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griffy208 wrote:
Okay, so I have three things I would like to purchase for my XPS 700 at the moment:

Another cd/dvd burner
A gig stick of RAM
Another harddrive

I plan to get stuff from ebay or newegg, and for RAM, I plan to get the same speed.

Question is, which part should I buy first? The optical drive is cheapest.
I need to figure out which size HDD to get.

Thanks in advance!

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I would suggest you biy a SATA cd/dvd burner.  I have heard adding an IDE drive can slow down the system, especially on boot.  I have been looking for one, but they don't seem very cheap.  Perhaps I will wait a while.  You  might want to wait and see on the RAM too.  There has been no statement or no reason to think Dell will actually give us a BIOS update that will allow 800 speed Ram, but I am still holding out hope.  I have seen quite a few SATA harddrive deals lately though.

If you got it with the XPS 700, it is SATA.  They are the thin plastic cables with a small plug.  The same plugs that run from the 6 places on the mobo to the DVD bays and harddrive bays.  They also use different power plugs.  The XPS is set up for SATA, but does still have a few IDE ribbons.

This is a FAR better SATA dvd/cd burner, the Plextor PX-755SA

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16827249006

 

This model is even sold in Fry's stores for only $115 or so right now.

 

-David

 

The ide optical drive doesn't really effect the speed of your system, but if you have a SATA cable open, then you might as well buy that.   The drive is limited to its read/write speed, which for even for the best drives on the market, it is the same for both ide and SATA drives.  I would prefer to install a lightscribe dvd burner. I was originally going to replace the dvd drive with a ide lightscribe dvd burner, but then decided that there was no reason to take it out if I already have the slots. I purchased it on sale at best buy for $82 a few weeks ago.  Not sure what to do with three optical drives though.

 

You definitely want to make sure any hard drive you add is a SATA drive.  I also added a 500 GB hard drive and will add a fourth drive as the need arises.

 

 

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griffy208 wrote:
I think I also want to swap my X1900 XTX out for an X1950 XTX at some point. What do you guys think?

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I personally would wait for the DX10 cards and go with dual Nvidia cards.  That will really take advantage of the SLI chipset and future proof your system.