Comic, for you uses Software Raid, or Intel FakeRAID would work fine, the cost of hardware raid for your setup is no where near worth the costs involved IMO.

Sweet, I like how that sounds. I'll likely ditch the SSD's and keep the 6-Core or upgrade to 12-Core; 120GB's isn't all that important when I easily take 4GB's of photos a session which would last me a few months, 330$ for four months of photos is a bit steep, especially when I delete all the un-rated/bad photos after six months.

One thing I find lacking from that is Bluetooth. But it shouldn't be hard to add that in there - without sacrificing USB slots.

Now, I found a RAID card for 15$ and 565$, and one of the differences that I'm vastly curious over is that the 565$ sports "Single Disk." I did some Googling but was only able to assume that it takes data from one disk and copies it to two disks, requiring three disks. Yes?

And truthfully, I've been eyeing RAID for a while. But the 600$ price tag from Apple was off-setting. Is it possible to setup to RAIDs within a system? Such as: Drives A & B are read as a single Drive, E. Drives C & D are read as a single Drive, F. Because that'd be awesome for both photo and client data, my Document/OS drive won't need RAID as much as it'll need an external back-up. And with the Money I'd be saving here I might as well buy a 10TB external - or so - to back-up all my on-computer data.

RAID Cards (somehow, [url] didn't work.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Productcompare.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007607&IsNodeId=1&srchInDesc=1&page=1&bop=And&ActiveSearchResult=True&CompareItemList=410|16-132-001^16-132-001-TS,16-116-072^16-116-072-S01

Here's where I'll stir more than I have with this entire post. The Mac OS is coded with all the drivers needed into the OS, and you know it'll work because the OS is coded to the hardware and the hardware is made to the OS.

On Engadget today I noticed the release of a motherboard with extremely similar specs to the one you quoted for your "insane" build, perhaps even the same one? As Kllrnohj says, the reason Mac appears to "just work" without needing any extra drivers is that they include the drivers for the hardware and only need the drivers for the limited subset of hardware they use, not because they have custom hardware for their computers or custom drivers for their hardware (other than, of course, making them work on OSX).

Sometimes, less is more. I would just opt for a less resource-intensive operating system, and more power-efficient hardware.

When programs begin to bloat, the solution is not to rush out and buy expensive hardware upgrades - just use programs that aren't bundled with superfluous GUI effects and other frills.

I can't understand why people want to fill their HDs with bloated software suites that likely run $1,000+ per single-user license, then coax themselves into buying expensive hardware upgrades solely to run said software. Just because something is huge and expensive doesn't mean it's better than the alternatives. This entirely depends on your practical needs. You might do just as well to install a Linux distribution that uses LXDE, and run some lightweight graphics suite to handle all of your designs; and this wouldn't require that you had anything greater than a Pentium III.

I agree with Kllrnohj that a PIII is not going to cut it for you, but neither do I think the $5K Mac is the way to go.

I look forward to playing ut3 on the new rig!

Frankly, you're an idiot. A PIII will never be able to edit 10 megapixel images in a fashion that could be considered anything close to usable. More features is not bloat. A bigger install is not bloat.

He wants Photoshop CS5 because Photoshop CS5 is the best, by far. GIMP is a tiny little spec in Photoshop's rear view mirror.

Also, FYI, raw images are *big*. Photoshop is tiny compared to a couple hundred RAW images.

Who said anything about The GIMP? While it's a good photo-editor, there are other graphics suites available for *nix. I'm indicating that a person should consider their practical needs over what appears to be the most robust option available to them. I see too many people fall victim to the misconception that bigger = better. This is only true if your practical needs require something so robust. If you're purchasing software that's bundled with features you'll never even know how to use, then it's a wasteful investment. While Photoshop CS5 may be a good graphics suite on its own merit, it's also impractical for everyday purposes, and quite expensive for a single license. Unless you're doing professional, industry-standard photo-editing, why would you invest in such a thing, much less the resources to meet its requirements?

Unless you're doing professional, industry-standard photo-editing

I've spent far more time with CS4 than any other photoeditor; whenever I use GIMP, I have to re-figure-out how to do a task that I can pretty much do blindfolded in Photoshop. While CS5 is expensive, it is certainly well worth the cost (at least for students) for its capabilities as well as because of our/my familiarity with it.

Who said anything about The GIMP? While it's a good photo-editor, there are other graphics suites available for *nix. I'm indicating that a person should consider their practical needs over what appears to be the most robust option available to them. I see too many people fall victim to the misconception that bigger = better. This is only true if your practical needs require something so robust. If you're purchasing software that's bundled with features you'll never even know how to use, then it's a wasteful investment. While Photoshop CS5 may be a good graphics suite on its own merit, it's also impractical for everyday purposes, and quite expensive for a single license. Unless you're doing professional, industry-standard photo-editing, why would you invest in such a thing, much less the resources to meet its requirements?

If you can afford such expensive licensing, then by all means - throw your money away for no reason; then proceed to do it all over again every time an update ships out. If you want to learn the hard way, then go right ahead.

Regarding RAID, is it possible to RAID two sets of drives separately with one card or software RAID?

You mean like 2 drives in RAID 0 with a different set of 2 drives in RAID 1? You can definitely do that in software RAID, but software RAID sucks balls, avoid like the plague. Doing it with a RAID controller would depend on the controller. I believe the RAID controller on most x58 boards can handle that just fine, and (good) dedicated cards can handle that as well.