PC Upgrade

[lostcarpark]

Calling PC nerds!

I've got a pretty good idea of what I wand in my new upgraded PC, but if anyone has specific recmendations, I'd really appreciate hearing them.

Please feel to make recomendations like "buy a Mac". I appreciate them, and I know Macs are lovely, and I will buy one some day, but I need to run PC software, and I already have a number of PC components that have to integrate.

Please also feel free to say things like "don't buy that motherboard, it's shite". However, what I'd really like to know is why it's shite, and better still, what I should buy instead. I'd particularly like to hear if anyone knows of any incompatibilities or problems with anything I'm considering.

Here's what I'm looking at buying (with links to the website I'm currently planning to order from):

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3200+ 2.2 GHz Socket 754, 512 KB cache, BOXED
Motherboard: MSI K8T NEO-FIS2R Mainboard socket 754 K8T800, SATA, LAN, Raid, Firewire
Memory: TwinMOS PC3200 DDR-DIMM 1024MB Dual Pack Kit w/two matched PC3200 512MB DIMMs
Graphics Card: ATI Radeon 9800XT (I already have this)
Hard Disk: Maxtor DiamondMax 10 200GB S-ATA 8MB cache 7200RPM
Optical Drive: MSI DVD recorder DR8P IDE

I'm also considering using two SATA drives with RAID mirroring. This would be purely from the point of view of not having down-time if one drive fails. Probably over-kill, given the reliability of modern disks, but peace of mind is worth a hundred Euro. Anyone have experience of on-board RAID1 mirroring? Is it worthwhile, or does it cause any problems?

Comments

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

According to the Inq, there's a 3200+ 939. And it looks like the prices are the same for 754 and 939 where they have the same speed.

I'd have said the price sweet spot was at 3000+, myself.