Why choose PC133 SDRAM when the Athlon mainboard can only support PC100 memory?

Two words: Future Support.

Don't risk lamenting the fact that you purchased PC100 SDRAM for your PC three months from now when second generation Athlon mainboards that offer AGP4X and PC133 SDRAM support arrive. Instead plunk down the extra cost today and grab PC133 SDRAM if possible. Better to pay a little now, than a lot later.

We've tested the Quantum Fireball Plus KA drive previously and found that it offered strong speed with good UDMA/66 support and low noise.

GamePC has chosen to outfit the Disruptor PC with two 18GB Fireball KA drives RAID'ed together via a Promise Technology UDMA/66 PCI Raid card.

By offering this setup users are able to take advantage of the benefits that a RAID configuration offers including the ability to mirror all data to the second backup drive on the fly or combine the two individual 18GB drives into one large 36GB virtual drive.

Still, we'd recommend that users ditch this setup and instead just purchase one IBM Deskstar 34GXP UDMA/66 34GB Hard Drive from GamePC with their Disruptors. That way you save a couple hundred dollars on the total price while also getting back the PCI slot the Promise card uses without a performance penalty.

Many low quality hard drive coolers have arrived on the PC market over the past two years, often with the end result of no additional HD cooling and money wasted being all too common.

The Disruptor came equipped with two (one for each Quantum drive) Cooler Master Cool Drive units and after using them we can tell you with authority that the units have literally blown us away.

By surrounding the entire hard drive with an enclosed aluminium heatsink and then mounting two high speed small fans at the opening of the cooler's face (via a 5.25" slot in the case), the Cool Drive more than lived up to its namesake by impressively reducing the Quantum drive's temperatures while in operation.

We even found the Cool Drive units to be very effective in silencing hard drive noise to the point where we often wondered if the drives were engaged or not when the PC was on.

At $50 each, the Cool Drive coolers are pricey, but if you opt to swap out the two Quantum KA drives for a single IBM 34GXP drive as we recommended earlier you'll also be able to eliminate one of the Cool Drive units.