Tekforums

Hi all

Looking into buying a new PC and probably spend about Ã,£1300~ on everything except a keyboard, monitor and speakers.

Im definitely going down the AMD route and was looking at the following hardware from Scan.co.uk

AMD Opteron 64 165 Socket939 , Denmark Core, 2x 1.8GHz , 2MB Cache, Retail  Ã,£178.75 Ã,£210.03  - Cheapest dual core 2mb L2 cache Athlon 64 I could find. Will defo be overclocking.

512MB XFX 7900GTX Mem Clock 1600 MHz ,GPU 650 MHz , 24 Pipes, Dual DVI-I , HDTV  Ã,£324.95 Ã,£381.82  - Cheapest 7900GXT I could find.
 
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music Sound Card  Ã,£64.29 Ã,£75.54  - Is this about the best gaming sound card out there?
 
2GB (2X1GB) Corsair TwinX DDR2, PC4000 (500), 184 Pin, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 3-4-4-8  Ã,£129.89 Ã,£152.62  WRONGLY LISTED AS DDR2
 
4 x 80 GB HGST (IBM/Hitachi) Deskstar 7K80 , SATA II , 7200 rpm , 8MB Cache ,NCQ  Ã,£29.48 Ã,£138.56  - Yep, 4, going for serious RAID 0!
 
600W Silverstone Strider ST60F Quiet SLi Dual PCI-E EPS12v ATX Quad 12v v2.01 120mm Fan PSU Ã,£76.69 Ã,£90.11

Coolermaster Stacker RC-830 Silver Trim with Black Mesh w/o PSU Super-Hi End Ã,£135.89 Ã,£159.67

NEC ND-4570A-GNB Black 16x16 DVDÃ,±RW Dual Layer DVD-Writer OEM UK  Ã,£23.22 Ã,£27.28

1.44Mb Sony Black Floppy Disk Drive OEM  Ã,£3.99 Ã,£4.69 - Going to need one as I have Win XP 64bit and wont be getting Vista for a while, so need a Floppy for setting up raid drivers :(

Just need a motherboard, mouse and a CPU cooling solution.  Ill probably go for a DFI Lan Party board from elsewhere as Scan dont sell them.  As for a mouse, need some recommendations.  I want a really good GAMING mouse, preferably wired(unless its a wireless one with NO lag), uses a laser and it must have buttons on the side of the mouse for using in games.  As for cooling, Ive already got a Thermochill 120.3 radiator and a Eheim 1250 pump, so would only need a waterblock, reservoir and tubing.  Anyone got any recommendations on a waterblock?  Paulus?  Shaun?  Having said that, Im really tempted to go all air cooling as Im not too sure whether I can do with the hassle of watercooling and noise wont be an issue.

Anyone got any suggestions on the rest of the system?  Anything that they think should be changed?

Cheers guys

Hello :) the walrus is back :)

Yep :D  So out of the loop though now :(

Starting to make new machine for my son, will be socket 939 m-atx have a nice but used antec aluminum case to start with.

Great stuff, what CPU you going for?  Single or dual core?

I think single core, should be cheap but possible to play games on, he has a 440 BX with a convertor to use a tualatin celery at 1.4 gH and a ati 9200 which works amazingly well he plays CS over steam with no problems.

Probably going to just go air cooling too, that Coolmaster Stacker case can take 9 120mm fans.  So, maybe go for a Thermalright XP-90C or XP120.

I have an opteron 170 and you certainly wont be disappointed with the dual core opterons, mine reaches fx60 levels on default volts with the retail heatsink.

I got a DFI Lan Party and it was the Bees-Kness when i got it but im not sure whats out there now. Mine overclocks well and does the job.

Quote from: evilslyI have an opteron 170 and you certainly wont be disappointed with the dual core opterons, mine reaches fx60 levels on default volts with the retail heatsink.

Exactly what I hope to achieve :)

Quote from: ERUI got a DFI Lan Party and it was the Bees-Kness when i got it but im not sure whats out there now. Mine overclocks well and does the job.

Yeah, thinking about the DFI Lan Party Expert board........

yeah deffo wont be dissapointed with the x2, its a bit improvment :)

I wouldent go for the 4 diskis in raid tho, knightfever has 4 x 200gig sata1 drives in raid 0, and tbh theres no difference in preformance over just 2 disks :o
(no difference in benchmarks, and cant notice any difference using it)

tho maybe a proper hardware raid card might improve things ?.... especially if you can find one for the PCI-E slot ? tho there mega bucks iirc :(

I just got a logitech G7 lazer wireless moust too, its Ã,£60 for a mouse, but it rocks, no lag at all, 1 side button, nice wheel movement, and the wheel can go left and right too (tho ive never used that)

Quote from: knightywheel movement, and the wheel can go left and right too (tho ive never used that)

my Ã,£20 m$ mouse has done that about 2 years ago  :P

Cheers Knighty... Looking into the HD situation at the moment.  Was already thinking of going down the 2 disk route instead from a power/heat point of view.  But also, 2 larger drives will have larger platters, and larger platters means faster drives.  So, looking at 2 x 250 GB HGST (IBM/Hitachi) Deskstar T7K250 , SATA II , 7200 rpm , 8MB Cache ,NCQ.  Theyve got 125GB platters, as opposed to the 40GB ones in the 80GB drives I was looking at before.

Already looked at that mouse and not totally impressed by the lack of buttons and placement of buttons.  Think I may carry on using my MS intellimouse V1.1 for a while before I decide on anything.

Scan?  :shock:

How about a Raptor or two?

The newer MS wireless mice have months of battery life.

yeah I liked my wirelsee inteli mouse, only upgraded because that one broke, and the G7 was the onlie wireless lazer mouse i could find :o

Quote from: CeathreamhnanScan?  :shock:

How about a Raptor or two?

The newer MS wireless mice have months of battery life.

Yeah, Scan, best prices I could find and never had issues with them before.  74GB raptors cost too much and 36GB ones arent all that fast.  500GB will come in handy too :)

Nice choice of kit  :)

I have a 4400+ running at 2400MHz on very quiet air 24/7 very impressed and well worth the money IMO :D

I would go for DFI Lanparty nF4 SLI-DR, avoid the Expert it has major issues.

Thermaltake Big Typhoon is the best cooler at the mo and only 16dB, but seeing noise isnt a issue swap it for a higher flow fan  :D

i wouldnt go for the deathstar drives walrus :shock:

i built a new machine over chrimbo, x2 4400 ect and im running 2x80gb seagate 7200.9 drives and its fast! plus i NEVER hear a noise from them, even when working hard  :mrgreen:

Quote from: Rhinoi wouldnt go for the deathstar drives walrus :shock:

i built a new machine over chrimbo, x2 4400 ect and im running 2x80gb seagate 7200.9 drives and its fast! plus i NEVER hear a noise from them, even when working hard  :mrgreen:

why shouldnt he get the hitachi drives?

Ive been running some HGST recent spec drives for a year or two now (only just got a bigger Seagate), theyve been fine. They make a funny eeeh-ooooh-eeeh noise regularly now and then :lol:

/me is tempted to get an extra dive now to raid :o

i get slowdown when im compressing/uncompressing big (4gig +) files :(

its all disk slow down too :(

A few points (Hi Will!)

First off, theres nothing wrong at all with IBM drives these days, although the Seagate drives would be quieter but thats about it.

Second, DFI LanParty boards are stil the daddies to my knowledge, the SLI-DR being the best of the bunch.

Thirdly, yes the XtremeMusic is probably the best gaming soundcard out if you dont want to buy the Elite, the op amps are more favourable.

Ive had all sorts of issues with the IBM Deskstars.  But having read many reviews of the Hitachi Deskstars it would appear that they are probably the quietest and fastest drives overall.  Thus my choice.

Ok, DFI it is, but might pass on the expert as Ive read quite a few issues about them.

Im really only buying this PC to play games and do some music recording.  So the Creative card should do the trick.  I might even try to get back into programming with this PC too as Ive been doing it a lot more at work recently and getting a thirst for it.  Even have an idea for a program and I cant find a free one available :)

Quote from: ShaunNice choice of kit  :)

I have a 4400+ running at 2400MHz on very quiet air 24/7 very impressed and well worth the money IMO :D

I would go for DFI Lanparty nF4 SLI-DR, avoid the Expert it has major issues.

Thermaltake Big Typhoon is the best cooler at the mo and only 16dB, but seeing noise isnt a issue swap it for a higher flow fan  :D

Big Typhoon, yeah, read a 30 heatsink review and that one looked favourable, so will probably go for that if I do go aircooling.  Cant make my mind up.

Quote from: brummiewhy shouldnt he get the hitachi drives?

main reason is noise, but they have a bad past too. whereas the seagates are practically silent, very fast and have been ultra reliable for me :D

New PC ordered :D

Hopefully itll be here this week, just depends on how quick Scan get their 512mb NV7900GTX stocks in :)

Someone else bought into the hype of RAID 0.

1.) Benchmarks prove nothing
2.) It WILL make your box slower in many conditions.
3.) Installing the OS on RAID 0 is bad - dont do it, it WILL slow things down.
4.) RAID 1 will be faster for reads than RAID 0 - and  your disks are mirrored.
5.) PATA/SATA disks suck, they will die - and when one goes you loose ALL your data with RAID0.

Cornet

^^^

1.) balls, they prove how fast your system preforms in comparison to another system running the same benchmark, and depending on what there testing they prove a whole lot (like a full system test)

2.) balls. how will it make your box slower ? running raid 0 *can* increase the load on the CPU very slightly, but thats normally down to the fact that it is/can process a lot more to/from the disk than a non raid 0 system

3.) balls. why ? faster access to needed OS files, faster loading times, faster swap file, i cant see any reason it would be slower ? and having run a few systems normally then in riad0, in my experience it sped things up, a lot

4.) balls. how did you work that out ? no its not.

5,) balls. they might die, something bad might happen, but your in just the same boat as if you have 1 drive, 2 x 200 gig drives are better than 1 400 gig drive for speed, and drives dieing is pretty rare these days, especially without warning, as always back up your important data.

Cornet where is the hype???  RAID0 has been around for years and a lot of people who advocated it years ago still do today.
In a properly configured system RAID0 will not slow it down and saying other wise is harking back to the days of sub 500MHz systems  :lol:

Yes your right PATA/SATA  drives do fail but the only people who complain when they loose all there data are the ones dumb enough to have no redundancy.
Whether that be an automatic methods or backing up important stuff manually.

Quote from: ShaunCornet where is the hype???  RAID0 has been around for years and a lot of people who advocated it years ago still do today.
In a properly configured system RAID0 will not slow it down and saying other wise is harking back to the days of sub 500MHz systems  :lol:

Yes your right PATA/SATA  drives do fail but the only people who complain when they loose all there data are the ones dumb enough to have no redundancy.
Whether that be an automatic methods or backing up important stuff manually.

The very reason i wont go RAID0 is becuase its a constant round of back ups.

go raid 0+1 then :p

do you use raid 1 at the moment brummy ?

if not... the are you constantly backing up now ?
by the same logic as above, you should be :p

Quote from: knightygo raid 0+1 then :p

do you use raid 1 at the moment brummy ?

if not... the are you constantly backing up now ?
by the same logic as above, you should be :p

:stupid:

Raid level 0 shouldnt even be called Raid - it should be AID - as there is no redundancy

I have a 200GB HD drive which I will use for doing manual backups of important data.  So Im fine in that respect.

With regards to the other things you talked about Cornet, you are completely wrong.

Ive used RAID 0 before and know for a fact that it was faster in use, games NOTICABLY loaded quicker than they did with a single drive.

Just look forward to getting it all now so I can set it up :)

WIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiil


HALOOOOoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo


I have that memory, kicks ass

CPU though you should go for the HYper modular, good performing psu, not the best yeah, but the modular system certanly makes things easy

The PSU I ordered is modular :D  Much better PSU than the Hiper Power too I would think.  Ã,£90 vs Ã,£58.

Quad 12v rails too :D

Memory, I actually went for 2 x 1GB G.Skill PC4000 in the end.

Quote from: knighty^^^

1.) balls, they prove how fast your system preforms in comparison to another system running the same benchmark, and depending on what there testing they prove a whole lot (like a full system test)

But benchmarks prove nothing in the real world.

Quote2.) balls. how will it make your box slower ? running raid 0 *can* increase the load on the CPU very slightly, but thats normally down to the fact that it is/can process a lot more to/from the disk than a non raid 0 system

Its slower than Raid 1, the increased load on the PCI bus, or the cpu cycles if its software raid I would have thought just off of the top of my head. Much like shoving loads of USB attachments into a PC. If your a fan of benchmarks as you appear to be, every little helps right?

Quote3.) balls. why ? faster access to needed OS files, faster loading times, faster swap file, i cant see any reason it would be slower ? and having run a few systems normally then in riad0, in my experience it sped things up, a lot

Its only faster on writes, its actually slower on reads.

Quote4.) balls. how did you work that out ? no its not.

because he can read.

Quote from: FAQ on raid (RFC style)Raid Level 0 - Striping - Data is segmented and split onto multiple spindles.
Short Reads - Easily handles multiple simultaneous reads
Long Reads - Single operation can be split and processed in
parallel
Short Writes - Easily handles multiple simultaneous reads
Long Writes - Single operation can be split and processed in parallel
Redundancy - None
Cost - Good (no extra hardware)

Raid Level 1 - Mirroring - Duplicate data is kept on multiple splindles
Short Reads - Faster (shorter latency) since resolution can be from any of multiple disks
Long Reads - Faster since resolution can be from any of multiple disks
Short Writes - Slower since need to write to multiple disks
Long Writes - Slower since need to write to multiple disks
Redundancy - Excellent
Cost - Expensive - at least double the spindle cost

Quote5,) balls. they might die, something bad might happen, but your in just the same boat as if you have 1 drive, 2 x 200 gig drives are better than 1 400 gig drive for speed, and drives dieing is pretty rare these days, especially without warning, as always back up your important data.

Your 2 times more likely to suffer a catastrophic failure, than you are with no raid, with raid 1 you are half as likely as a normal non-raid install to suffer any dataloss.

Quote from: knighty1.) ...

Already been said - benchmarking proves nothing in real world.

Quote2.) balls. how will it make your box slower ? running raid 0 *can* increase the load on the CPU very slightly, but thats normally down to the fact that it is/can process a lot more to/from the disk than a non raid 0 system

This is naff all to do with the CPU. Its the speed at which the disks can read/write data.
If you actually knew anything about RAID then you would know that the most important thing to get right with a RAID0 setup is the stripe size.
Getting the stripe size right so it actually increases performance depends on you knowing the size of the files that you are going to be working with.

Read this for a full explanation.

Quote3.) balls. why ? faster access to needed OS files, faster loading times, faster swap file, i cant see any reason it would be slower ? and having run a few systems normally then in riad0, in my experience it sped things up, a lot

This relates to 2.) - OS installs contain lots of differently sized files. Putting your SWAP on raid0 would give some speed increase thou.

Quote4.) balls. how did you work that out ? no its not.

More heads, less latency (see M3ta7H3ads post)

Quote5,) balls. they might die, something bad might happen, but your in just the same boat as if you have 1 drive, 2 x 200 gig drives are better than 1 400 gig drive for speed, and drives dieing is pretty rare these days, especially without warning, as always back up your important data.

Its basic maths... again see M3ta7h3ads post.

As for the use "RAID 0+1" rubbish:
1.) Use RAID 10 not RAID 0+1 (see this

2.) Again getting stripe size is crucial

Waterblock from paulus, his are really nice
keyboard - get a decent one this time m8, not a old naf one, get a nice logictech, same with mouse, or the razors.

Looked at psu, yeah, nice when you spending that amount ^^

Quote from: M3ta7h3ad

Quote from: knighty^^^

1.) balls, they prove how fast your system preforms in comparison to another system running the same benchmark, and depending on what there testing they prove a whole lot (like a full system test)

But benchmarks prove nothing in the real world.

Quote2.) balls. how will it make your box slower ? running raid 0 *can* increase the load on the CPU very slightly, but thats normally down to the fact that it is/can process a lot more to/from the disk than a non raid 0 system

Its slower than Raid 1, the increased load on the PCI bus, or the cpu cycles if its software raid I would have thought just off of the top of my head. Much like shoving loads of USB attachments into a PC. If your a fan of benchmarks as you appear to be, every little helps right?

Quote3.) balls. why ? faster access to needed OS files, faster loading times, faster swap file, i cant see any reason it would be slower ? and having run a few systems normally then in riad0, in my experience it sped things up, a lot

Its only faster on writes, its actually slower on reads.

Quote4.) balls. how did you work that out ? no its not.

because he can read.

Quote from: FAQ on raid (RFC style)Raid Level 0 - Striping - Data is segmented and split onto multiple spindles.
Short Reads - Easily handles multiple simultaneous reads
Long Reads - Single operation can be split and processed in
parallel
Short Writes - Easily handles multiple simultaneous reads
Long Writes - Single operation can be split and processed in parallel
Redundancy - None
Cost - Good (no extra hardware)

Raid Level 1 - Mirroring - Duplicate data is kept on multiple splindles
Short Reads - Faster (shorter latency) since resolution can be from any of multiple disks
Long Reads - Faster since resolution can be from any of multiple disks
Short Writes - Slower since need to write to multiple disks
Long Writes - Slower since need to write to multiple disks
Redundancy - Excellent
Cost - Expensive - at least double the spindle cost

Quote5,) balls. they might die, something bad might happen, but your in just the same boat as if you have 1 drive, 2 x 200 gig drives are better than 1 400 gig drive for speed, and drives dieing is pretty rare these days, especially without warning, as always back up your important data.

Your 2 times more likely to suffer a catastrophic failure, than you are with no raid, with raid 1 you are half as likely as a normal non-raid install to suffer any dataloss.

as for increased load on the PCI bus or increased CPU cycles....

do you really think the increased load on the PCI bus is going to slow down system preformance ? I dont understand where you got that from, even if your raid aray means your maxing out the PCI bus throughput, thats going to be directly preportunbal to the increased speed of the system because it can read/write data so much faster.

for the extra CPU cycles, the only difference Ive ever seen is that the CPU is working harder because its reading/writing so much more.
if I run some heavy compression software, copy a file from disk and put it back on the same disk my CPU is only just peaking at 20% usage (non raid here)
so the real bottle neck there in the system are the HD read/writes, not the CPU, and im pretty sure this will be the same 99% of the time.   if I copy a file to a virtual ram drive, and do the same but using my ram instead of HD the cpus both run at 100% and its hellish fast  (again confirming the HD bottle neck)


as for your little box of quote about raid, go and find some examples of raid cards that will read from 1 disk and not the other (to increas speed as it sugests) Ive never seen any, and Ive and a good look/read through difference raid cards, the whole point of raid1 is that everything that happens to one disk happens to the other too.

and I just plain dont beleave "RAID1 Long Reads - Faster since resolution can be from any of multiple disks"

balls to that, did you write it yourself ?  raid 1 is faster becuase it can read from 1/2 as much from 2 disks in half the time it takes to read the same full thing from 2 disks !   (a major point of raid 1 being you read from both disks and check the data is identical)

Quote from: cornet

Quote from: knighty1.) ...

Already been said - benchmarking proves nothing in real world.

Quote2.) balls. how will it make your box slower ? running raid 0 *can* increase the load on the CPU very slightly, but thats normally down to the fact that it is/can process a lot more to/from the disk than a non raid 0 system

This is naff all to do with the CPU. Its the speed at which the disks can read/write data.
If you actually knew anything about RAID then you would know that the most important thing to get right with a RAID0 setup is the stripe size.
Getting the stripe size right so it actually increases performance depends on you knowing the size of the files that you are going to be working with.

Read this for a full explanation.

Quote3.) balls. why ? faster access to needed OS files, faster loading times, faster swap file, i cant see any reason it would be slower ? and having run a few systems normally then in riad0, in my experience it sped things up, a lot

This relates to 2.) - OS installs contain lots of differently sized files. Putting your SWAP on raid0 would give some speed increase thou.

Quote4.) balls. how did you work that out ? no its not.

More heads, less latency (see M3ta7H3ads post)

Quote5,) balls. they might die, something bad might happen, but your in just the same boat as if you have 1 drive, 2 x 200 gig drives are better than 1 400 gig drive for speed, and drives dieing is pretty rare these days, especially without warning, as always back up your important data.

Its basic maths... again see M3ta7h3ads post.

As for the use "RAID 0+1" rubbish:
1.) Use RAID 10 not RAID 0+1 (see this

2.) Again getting stripe size is crucial

ok, ok, its important to get a good stripe size for what your using, but you havnt told my why running raid 0 is going to slow down my box yet ?
a raid 0 array with a badly set stripe size is still going to out preform a single disk.

as for the "the raid card has tell a disk to write a ***k file, then check its done that, then send the next one bla bla bla,. thats just plain wrong, the raid card sends data to/from the disk, the disk handels the rest and uses its cach to help, so thats running at 300mb/s (for SATA2) or even old IDE133, thats 133meg a sec, way faster than the disk can actually read/write from the platters.

so what if your OS install containes lots of different sized files ?  weve already established that even with a badl set stripe size that raid0 is still faster then a single disk (and id argue its way faster)

yeah, so youve got twice the chance of a catastrophic failure, if i buy 2 lottery tickets ive got twice the chance of winning, its still naff all chance tho ;)
and as said above, were talking about people running raid1 for the preformance increase here, this isnt people who have 2 identical drives, decide they might as well run raid and cant decide which rout to go it is.
so really were compairing a raid1 box to a non raid box, so backups are just as important either way arnt they ?

Quoteas for your little box of quote about raid, go and find some examples of raid cards that will read from 1 disk and not the other (to increas speed as it sugests) Ive never seen any, and Ive and a good look/read through difference raid cards, the whole point of raid1 is that everything that happens to one disk happens to the other too.

and I just plain dont beleave "RAID1 Long Reads - Faster since resolution can be from any of multiple disks"

Well Linux Software RAID has had this for years:
From here (http://www.linuxjunkies.org/html/Software-RAID-0.4x-HOWTO.html#toc8)
MD implements read balancing. That is, the RAID-1 code will alternate between each of the (two or more) disks in the mirror, making alternate reads to each. In a low-I/O situation, this wont change performance at all: you will have to wait for one disk to complete the read. But, with two disks in a high-I/O environment, this could as much as double the read performance, since reads can be issued to each of the disks in parallel. For N disks in the mirror, this could improve performance N-fold.

Quoteballs to that, did you write it yourself ?  raid 1 is faster becuase it can read from 1/2 as much from 2 disks in half the time it takes to read the same full thing from 2 disks !   (a major point of raid 1 being you read from both disks and check the data is identical)

No, reads are assumed to be correct as disk have internal integraty checking. Only very old RAID1 implementataions do what you discribed above.

Quoteok, ok, its important to get a good stripe size for what your using, but you havnt told my why running raid 0 is going to slow down my box yet ?
a raid 0 array with a badly set stripe size is still going to out preform a single disk.

as for the "the raid card has tell a disk to write a ***k file, then check its done that, then send the next one bla bla bla,. thats just plain wrong, the raid card sends data to/from the disk, the disk handels the rest and uses its cach to help, so thats running at 300mb/s (for SATA2) or even old IDE133, thats 133meg a sec, way faster than the disk can actually read/write from the platters.

so what if your OS install containes lots of different sized files ?  weve already established that even with a badl set stripe size that raid0 is still faster then a single disk (and id argue its way faster)

I assume you are refering to the the following quote:
This pretty picture changes into a nightmare when we try to write the 8192KB file. In this case, to write the file, the RAID controller must break it into no less than 4096 blocks, each 2KB in size. From here, the RAID card must pass pairs of the blocks to the drives in the array, wait for the drive to write the information, and then send the next 2KB blocks. This process is repeated 4096 times and the extra time required to perform the breakups, send the information in pieces, and move the drive actuator to various places on the disk all add up to an extreme bottleneck.

Reading the information back is just as painful. To recreate the 8192KB file, the RAID controller must gather information from 4096 places on each drive. Once again, moving the hard drive head to the appropriate position 4096 times is quite time consuming.

Yes the disks will use the cache but they still have to ack the incoming blocks to say they have received them ok. It was not meaning that you had to actually wait for the data to be physically written to the disk.
There are also issues with file system fragmentation and - ext2fs on RAID0 can suffer really badly - would need to read up on NTFS to see how it arranges data on the disk.

Quoteyeah, so youve got twice the chance of a catastrophic failure, if i buy 2 lottery tickets ive got twice the chance of winning, its still naff all chance tho ;)

SATA and PATA drives suck... they really do suck. Push them hard and they will die. Why do you think SCSI is still used in production systems, no sane sysadmin would run SATA on a production box where data integraty mattered.

Quoteand as said above, were talking about people running raid1 for the preformance increase here, this isnt people who have 2 identical drives, decide they might as well run raid and cant decide which rout to go it is.
so really were compairing a raid1 box to a non raid box, so backups are just as important either way arnt they ?

RAID1 vs no raid:
Reads much faster on RAID1.
Writes same speed on both.

RAID != backup, never has and never will.

Cornet

Quote from: neXusWaterblock from paulus, his are really nice
keyboard - get a decent one this time m8, not a old naf one, get a nice logictech, same with mouse, or the razors.

Looked at psu, yeah, nice when you spending that amount ^^

Too slow, all ordered.  And will be using the same cheapo Ã,£2 keyboard as it was perfectly fine for me.

Knighty.

No I didnt write it myself if you wish to read the (guess) 100 or so page document.. please do: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/arch-storage/part1/index.html

cornet, your one of those annoying people, you talk sh*t, then when you get pulled up on it, you talk more sh*t to cover it up, if that sh*t dont work, youll talk about some other sh*t instead, theres no point talking to you if you dont listen.

Hes backed up his sh*t. Im yet to see anything backing up your "sh*t".

Pot painting the kettle black.

M3ta7h3ad lol you noticed the date on your link?

knighty Waste of time arguing with them :x  
The same trolls come out every time RAID0 is mentioned and say exactly the same things every time!!!
Then totally dismiss other forum users positive experience with RAID0 :roll:

Wonder how many of then have actually used RAID0 in real life to come to that conclusion, rather than read it off a website ???    :roll:

Quote from: ShaunM3ta7h3ad lol you noticed the date on your link?

knighty Waste of time arguing with them :x  
The same trolls come out every time RAID0 is mentioned and say exactly the same things every time!!!
Then totally dismiss other forum users positive experience with RAID0 :roll:

Wonder how many of then have actually used RAID0 in real life to come to that conclusion, rather than read it off a website ???    :roll:

Its a FAQ. Regardless of date, the FAQ was based on the fundamentals of the technology as laid out by the standard. They wont change. Granted item specific stuff may change but not the fundamentals such as which each layer of raid does.

Quote from: ShaunM3ta7h3ad lol you noticed the date on your link?

knighty Waste of time arguing with them :x  
The same trolls come out every time RAID0 is mentioned and say exactly the same things every time!!!
Then totally dismiss other forum users positive experience with RAID0 :roll:

Wonder how many of then have actually used RAID0 in real life to come to that conclusion, rather than read it off a website ???    :roll:

Oh and as for positive experiences... Give sugar placebos to cancer patients claiming its a new drug... youll always have a large number of "believers" despite it doing nothing for them.

Quote from: ShaunM3ta7h3ad lol you noticed the date on your link?

knighty Waste of time arguing with them :x  
The same trolls come out every time RAID0 is mentioned and say exactly the same things every time!!!
Then totally dismiss other forum users positive experience with RAID0 :roll:

Wonder how many of then have actually used RAID0 in real life to come to that conclusion, rather than read it off a website ???    :roll:

Yes I have used it, I did do various tests - there were occasions where it was quicker and some things were slower. Yet the "benchmarks" showed it was tons faster. In general usage I noticed no difference until it slowed down.

So yes, I do have actual experience.

My full time job is as a sysadmin for a leading SMS aggregator (nothing to do with crazy frog, clients range from tech companies to tv networks). I maintain DB servers that handle millions of queries a day, get your RAID setup wrong and it can seriously affect performance.

knighty: Ive backed up my info with reading material, its up to you to make your decision based on that. If you think im "covering my argument up with rubbish" then please point out the rubbish and Ill gladly either back it up or retract. I have no issue with either.

Cornet

cornet, I gave up arguing with you, your talking sh*t and your not listening to me, and tbh, i dont really care.

It just pissed me off that your posting sh*t, when there could be people on this forum, or guests who dont know much about computers will be reading what you say and not realising its bollocks.

these very same people then go and screw there PC, end up asking me for advice and I have to try and be polite when im explaining to them that theyve been told a load of sh*t.

Ive used both

I used to run RAID0 but its too prone to failure.
I then went to RAID 10 and then 5 but wasnt impressed.
I now run a permanent RAID1 system. I like my data secure :) i even have spare disks on my shelf ready for a failure.
RAID1 is decent enough because your data is safe "hardware wise" and it has a slight increase in throughput due to the chip being able to read from each device if one is busy. (EDIT: writes are not slowed down as wrote in a previous post)

RAID0 is definately the fastest and less secure of all the RAID setups.

Anyone that remembers my experience running a RAID 0 with 2x IBM GXP60 40Gb drives will recall how blindingly fast it was both for benchmarks AND windows/games without the BS.

Basically, its the same people with the same arguements over and over and neither side will convince the other. At the end of the day its down to personal experience, if you want to argue about it make a new thread, this has gone far enough off topic.

Apologies for this thread getting out of hand. I was far to broard with my statements.

I still stand by my statement that RAID 0 is just hype for a desktop PC and that benchmarks prove nothing.

But too clarify and finalise:
Compaired to a single disk:

RAID 0
Will be faster for some things (when reading/manipulating large files)
Will be around the same for most things.
Will sometimes be slower for some things (e.g. when you deal with lots of small files and your stripe size is wrong)

RAID 1
Will be about the same for writes
Faster than RAID0 for most reads (isnt this what your PC does most of the time).
...and above all: mirrored.

Also
RAID 1+0 vs RAID 0+1
Performance is the same, redundancy is better on RAID 1+0.

There are many other issues which i might actually write a full article on at some point, including quality of controllers - software vs hardware. How FS choice can seriously affect RAID performance.

Knighty: Your use of such language on these forums is out of order I thought. Thou argument over as far as Im concerned.

Cornet

Linky explaining different raid levels (http://www.pugetsystems.com/articles.php?id=24)

what was this thread about originally btw???

....someones new pc specs  :lol:

Quote from: WalrusbonzoHi all

Looking into buying a new PC and probably spend about Ã,£1300~ on everything except a keyboard, monitor and speakers.

Im definitely going down the AMD route and was looking at the following hardware from Scan.co.uk

AMD Opteron 64 165 Socket939 , Denmark Core, 2x 1.8GHz , 2MB Cache, Retail  Ã,£178.75 Ã,£210.03  - Cheapest dual core 2mb L2 cache Athlon 64 I could find. Will defo be overclocking.

512MB XFX 7900GTX Mem Clock 1600 MHz ,GPU 650 MHz , 24 Pipes, Dual DVI-I , HDTV  Ã,£324.95 Ã,£381.82  - Cheapest 7900GXT I could find.
 
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music Sound Card  Ã,£64.29 Ã,£75.54  - Is this about the best gaming sound card out there?
 
2GB (2X1GB) Corsair TwinX DDR2, PC4000 (500), 184 Pin, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 3-4-4-8  Ã,£129.89 Ã,£152.62  WRONGLY LISTED AS DDR2
 
4 x 80 GB HGST (IBM/Hitachi) Deskstar 7K80 , SATA II , 7200 rpm , 8MB Cache ,NCQ  Ã,£29.48 Ã,£138.56  - Yep, 4, going for serious RAID 0!
 
600W Silverstone Strider ST60F Quiet SLi Dual PCI-E EPS12v ATX Quad 12v v2.01 120mm Fan PSU Ã,£76.69 Ã,£90.11

Coolermaster Stacker RC-830 Silver Trim with Black Mesh w/o PSU Super-Hi End Ã,£135.89 Ã,£159.67

NEC ND-4570A-GNB Black 16x16 DVDÃ,±RW Dual Layer DVD-Writer OEM UK  Ã,£23.22 Ã,£27.28

1.44Mb Sony Black Floppy Disk Drive OEM  Ã,£3.99 Ã,£4.69 - Going to need one as I have Win XP 64bit and wont be getting Vista for a while, so need a Floppy for setting up raid drivers :(

Just need a motherboard, mouse and a CPU cooling solution.  Ill probably go for a DFI Lan Party board from elsewhere as Scan dont sell them.  As for a mouse, need some recommendations.  I want a really good GAMING mouse, preferably wired(unless its a wireless one with NO lag), uses a laser and it must have buttons on the side of the mouse for using in games.  As for cooling, Ive already got a Thermochill 120.3 radiator and a Eheim 1250 pump, so would only need a waterblock, reservoir and tubing.  Anyone got any recommendations on a waterblock?  Paulus?  Shaun?  Having said that, Im really tempted to go all air cooling as Im not too sure whether I can do with the hassle of watercooling and noise wont be an issue.

Anyone got any suggestions on the rest of the system?  Anything that they think should be changed?

Cheers guys

ahh ere we go,

well ive been running air on a xp3200 and its getting on me tits now with noise,
the case is an old yeong yang server cube with the motherboard compartment only just deep enough for expansion cards and its gets hot in there with the side on.

id say itd depend on how well ventalated the case your gonna whack all that in, given the stacker youve specd has mesh all over the shop, i think you can get away with quiet air doing the 120mm in + 120mm out.

im outta touch with what heatsinks best, although valman are usually quiet.

on the floppy, id get one of those mitsumi floppy + card reader,
got one last week and its not bad, just plugs into a mobo header although the usb header cable is a touch short, especially if the floppy is put at the top of the tower.


Id leave out the sound card till youve tried the onboard azilla sound, theyve come on a lot since ive last built one

Onboard sound is still as rubbish as it ever was. If hes serious about gaming/his music then hes better off with the Creative X-Fi.

creative? please dont say they have made another card....


yes i am out of the loop. and yes i do think music from a 4 valve diesel head sounds better than anything reproduced on a reproducing device

Back in action!!!!!!

All running very nicely now.

CPU does 2.7GHz with 1.5v air cooled!

Quake 4 looks so good at 1680x1050 with 4xAA, 16xAF and everything else on MAX, and plays so smooth!!!!

:D

nicely done :)

x2s = smoooooth xp/apps dont you think ?

Quote from: knightynicely done :)

x2s = smoooooth xp/apps dont you think ?

Yeah, and Quake 4 loves dual cores too :D

My 2GB of GSkill PC4000 is faulty, so until I get a replacement Im using my old 1GB Patriot PC3200 XBL.

Its got a new lease of life.  Its never done more than 250MHz~ before with 4 other CPUs in 3 other motherboards.

But now its happy to do 300MHz!  DDR600 rocks :D

3DMark 2001 score - http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=8961781

36345!!! :)  No GFX card overclock and theres definitely room in the CPU and RAM yet :D