CPU choice for DVD conversion/backup and HD choice of RAID

[justice1327]

I am new to these boards, but not new to building computers. I have built computers for about 10 yrs and helped finance my way through college. However, it has been about 5 yrs since my last full build and in the meantime I simply upgraded. Furthermore, I have failed to keep up to date with the differences in RAID and their performance, the pro/cons of faster FSB vs Cache vs Mgtz etc… This said, below you find my choices of MB, PSU, DVD burner, Vid Crd and HD. Please give me your opinions of each if you like, however, please note that my dilemma rests with the choice of CPU and DDR 2 or 3 and a HD configuration. I have read conflicting info on RAID and which is better for my uses as noted below.

Which of the below configurations of HD’s would suite me better.
One WD VRaptor w/ 16mb cache as my main drive or C: drive and 2 WD Caviar SE16 500GB set up as a RAID ( not sure if 0 or 1 is better for my uses) as my active drive.
Or use the WD Caviar SE16 500GB set up in RAID ( 0 or 1 ???) as my main drive and the Vraptor as my active use drive
Allow me to explain my uses and what I mean by active drive. 85% of what I do is make backups of DVDs and convert them to .avi format to store for later viewing on portable devices. I also convert music and play a little bit of games and internet. The programs I use are 123Copy / DVD Fab / X-Copy/ DVD-AVI / NERO / DVD-Cloner. Games are Doom, Flying Games / Need for Speed/ World at Conflict/ various sniping and first person shooter games.
By active drive my idea is this. Use my active drive to load/install all my programs on and when I begin to copy/convert use the main drive (which ever config is faster) as the temp drive until it finishes burning or converting. My rational (not to say this is correct) is that if the main drive is running the programs and copy/converting it will bottleneck even more so than HD already are.
So is the WD RAID drive as the main drive better than one Vraptor? If so which config 0 or 1?
Or is the Vraptor better as the main drive and the RAID WD as the active drive better? An example: Load DVD Cloner on the active drive Vraptor and locate the temp file onto the main drive. This way the programs can operate faster since the temp data is stored in another location.

To sum it up: which CPU/Memory is better for my use? And which config is better for my harddrives?

When answering regarding the CPU and Memory, please be specific and support your choice with factual information.

P.S. I am not into overclocking. I have played around with it but that is not my focus.

Thank you for your suggestions.

CPU: E8400 or Q9300
Memory: Either DDR1200 or DDR3 1600 (Corsiar)
I currently have the two WD Caviar already.
MB: Gigabyte - EP45T-UD3P or EP45-UD3P / ASUS-P5Q Deluxe or P5Q3 Deluxe
HD: WD Velociraptor 10K w/ 16mb cache
Vid Crd: ATI 2900 XT 512DDR3 ( Crossfire config and currently have)
PSU: Hiper Type R MKII 680 or Gigabyte ODIN GT 800W
Lite On: SATA 20X DVD burner 2mb cache (currently have two of the same)

[Cobracon]

Tom's Hardware has benchmarks covering just about everything you ask. These are documented tests, not off-the-cuff opinions. I believe you owe it to yourself to check out the site.

The very last I read, DDR3 RAM was not worth the increased cost, and it's advertised speed superiority over DDR2 (on paper) wasn't realized until trying to obtain World record CPU clock and FSB speeds which also required liquid nitrogen cooling for the system's major components. Obviously not your everyday working man's set-up.

Also, between the 2 CPUs, I'd go with the quad. Most of my justification can be found at Tom's Hardware.

[Fred Jodry]

justice 1327, please join the Forum membership as questions like the above one are best answered in the different levels. I already work in the area you cover here but my first answer would probably be excessive in detail, thoughtlessly long to read in regular Forum posting. A PM private message isn`t possible to guests.