hi, i am going to configure my dream machine. it may not be the top of the line, but that much i can afford. OS: Win XP Prof 32 bit PROCESSOR: Core i7 i920 D0 2.66GHz MOTHERBOARD: MSI X58 Pro GRAPHICS CARD: Palit GTX260 896MB GDDR3 SONIC or Sapphire HD4850 512MB GDDR3 (which one is better?) RAM: Corsair TR3X3G-1333 C9 3GB Kit ( can i go for 4 GB ? ) PSU: Corsair TX 650 (is it sufficient? ) HARD DRIVE: Two Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB hard drives in RAID 1 CABINET: NZXT Guardian 921 is my configuration is all right? my goals are playing games, to learn 3ds max, photoshop. i want to know does win xp support 4GB RAM? some people are saying that it can support max 3 GB ! is it true? can anyone guide me how to set up RAID 1? i was going through tutorials & mobo manual downloaded from MSI website. they are saying i have to put RAID drivers in a floppy from where i should install. but nowadays cabinets do not a floppy drive & i'm in no mood buying so. so what should i do? should i configure hard drives in bios to RAID before installing windows? or i can do that later on? lots of question. don't whether i picked up right forum category. many many thanks to all of you. i can proceed whenever i will get green signal from you all. regards, sidhu

I'm sure you will be getting a ton of additional comments, so I'm just going to cover two things I notice. First, go with a 64 Bit OS, this will "future-proof" you a bit longer, provides better performance in some areas, and will let you more than 4GB of ram. XP 64bit was not so great. I'm on Vista x64 and love it, but many people despise Vista. If you wait a bit, you can buy Vista x64, and also be eligible for a free upgrade to Windows 7 x64 when it comes out. The best way to get RAID working is to set up the hardware raid, then install Windows. If you decide to install XP, you'll probably need drivers. The good news is, many newer motherboards will allow you to put them on a USB flash drive instead of a floppy. If you go with Vista or Windows 7, you may not even need to install drivers manually. There are also other ways to get the drivers loaded by Windows (such as by slip-streaming them into the install CD) but these get more complicated. -Ryan Adams Free Computer Tips and more:http://RyanTAdams.com Paid Tech Support: Black Diamond

many many thanks. i think that i will use my own copy of xp. according to your advice i logged on to microsoft's website for windows 7. thinking of installing beta version. will it be good. i use many small but useful programs. don't know whether it will support it. thanks once again.