I am trying to build a computer that will primarily be used to handle unwieldy MS Office applications for work (i.e. 100+ MB spreadsheets with lots of number crunching) along with some document creation (Word to PDF mostly). It will be running Windows XP Pro (I assume I should go ahead and get 64-bit) and Excel 2007. I don't want to go with integrated graphics, because at some point I may decide there is a game that I want to upgrade my graphics card for, so I'd like to have that ability. Price isn't a big concern, but I'd rather stay more in the best value range than on the bleeding edge. Running quietly doesn't trump speed, but should be a consideration. I am willing to overclock.

Here is what I am looking at currently:

Case: Antec Solo
PS: Corsair 520HX

CPU: Intel Q6600
Mobo: GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3R
Memory: CORSAIR Dominator 2GB DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500)
Video Card: EVGA 256-P2-N541-T2 GeForce 7600GS 256MB

Hard Drive: Western Digital Raptor WD1500ADFD
DVD: LITE-ON 20X DVD±R DVD Burner with LightScribe Black SATA Model LH-20A1L-06
Heatsink: Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme CPU Cooler

Specific Questions:
1) Is it worth it to me to upgrade to the Corsair 620HX? I don't think it is necessary.
2) Do my CPU, Mobo, Mem, VC combo work together? Would it be worth it to go ahead and get 4GB of RAM?
3) Will the Thermalright heatsink fit in the case?
4) Am I heinously bottlenecked anywhere? Is RAIDing Raptors a good option for me when I am dealing with a lot of opening, closing and saving of huge office files?

Thanks for any input. I've probably read hundreds of these threads, but I am only a very occasional system builder. My last one was the computer I am using now and replacing, an old P4 Northwood.

(Edited to add links)

1_No
2_For more applications 2GB is enough , but when u have the money , then get 4GB

3_Havent had any Antec case so i cant answer that sorry

4_No u wont be bottlenecked anywhere

hi there. For what you say you want to do, you don't really need the Quad Core since Office doesn't support it yet, and if you want to OC you can get something cheaper and overclock it. Maybe something like the E6750. If you have the money, however, you can't go wrong with Q6600.

For the ram, drop the 8500, bigger freq, doesn't mean people. Get some DDR2-800 Ram and save some money.

For the Harddrive, I don't really think you need the Raptor, I have one and I don't see much performance gain, if any at all, on office application and even most games. I think you should save your money and get a bigger/cheaper seagate SATA drive.

For the Graphics card, you can find a 1950Pro for around 137, you should get that instead of the 7600 if you plan to do gaming in the future and if those games are graphic intensive. If not, you can go with something like 8600GT or HD 2600XT.

For Motherboard it depends on what you need. Do you need esata or firewire? If not, you can get the gigabyte p35-DS3R.

Your PSU will be just fine, you wont even use all the power it generates so you don't need to get the 620HX.

Excel 2007 ,Q6600 vs E6860 :
http://xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/d [...] html#sect0

So I'm wrong, sue me Thanx for the info Maz

Yeah, Excel 2007 finally supports multi-core. It seems decent at spreading the workload around, but obviously, depending on the structure of the spreadsheet, it can't always do that. I try to build spreadsheets that lend themselves to parallelism. I was wondering about if I really needed memory clocked to 1066. Would it make it any easier to overclock or am I really going to do just as well with 800?

I was thinking I might be better off with a bigger drive, especially since my usage is less an issue of lots of seeks and more an issue of regularly having to load and save large files, and there are 7200rpm drives that can do that just as well. Still, I like the idea of having my OS on a Raptor and the hard drive is definitely a bottleneck.

I don't plan to do any gaming on the computer at the present, and if I do decide to change my mind, I'll either be getting an 8800 or whatever is looking good at the time. I'd rather spend as little as possible on a video card at the present, so I chose the cheapest from Tom's value list.

I don't think I'll need firewire for anything and I'm not familiar with esata.

For the Memory, you wont even use 800 unless you over clock. RAM runs at the speed of your cpu, since its 1:1 ratio. The Q6600 is 333FSB I believe and ram is double that, so around 666, meaning with 800 you still wont use it to its full potential.

If you really want to have a raptor, maybe get the 36GB one for your OS and use the bigger drive for storage.

If you just want a basic card, get something like the 7300GS or even 7200GS, they are really cheap and since you aren't gaming at the moment, you don't need anything like the 7600GS.

if i were you i'd just get 800mhz cl4 ram...you dont need 1066 unless you're going for 533mhz fsb! you'd need watercooling or some exotic cooling just to run your PC.

save a few $ and go for good 800mhz ram, good luck

So maybe try some of this instead?

Patriot Extreme Performance 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)

If the large amount of number crunching will be on critical data for work, you should reconsider your choice of motherboard (and memory). Specifically, you should choose a motherboard that supports ECC memory. The P35 chipset does not include ECC support, however some of the upcoming X38 boards will fully implement it. If you want to stick with an Intel chipset, there are a few current boards that implement ECC, for example Intel's D975XBX2. If you get an ECC capable motherboard and in the future no longer need to work on critical data, you can always upgrade the memory to faster non-ECC modules and then turn off ECC in the BIOS to eliminate the slight overhead.

Is there an article somewhere that would summarize the benefits of using ECC memory over regular memory? Currently, when we occasionally get locked up or crash, we just re-run the data set completely. Does ECC memory primarily concern itself with preventing data corruption? If so, no single piece of data is "mission critical" so to speak, so while foul ups aren't desired, they aren't catastrophic. I don't know enough about ECC memory to know whether it would be worthwhile or not.

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/foru [...] ory-memory

The primary reason for using ECC memory is indeed to prevent corruption. Specifically, to insure that the number that you save into memory is the same as the number that you later read out of memory. This is of little to no importance in gaming, image editing or word processing because the usual worst case result would be a mis-colored pixel or a spelling error. However, if a number changes in a spreadsheet or financial database, or if a line of programming code develops a spelling error, or if a number changes in a calculation that will determine the size of a beam in a bridge, then the ramifications could be huge. It is rare that data changes lead to system crashes or even system hiccups. In fact, without such an event you likely would never know that data corruption had occurred. Therefore the fundamental question about data corruption is, do you care?

If you go back a few decades, the primary reason that Apple was unable to make inroads into business was that the IBM PC and its clones all used parity memory and Apple didn't. MIS managers therefore considered all Apple computers as toys, and relegated them to non-mission critical areas such as advertising. Apple did make one computer for a short while that accepted a proprietary memory card that held the parity bits, but it was unsuccessful. Well into the 1990s, virtually all PC memory modules contained the 9th parity chip, but that began to fall out of favor as PCs were targeted at the home market.

For a mixed use PC, the most cost-effective approach to ECC is to use a motherboard designed to work with un-buffered memory. The modules are widely available with only a minimal price penalty reflective of the extra memory chip(s) and lower production volumes. Often such modules are to be found in the "server memory" section of web sites (NewEgg, etc.). As you drill down to find an appropriate module, you will often be given a choice between UN-buffered, FP-DIMM, Registered, etc., the later types being the exclusive domain of servers and workstations.

Another area where ECC is used extensively today is in hard drives. As storage densities have increased, read/write error rates have exploded. Without the ECC circuitry built in all current hard drives, they would be unusable. It is not uncommon for there to be tens-of-thousands of "corrected" hard drive errors each day. This isn't a problem unless "un-corrected" errors begin to appear.

One final point -- read/write memory errors do not mean defective hardware. To the contrary, all digital components and assemblies have bit-error-rates, including hard drives. ECC is just the most common way to attempt to fix the errors when they occur.