Your Dream Home Made PC?!

Monty Burns said:
Can I suggest you go read up the definitions of raid again .... raid 0 is not the only stripe - although this is what I use at home (its only a media center pc/games box anyway)

RAID 0 is striped only!
RAID 1 is mirrored
RAID 0+1 / 10 - the data is striped then mirrored.
RAID 5 is striping with distributed parity
RAID 6 is striping with 2 drives used for the distributed parity.

The other RAID levels aren't really worth using.
 
Monty Burns said:
Can I suggest you go read up the definitions of raid again .... raid 0 is not the only stripe - although this is what I use at home (its only a media center pc/games box anyway)

Stripe

and i can't see in that link, what other striping you're going to be using...... RAID 2? ROFL
 
mjn said:
RAID 0 is striped only!
RAID 1 is mirrored
RAID 0+1 / 10 - the data is striped then mirrored.
RAID 5 is striping with distributed parity
RAID 6 is striping with 2 drives used for the distributed parity.

The other RAID levels aren't really worth using.

:thumbsup:

See there are three other common variations on Stripe. Why assume that im using zero in a live production, mission critical system? In such environments 5+ hotstandbye is the only way to fly. :)
 
I think it was from your post Monty.. I wondered what the hell you were doing building raid0 servers for banks too..;)

Being a network/server admin/Security consultant i've put my money where my mouth is with twin, shiney looking Raptors in a sexy little stripe. I'm very happy with this and will do it again and again and again and recommend it to anyone :) (In fact I have, with SCSI systems for more banks than you can shake a very big stick at
rotfl.gif
)


Obviously, RAID5 in a 4+1 configuration is the absolute min any of us would consider for an array that matters... :)
 
The Dude said:
I think it was from your post Monty.. I wondered what the hell you were doing building raid0 servers for banks too..;)




Obviously, RAID5 in a 4+1 configuration is the absolute min any of us would consider for an array that matters... :)

:rotfl: I can see how someone may of "assumed" the wrong idea there. Still we all love the definition of Ass of U ME ;)

Sadly, looks like the thread has been successfuly derailed :(

Edit: in fact -
mjn said:
I can only assume you're talking about RAID 0 here?!?
:D Doh!
 
Monty Burns said:
Being a network/server admin/Security consultant i've put my money where my mouth is with twin, shiney looking Raptors in a sexy little stripe.

As an impartial observer the fact you said twin raptors in a stripe implies RAID 0.

I think the article everyone is refering to is the one from storage review. [link] They also have others discussing the merits of RAID 0 in different applications. RAID 0 wont offer much improvements in the performance of your OS and as we all know benchmark results and real world results are often different. As for that matter are the conclusions on tomshardware and i thought most IT 'experts' where well aware of the documented flaws in some of their testing methods.
 
Da_Rude_Baboon said:
As an impartial observer the fact you said twin raptors in a stripe implies RAID 0.

I think the article everyone is refering to is the one from storage review. [link] They also have others discussing the merits of RAID 0 in different applications. RAID 0 wont offer much improvements in the performance of your OS and as we all know benchmark results and real world results are often different. As for that matter are the conclusions on tomshardware and i thought most IT 'experts' where well aware of the documented flaws in some of their testing methods.

Yeah i did indeed previously mention where the assumption could of been made.

As for OS not being boosted by raid 0 ....

I honestly will give up with this after asking these questions:

1 - where are the most frequently access portions of code on a disk?
2 - what are these? Dll's? Registry? Pagefile (if you use one)? etc...
3 - (oldskool but some stuff still uses it) Would putting a temp directory on a raid 0 help?
4 - Are you people honestly saying having these files on a non-raided system will not slow your system down compared to a raid 0?
5 - where are all these files *generaly* found? OS disk maybe?


It certainly and dramticaly increases performance of the load times of files and swapping. If I unrar on sata data drive it takes significantly longer than doing it on my raid 0 ..... THAT to ME is a real world soloution. And that article is correct. Raid 0 will make no diference to the frame rate, BUT it will load the level much faster and get spawned in that game quicker (if you install the game on that drive).

The real-life situations? What is a real life situation!? It's diferent for everyone. BUT I can garuntee you this with 100% certainty, my PC boots a LOT faster on raid 0 than it does single disk and that is a real-life situation.


This threads been de-railed way too much .... im outa here. :thumbsup:
 
RAID 0 writes every other bit of data to a the other drive (when only 2 are used). This speeds up writes times simply because the data isn't being spanned across the buffers of the drives. Here is an example

Data bit 1 gets put in Drive 0's buffer
Data bit 2 gets put in Drive 1's buffer and DB1 gets written to D0's platter

When Data bit 3 is going to be moved into Drive 0's buffer the drive has already written the data to the disk so the buffer of Drive 0 is now clear ready for DB3.

This is how RAID 0 speeds up performance, it effectively writes the same amount of data in half the time on paper but in reality the drives will have to find space if the drives are fragmented which slows down the write time, it is still faster than witout RAID though. The problem with RAID 0 is the read times because the drives are having to scan their platters for the data and one drive is always held up by the other because the info needs to be put back together in the right order, this slows down read times.

Drive 0 is looking for DB1
Drive 1 is looking for DB2
Drive 1 has found DB2 but is waiting for DB1 to be located
Drive 0 has found DB1

etc

RAID 1 is the opposite of this, slow write times but fast(er) read times...

Wether or not you notice this though is another thing, there are many more limiting factors, such as platter size of the disks, how good the controller is, how much bandwidth is being used on the data busses on the machine, possible packet loss from interference on the channels.

Anywho...dream machine eh?

I fancy a Dell :devil:
 
I'm thinking of build a new system with:

Asus A8N-SLi nForce4 SLi
AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Venice 90nm
2 X 512mb DD2 PC2-4200
250gb HD

I also have my eye on:
LEADTEK NVIDIA 6800GT, 256GDDR3, (PCI-E)
MSI RADEON™ X800XT 256DDR3, (PCI-E)

I havent been keeping an eye on computer technology lately, so this sli stuff is new to me (as is any other new computing technology i.e. crossfire :) ) . I havent bought any the items yet and was just looking for advice on, is this the best memory to buy to go with this mb+cpu? Would these grafix cards go together on this mb?

:lease:

But mainly would like to know which grafix cards go together well in an sli system.

Thanks in Advance
 
ln_lfc said:
I'm thinking of build a new system with:

Asus A8N-SLi nForce4 SLi
AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Venice 90nm
2 X 512mb DD2 PC2-4200
250gb HD

I also have my eye on:
LEADTEK NVIDIA 6800GT, 256GDDR3, (PCI-E)
MSI RADEON™ X800XT 256DDR3, (PCI-E)

I havent been keeping an eye on computer technology lately, so this sli stuff is new to me (as is any other new computing technology i.e. crossfire :) ) . I havent bought any the items yet and was just looking for advice on, is this the best memory to buy to go with this mb+cpu? Would these grafix cards go together on this mb?

:lease:

But mainly would like to know which grafix cards go together well in an sli system.

Thanks in Advance

"Warning, this is the hardware police, put down your hardware list and put your hands behind your head!"

I used to have an A8N-SLI, it was a terribly unstable board and I dont care to try another one, swapped it out for an ABIT AN8 within a week of buying it! Also, that setup does NOT support DDR2 so that memory would not work.

If you're interested in getting some bits i'm selling my Maxtor DiamondMax 10 250GB SATA drive for £65 shipped, only had it a few weeks but I over estimated my required space! Its in very good condition with no bad sectors or anything bad of the sort.
 
:clap: you should stick with pentium for work if you intend to do any graphics i.e. anmi, i've had a custom built 1 for 3 yrs now getting very dated but reluctant to spend more £££

Pentium 4 2.66
2 gig ram
pioneer dvd R/RW
cd R
twin Diamond Plus 74SB monitors
Gforce4 Ti 4200
3 x harddrives
XP pro
running
Bryce
3ds max 5
PhotoShop
Premiere
Encore
Maya Unlimited
Poser

all this adds up to many many days of rendering, last 1 was 15 days for
9 secs anmi

would suggest
twin processers not Intel hyprothreading as most top end software hates it look to spend about £3000 for new custom build job
what you plan to use it for?
 
would suggest you stay away from only 1 harddrive regardless of size & go for multi drives, if any 1 should pack up on you then at least your files should be split across other drives. Having twice now been unfortunate to format main drive no work was lost only programs but there easy to reinstall
 
Hi, sorry to jump in here, but i wonder if anyone would be kind enough to comment on some hardware i'm thinking of putting together?

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+
MSI K8N SLI Platinum NFORCE4 SKT939 (what's the difference btw this and the diamond version?)
Maxtor 6L200P0 Diamondmax 10 200Gb 7200rpm
Antec TruePower 550 12V AC 550W ATX
NEC ND3540A 16X DVD±RW Dual Layer Internal IDE

and i want to run winxp 64. I've heard there are problems with getting drivers though. Would this be a problem for the DVD drive?

you can probably tell i'm an amateur at this, so any advice greatfully received
 
mikehbwould suggest twin processers not Intel hyprothreading as most top end software hates it look to spend about £3000 for new custom build job what you plan to use it for?[/QUOTE said:
If you want a high end PC for Graphics/video and want it built to your spec, then the only way to go is BOXX Technolgies, they are the king of Video Editing machines, alot of video studios use them, all them WMVHD vids up on www.wmvhd.com were trancoded on a BOXX machine I think...

BOXX
 
never heard of BOXX, just had a look at there site amazing prices amazing specs pity it's out of most peoples reach
 
Thanks for the quick replies!! :smashin:

Daft of me not to notice the memory doesnt match the mb! :oops:
After looking on overclockers.co.uk this afternoon I couldn't find any socket 939 mbs that supported DDR2 memory? Does that mean there are none out there?

Does anyone know which grafix cards are good together on a SLI mb?
Should I not bother with SLI and go for crossfire instead?

RE: Jim_Fear - probably wont build this system til late nov-dec, if you'v still got the hard drive then i might buy it... though the way prices drop in computer hardware it'll probably worth half that. :(
 
ln_lfc said:
Thanks for the quick replies!! :smashin:

Daft of me not to notice the memory doesnt match the mb! :oops:
After looking on overclockers.co.uk this afternoon I couldn't find any socket 939 mbs that supported DDR2 memory? Does that mean there are none out there?

Does anyone know which grafix cards are good together on a SLI mb?
Should I not bother with SLI and go for crossfire instead?

RE: Jim_Fear - probably wont build this system til late nov-dec, if you'v still got the hard drive then i might buy it... though the way prices drop in computer hardware it'll probably worth half that. :(

Correctamundo, AMD have no plans to support DDR2 until Socket 1207 next year. AMD have no real need to swap and the onboard memory controller creams any DDR2 platform. SLI is in its prime, very few bugs and you can put a nice pair of 6800GT's in that bad boy (or just buy a single 7800GTX to stomp any 6800 SLI setup! :)) whereas crossfire isn't even out and will suffer teething pains at first much like SLI. So for now I would say SLI unless ATI have all the wrinkles ironed out qucikly.

As for the hard drive I may still have it, but knonwing me i'll sell it, buy my nice smaller SATAII drive and BOOM!! Price drop!! :rotfl:
 
I used ASUS A8n-SLI premium
3700 AMD 64 (changed the fan though)
ASUS 7800gt
3 x samsung 250 gig SATA 2 drives.
got it from Scan so I only had one place to go if problems.
If you want the full parts list happy to PM it to you.
devils own job getting multi boot to work across disks (its in other threads).
Runs nicely and my GEEXBOX CD fired up and ran without any need to regen it.

seems pretty sound stuff you are looking at
 

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