Wow…I do understand the reason for dual rail and I also understand that you are terrible at analogies.
PC Power and Cooling is pretty much as good as it gets for PSUs. Their are few to none better and yet all of their PSUs are single-rail units.
Dual rail setups usually have rails that are rated at a lower amperage. It might be 15 or 18 amps or something. You get one component that hogs the amperage and the PSU shuts down. Whereas you get the best PSU possible such as this one: http://www.pcpower.com/products/viewproduct.php?show=S75QB
with a massive 60amp single rail and you’re good to go.
I got a nice case from Aerocool, called the Extreme Engine 3T, it has a 250mm fan on the side (yes, 250mm), a 140mm in the front and space for a 120mm in the back. It didn’t come with a powersupply, but had hardware fan controls and was very easy to set up.
Thing is freaking dead silent and runs my case icy cool. Don’t go with Alienware… and beware any fan below 120mm sizes… the noise will slowly drive you insane.
I have that PC Power and Cooling PSU, and I can tell you that it will not disappoint. There’s no way this case comes with anything close to that, so please look the other way.
Putting it together is MUCH EASIER nowaday … No JUMPERS to mess with. no need to worry about what clock speed/bus speed/ voltage you need to set the jumper to without fry your $100 Chip…
as long as you know how to set the Jumpers on IDE Drives to “cable select” or “auto detect” you should be all set…
no more mess around D:\setup command…no more mess with FDISK command, no more mess with Format command, no more mess around with “you gotta install dos before you install windows…” “your must have previous version of windows to use this upgrade version of windows” or “you can not use full verison of windows on a machine with previous versions of windows” kind of craps…
remember how to fool win 95 upgrade version and use as a full version anyone?
answer:…fake “GDI.exe” and “win386.exe” file…
Microsoft has come a long way to prevent piracy so be prepared to “buy a real verision of windows xp” which may cost an arm and a leg… unless…of course…if you know somebody work at Microsoft…then you can buy a copy of Vista for less than $40
Dual rail (or multiple rail since some have quad) is intended to help keep a steady consistent voltage level to critical components like the cpu and memory. You put the motherboard on one rail and all of the hard drives and media drives on another rail.
Then as drives spin up and down and seek when you access data, the voltage fluctuations only impact that rail and leave the other rail full of smooth clean power. drives and fans are much more tolerant to fluctuations in voltage than the motherboard/cpu/memory.
That’s all fine until a massive power hog of a video card suddenly demands much more current (power) than the rail can supply. Then, in that case, a single huge rail would be advantageous.
I basically looks like a fairly nice case… However, I lean towards ANTEC. I think that they have the best cases around… I do not need a case with a funny looking from just for looks… I prefer to pack the punch than put on a good show. My favorite case is, and what I run is the ANTEK P190 with 1200 watts of power. Well worth the extra, and it holds up great, fans are all 120 MM and quite to boot. Check it out.
thanks for the pics, do you know if the 8800gtx will fit in the case? the video card is almost 12" long. can you measure the distance? i’m jumping on this if it does fit.