Whilst surfing the net for an idea of what my new machine will be like when I have to shell out for PCI Express, 64-bit etc just to play Doom III (http://www.doom3.com/) (probably ;) ), I found this lovely article (http://www.systemcooling.com/cm_stacker-01.html) on a great case (http://www.systemcooling.com/images/reviews/Cases/CM_Stacker/front_lg.jpg).

This case rocks (http://www.sundialmicro.com/cgi-bin/sundial/stct01uw.html). Its compatible with ATX and BTX motherboards apparently and supports what looks like quite a mean number of hard drives.

Although I guess I will wind up getting something that is completely BTX, this did give me an idea of what I would want my BTX system to sit in.

More here (http://www.systemcooling.com/cm_stacker-01.html).

I was of course kidding about the Doom III thing which I think we will all be playing soon but don't be surprised if the following refers to the kind of PC some of us may have when Longhorn comes out.


I am looking for something just like that when I build my new machine.

The high number of drive bays is a must. This is because my new system will probably have 8 hard drives, like this:

-1 SATA HDD for the operating system

-1 SATA HDD for temporary working space

-2 SATA HDD in RAID 1 MIRROR for data

-4 SATA HDD in RAID 0 for Multimedia datastore


Then I kind of miss have more than 2 CD-ROM drivey type things as I did when I used to be the SCSI king, so I want maybe:

3 X DVD RW Drive

I used to have 1 x DVD, 1 X CD-ROM, 1 x CD-RW when I had SCSI and believe me you can use that third drive!

I also need some way to have 2 PCI Express graphics cards , or something like that if its possible beccause I have 3 monitors, and I need 2 graohics cards to do this (one is dual, of course.)

However, maybe I could buy 2 x 19" flat screen monitor for this system.

As I think you can read here:

http://www4.tomshardware.com/motherboard/20040301/alderwood-01.html

BTX use DDR2 which have like 4 GB on one module easy. I guess I would start out with probably 3 x 1 GB modules.

The processors would be 64 bit of course, probably Intel and of course 2 or more of them.

Needless to say, this involves saving money.

Wow.. good for you if you can afford all that ;)

Yeah but at the same time the price of these things will drop and I'll try to save money instead of frittering it away on upgrades here and there. I am pretty sure I will need a new machine for longhorn alright.

Im surprised your going to even use longhorn :p

Well, not in its present form but certainly when it comes out.