Well, if cost is remotely a concern, then downgrade the motherboard to a ddr2 variant and get 4gb of ram. Also the GX2 is somewhat outdated. Switch it out with a GTX260 or a Radeon 4870 if possible.
Yes, oem hard drives will come wrapped in bubble wrap in a plain brown box. You will definitly need to buy a cable. I would personally go with Vista if for no other reason than DX10 support.
So I don't need 2 of the Raptor operating hard drives?
Unholy_Vanguard
No, you really don't. Contrary to popular belief, they don't effect load times by much at all. I would try to switch out the three 74GB raptors with a 150GB raptor like this. For the big storage drive, get a 500GB drive like this. And don't worry about RAID. I can tell you from personal experience, it's not worth it.
Overall it's a very nice computer and will handle anything you throw at it (short of Crysis on all high settings). However as a buyer you should be aware that Intel's processors beat AMD's at most price points and the 9800GTX is all but outdated. See if you can substitute it out for an HD 4850. As for the processor, I wouldn't worry about it too much; that's plenty of horsepower if all you do is game.
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