My Dual Harper - Asus Z7S WS living review *56K warning*

[jcool]

Well, it depends. A LOT of raptors around here have died, but I guess if they die then they die quickly. And if they last, they'll last forever.
The old raptor is a little too noisy for my taste though, and HDD speed doesn't really matter for the crunchers OS.
I'm still contemplating what to do about my HDD setup, whether I'll install the OS directly on the Raid 5 array, which will effectively eliminate the possibility to shut down the drives when not needed. On the other hand, I will save one disk and too many spinup/downs aren't healthy anyways.

I love having spare parts. I tried 3 video cards to rule them out over my stupid new 24" LCD that liked to turn on and off at random. I'm getting reading to run 3dmark06 on one 3870 here in a bit, will let you know. Not bad on your X2 - does that use about the same watts as the single 3870? I might consider that over the 4850 depending on price. Sorry about your issues today, trust me I feel for ya.

The X2 eats about double the power of a single 3870
Also, two single 3870's in CF mode will need considerably less power than a 3870X2 when in idle. You could also pair your single 3870 up with a 4850, that should work well too.