a fast one with lots of memory and cpu speed 45nm intel core duo quad, and a couple of terrrabyte(or more) of hard drive, blue ray reader, will use it to do blueray and x-plane, want 3-sata, firewire, usb2.0, also hook up to large screen lcd tv, and maybe use as HD dvr for games. I like shuttle, can I do that with shuttle or do I need mid tower? if I go mid tower what motherboard? what should I do fellow HFers?
I wouldn't go shuttle for a high powered rig. Too much heat in too close proximity and power supplies that are not up to the task.
Not worth it. You used to be able to save hundreds building a machine yourself. The margins are so low, its just not worth the time anymore. JMO.
It'll also teach you a lot about how hardware and software work together along the way, which will help you avoid 'mysterious' problems in the future...
Agree with Luke and Ignatius. I don't think that a shuttle rig is going to get you where you want to go. Over the past couple years, I've built systems with gigabyte, asus, and a cheapo ECS board for a server build. My next board will be gigabyte.
ah, good advice so far, thanks for the answers, how about some specifics? I am familiar with newegg. This would be the first one I would build, are there any good sites with examples with pics of step by step of construction so I can get an idea of what I might be getting myself into? and on the shuttles, if I went with a less powerful rig, would shuttle be ok, or should I foreget shuttle?
If you're really going to do it, I'd suggest laying down some $$ for Scott Mueller's 'Upgrading and Repairing PCs'. It's been the freaking Bible of building your own rig for years. Totally overkill on information, but you will know every damn thing about a PC you'd ever want. It's ridiculously detailed on every facet, but there is a good 'step by step' section also... I've built 3 Asus rigs and always had good luck with them; I also put together a Gigabyte whose onboard NIC went out after about 2 years, but that was awhile back, they have a good rep...
I had the exact same nic problem with an asus board, dead on arrival. IMO there is very little to differentiate most major brand boards unless you totally geek out. Giga had a much better support website than asus. Most of the time when I tried I couldn't even access their site or it was really slow. That's really the only thing that would push me to giga over asus.
The small Lian-Li cases are awesome (the ones with 2 external 5.25" bays). Buy a good (Silverstone), MODULAR, power supply. Pony up for a good mobo (Asus P5Q is a good one, but the chipset cooler is atrocious). Quad cores are a waste of money for the next five years unless all you do is encode video or run Cinebench. The E8500 is the part of a QX9770 that you can actually use, and it costs $185. Zerotherm and Zalman make great CPU coolers, but do not use the flat Zerotherm one with the P5Q. This is the cooler with the fan that pushes air onto the mobo like a stock heatsink, but you can't install it so that it pushes air over the chipset on the P5Q. The Nirvana 120 is a monster, and it will fit in the cases that I mentioned above. SLI generally doesn't pan out the way you want because older graphics cards don't drop in price relative to their performance versus new cards. You wind up saving money by buying a new card rather than adding an identical one. Finally, a few 32-64 GB SSDs in a RAID0 will give you a nice performance boost, though you have to be very careful about which drives you get (some of them, like the OCZ Core series, suck donkey balls and still cost a lot). Don't try this if you are on a tight budget or are uncomfortable setting up a software RAID (which is much easier in linux).