i'm building a system

Hi guys i am in the process of building a computer gaming system(slowly) and am going extreem with top of the line components. This is my first attempt and all my knowelege(which is very little if any) has come from youtube vids.I have the Thermaltake snow edition case and am getting a 1500w psu soon. Also i will mention that i am waiting for the Radeon 7970 graphics card to hit the market any day this month and am getting 2 of those.For the motherboard i am seriously going to get the Asus extreem rampage 4 with a intel core i7 extreem 3.47 processor.I notice in my tower case there are 5 hard drive slots, i am used to having only 1 hard drive what are the other 4 for. excuse the simple question but i have to start somewhere.Regards Grassy

They are simply there should you wish to put multiple hard drives in your system.

You could put extra hard drives in simply to give you storage space for things like music, movies, pictures etc.

You may want to use them to back up data incase another drive went down fataly.

You may want to have different operating systems on different drives.

Or you may want to use a RAID array where lets say four hard drives are treated logicaly as one by the operating system, but there is fault tolerance that provides back up should you fataly loose a drive. The advantages of a RAID array are things like speed, and fault tolerance. This would require further research as there are different types of RAID arrays that suite different circumstances, and your motherboard would have to support it or you would need a RAID controler card for best results.

Hope that helps a bit grassy,
jodav

Perfect.I like the idea of having a seperate hard drive for my itunes music and a larger hard drive for my movies. I dont know about having 2 seperate operating systems yet, i was hoping on running windows 7. I have even thought of the idea of not having it connected to the internet at all being it will be free of virusus and infectious programs and using my other xp for internet stuff. What do you think.

Well that is due to personal preference grassy, and so is your call. I will say however that regular windows updates through the Internet is always advisable. And as long as you are taking the necessary precaution of installing an antivirus program, you should not be afraid of the Internet.

I have always agreed that common sense is by far the best protection against malware, without it you have no chance. So put that together with an antivirus and you will be as safe as you can be. You can never be 100% safe as new variants of malware come out on a regular basis, hence windows and antivirus updates are continualy required.

If you have your important data stored or backed up on a spare drive, then reinstalling the Operating System on your system drive should be no big deal should you run into problems with malware, or the hard drive itself. In fact sometimes over time it is a good thing to do to get your system back to a clean reliant state, as long as you have the time to reinstall your software, drivers, updates etc.

It all depends on you and your specific priorities grassy, your idea of using another system for browsing the net seems a good idea, and shows that you are in fact using your common sense. But I will stress to not be afraid of the NET, and instead enjoy and take what it has to offer, whether that be on your older system or soon to be new one, or both is your choice.

jodav

Well in a top of the line system ,you would want large fast SSDs and quad graphics card.

I have always agreed that common sense is by far the best protection against malware, without it you have no chance. So put that together with an antivirus and you will be as safe as you can be. You can never be 100% safe as new variants of malware come out on a regular basis, hence windows and antivirus updates are continualy required.

You're aiming for the $4,000 computer market? Ahh, the land where performance per dollar and value go to die.

A few things to remember...

Most games use two cores, few use four, and none use more.

A Radeon 7970 is a beast, but it really shines at very high resolutions with EyeFinity.

More than two graphics cards in a multi-GPU setup doesn't scale well, so ROI (Return on Investment) goes down dramatically.

If you do 3D gaming complete with glasses, you will be aiming for 120 frames per second, if you "just say no" to gimmicks and use a standard monitor, 60 fps.

Keeping Windows 7 off the net and using XP as the fall guy is just... silly. Put a 64-bit version of Windows 7 on the PC and use Microsoft Security Essentials and you will be fine if you exercise a bit of common sense.

Well that is due to personal preference grassy, and so is your call. I will say however that regular windows updates through the Internet is always advisable. And as long as you are taking the necessary precaution of installing an antivirus program, you should not be afraid of the Internet.

I have always agreed that common sense is by far the best protection against malware, without it you have no chance. So put that together with an antivirus and you will be as safe as you can be. You can never be 100% safe as new variants of malware come out on a regular basis, hence windows and antivirus updates are continualy required.

If you have your important data stored or backed up on a spare drive, then reinstalling the Operating System on your system drive should be no big deal should you run into problems with malware, or the hard drive itself. In fact sometimes over time it is a good thing to do to get your system back to a clean reliant state, as long as you have the time to reinstall your software, drivers, updates etc.

It all depends on you and your specific priorities grassy, your idea of using another system for browsing the net seems a good idea, and shows that you are in fact using your common sense. But I will stress to not be afraid of the NET, and instead enjoy and take what it has to offer, whether that be on your older system or soon to be new one, or both is your choice.

jodav

Thanks for your opinion its much appreciated. Its always good to be reasured, especially when venturing into little known territory. I have just purchased the Malwarebytes Anti Malware program and will most likely use that with an Avast anti virus program. I also have the Superantispyware pro version which i am thinking of running also. I think i'll be hanging around here for a while

You're aiming for the $4,000 computer market? Ahh, the land where performance per dollar and value go to die.

A few things to remember...

Most games use two cores, few use four, and none use more.

A Radeon 7970 is a beast, but it really shines at very high resolutions with EyeFinity.

More than two graphics cards in a multi-GPU setup doesn't scale well, so ROI (Return on Investment) goes down dramatically.

If you do 3D gaming complete with glasses, you will be aiming for 120 frames per second, if you "just say no" to gimmicks and use a standard monitor, 60 fps.

Keeping Windows 7 off the net and using XP as the fall guy is just... silly. Put a 64-bit version of Windows 7 on the PC and use Microsoft Security Essentials and you will be fine if you exercise a bit of common sense.

Hi DJ, Appreciate the response, what are cores? sorry for my ignorence I think i know what you mean when you say my retun of investment will go astray when using more than 2 graphics cards. I have thought about that lately, but i cant remember what where i got that info from. I have been doing so much research lately. I probably picked it up from youtube vids(hehe). I really want to keep my system in touch with reality and dont want to purchase items which will be an overkill( i think thats what you meean). What is a Multi GPU. OK so i need to put a 64 bit version of windows 7 on my pc.I have read that windows 7 is fast is that true?. I have more questions but i think these are enough for me to deal with for now.(hehe).

Well in a top of the line system ,you would want large fast SSDs and quad graphics card.

Hi killer, appreciate your response bro, could you tell me why i would need quad graphic cards. And Is there a big difference in having quads( i assume you mean 4)rather than 2. Thanks

Well that is due to personal preference grassy, and so is your call. I will say however that regular windows updates through the Internet is always advisable. And as long as you are taking the necessary precaution of installing an antivirus program, you should not be afraid of the Internet.

I have always agreed that common sense is by far the best protection against malware, without it you have no chance. So put that together with an antivirus and you will be as safe as you can be. You can never be 100% safe as new variants of malware come out on a regular basis, hence windows and antivirus updates are continualy required.

If you have your important data stored or backed up on a spare drive, then reinstalling the Operating System on your system drive should be no big deal should you run into problems with malware, or the hard drive itself. In fact sometimes over time it is a good thing to do to get your system back to a clean reliant state, as long as you have the time to reinstall your software, drivers, updates etc.

It all depends on you and your specific priorities grassy, your idea of using another system for browsing the net seems a good idea, and shows that you are in fact using your common sense. But I will stress to not be afraid of the NET, and instead enjoy and take what it has to offer, whether that be on your older system or soon to be new one, or both is your choice.

jodav

Thanks for your opinion its much appreciated. Its always good to be reasured, especially when venturing into little known territory. I have just purchased the Malwarebytes Anti Malware program and will most likely use that with an Avast anti virus program. I also have the Superantispyware pro version which i am thinking of running also. I think i'll be hanging around here for a while

You don't want to run both MalwareBytes and Avast at the same time, that can cause problems. The free version where you do on-demand scanning with MalwareBytes would have worked just fine.

You can use Malwarebytes and Avast together as long as you set up each to ignore the other's folder.

I found this topic on the subject.

Well in a top of the line system ,you would want large fast SSDs and quad graphics card.

Hi killer, appreciate your response bro, could you tell me why i would need quad graphic cards. And Is there a big difference in having quads( i assume you mean 4)rather than 2. Thanks

If your playing at the resolution of 5760 x 1200 or higher, you would want quad graphics cards. It depends on the game. Also it should be fine using MBAM and Avast together as i am using both them.

Well that is due to personal preference grassy, and so is your call. I will say however that regular windows updates through the Internet is always advisable. And as long as you are taking the necessary precaution of installing an antivirus program, you should not be afraid of the Internet.

I have always agreed that common sense is by far the best protection against malware, without it you have no chance. So put that together with an antivirus and you will be as safe as you can be. You can never be 100% safe as new variants of malware come out on a regular basis, hence windows and antivirus updates are continualy required.

If you have your important data stored or backed up on a spare drive, then reinstalling the Operating System on your system drive should be no big deal should you run into problems with malware, or the hard drive itself. In fact sometimes over time it is a good thing to do to get your system back to a clean reliant state, as long as you have the time to reinstall your software, drivers, updates etc.

It all depends on you and your specific priorities grassy, your idea of using another system for browsing the net seems a good idea, and shows that you are in fact using your common sense. But I will stress to not be afraid of the NET, and instead enjoy and take what it has to offer, whether that be on your older system or soon to be new one, or both is your choice.

jodav

Thanks for your opinion its much appreciated. Its always good to be reasured, especially when venturing into little known territory. I have just purchased the Malwarebytes Anti Malware program and will most likely use that with an Avast anti virus program. I also have the Superantispyware pro version which i am thinking of running also. I think i'll be hanging around here for a while

You don't want to run both MalwareBytes and Avast at the same time, that can cause problems. The free version where you do on-demand scanning with MalwareBytes would have worked just fine.

Point taken,thanks

You can use Malwarebytes and Avast together as long as you set up each to ignore the other's folder.

I found this topic on the subject.

Perfect, i dragged the link into a briefcase on my desktop and will read up on it later tonight.Thanks for that.