Dream Machine ( Build your own PC ) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: $Mogul who wrote (7390)	5/4/1999 11:30:00 PM
From: RJL	Respond to of 14778

I'll go step for step here... IBM DeskStar 10.1 Gig DTTA IDE 7,000 RPM 371010 IBM drives have built a nice reputation recently. However, if you are going for a power machine, go SCSI, not IDE. The UltraStar 18GB Ultra2 LVD 10,000 RPM's are very nice (have 2 myself). "500mhz PIII Intel Chip or Should I REALLy Spring for the XEON 500 or 550mhz" A PIII 450 should be fine. Unless you're a real speed freak the extra cost involved to go to a 500Mhz P3 is not really necessary. Although the Xeon's are quite nice, they're only real use pops up in graphic workstations for CAD/CAM. Perhaps you should go with a dual Pentium III system. Regardless...remeber that only NT can support a dual processor system. Windows 98 would only use one CPU. All in all, go with a 450Mhz P3 or a dual 450 P3. "Cache is there a way to have more than 512k Cache on Standard 440 BX Chipset with a P 3 500 mhz or do I have to spring for the XEON???" Nope. Although some Super7 motherboards for AMD CPU's can hold 1Mb of cache, the BX motherboards for PII/PIII's use whatever is in the cpu cartridge. The Xeon processors can hold up 2Mb (maybe 4mb now) of cache per processor. Then again, the cost for those 2Mb Xeon's is over 5k each. If you go standard Pentium II/III, go with the Asus P2B-F board. 1AGP slot for video, 5 PCI, and 2 ISA (1 shared). The more PCI the better. If you choose dual CPU or Xeon, that gets into a different ballgame. Cooling: a 7200 RPM or 10,000 RPM drive should have a fan blowing over them. The standard Intel fan on a boxed retail CPU should cool it fine unless you overclock (not recommended). RAM: 256Mg is more than enough. 512Mg is most likely overkill unless you're setting up a server or a CAD workstation. OS: NT 4.0 with SP3/4. Forget 98. Don't hold your breath for Win2000 just yet either. NT 4.0 resembles a 95/98 interface with 10000 times the stability/security. Video: If you are setting up a trading station, then some of the multimonitor cards may be for you. Unfortunately, that's not my area of expertise...hopefully someone else can bring a couple up. A good 2D/3D combo card that I like is the Diamond Viper V770 Ultra. 32Mg TNT2 AGP card. Time is short so I'll leave it there for now. Rich

To: $Mogul who wrote (7390)	5/5/1999 1:08:00 AM
From: Sean W. Smith	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14778

Mogul, I would spend dollars on the fast 10000 RPM drive before I kicked down for a Xeon on PIII 500. for a HD cooler get this.... best thing going and quiet... computernerd.com I doubt you need more than 256M. Get 2 - 128M Sticks of ECC and you'll have room for a another 256M. It would help if you define what you do on your trading machine specifically. Note: Trading machines don't play 3-d video games :) trading machines that require robustness run NT 4.0. NT 4.0 looks like 95/98, but doesn't support USB/PLug and Play/ play MOST Games well. Installation is harder. The results are worth the effort. NT doesn't inherently suppport multimonitor. Matrox and STB have cards with Multimon drivers for NT. All the integrated mulitmonitor cards have NT 4.0 support. Riva TNT's are great combo 2d/3d cards but doubt they do multimon in NT. Sean

To: $Mogul who wrote (7390)	5/5/1999 6:13:00 PM
From: mowa	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 14778

$Mogul, Previous replies are excellent! Here's another. I am assuming you are ready to lay out some serious ca$h if you are talking about Xeons, what I am getting ready to reccomend is very expensive, but it is serious hardware. SCSI *should* be a part of your computer (kick down for the UltraStar 18GB Ultra2 LVD 10,000, IBMs ROCK! I am using the IDE 7200 IBMs very quite, very fast) Look at the Mylex Flashpoint LT/DL SCSI cards. Win NT? For what you are talking about this question should not even enter your mind. For a high-end Windows based trading platform, your only option (IMO, Win 95/98'ers don't take this personally) is NT. We will get to gaming in a minute. :) 256 RAM is more than enough in most cases. I would save the money on Xeons and plow it in to the video sub-system. I would recomend a dual-motherboard, Asus P2B-D (D is for dual) and a couple of PII 450s. I believe, the significant changes in the PIIIs won't happen till late summer (fabrication/cache) so right now not really worth the extra price. Video, Colorgraphics makes an AGP 4-port multi-head card with 8 megs of Ram per port, which can be paired with another PCI version for upto 8 monitors. I HIGHLY recomend Multi-head cards see post #7197 for a list of links to multi-mon Vendors continued...