hiredgun

Five or six years ago I used to build PCs (budget gaming or general home use) but I have been out of the game so long that it feels a bit intimidating trying to get back into it. I am not so lazy that I will simply ask you all to come up with full builds, but I could certainly use a few pointers to help me back on my feet.

What I need to do is build a new PC whose sole purpose will be to process very large amounts of data. So graphics is a non-issue; a very cheap optical drive will suffice; and the box will definitely be running Linux (probably Debian or openSUSE) as the primary OS.

My instinct tells me that since intense data analysis is computationally intensive, I want to jump for a quad core or even dual quad core. Is this correct? (I am potentially worried that a Linux distro might not take full advantage of the most modern processors... so am I better off with a dual core?)

My guess is also that I should get a decent, but not necessarily gaming-strength amount of RAM - say 2GB.

For the hard drive, I would eventually like a hardware RAID array to insure against the loss of data, but for the moment a single ordinary high-speed drive will do. 7200rpm is what I should be looking for in terms of speed, right? Or are faster drives widely available now at decent prices?

For anyone who can't take the time to give specific hardware recommendations, I would also truly appreciate being pointed to any particular threads or articles that give a concise overview of the current state of hardware... what are the common features of today's motherboards, what chipsets are now in wide use, what kinds of RAM are available now... etc. If such a resource exists, that is.