Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Snatch]

Well it is time to shoot my old workhorse and get a young, frisky Thoroughbred. Thinking of getting the following:

CPU: E6600
Mobo: Asus Asus P5N-E SLi (why is the MSI 650i board so expensive?)
Memory: OCZ DDR2 PC2-5400 Gold GX XTC (1GBx2)
PSU: Thermaltake Toughpower 850W (overkill until I get 2x8800GTX) otherwise the Zalman 600W
HD: WD Raptor 74GB + Seagate SATA-II 250GB/16M
CPU Cooler: Zalman CNPS9500 LED
Case: Antec 900 (Looks, cooling, will fit 2xGTX)
DVD-RW: Samsung SH-S183A
Graphic card: XFX 8800GTS Extreme 320MB (560MHz oc, Ghost Recon)
Mouse: Razer Diamondback (I'm lefthanded, let's not go there)
LCD: Teamtech TT220W 무결점 22"/1680 x 1050/ 5ms/300cd/1000:1

Basically a gaming system. Lots of agonizing about the PSU. Zalman would be fine for now, but not for 2 GTXs. When Crysis comes out what would be sufficient, 2 GTXs, 1 9xxx? Or would SLI just be pointless at 1680x1050 anyway?
Waiting for the Intel price cuts in April. Any suggestions/improvements would be welcome.

[gsxr750r]

You should be able to find some other choices than the aging WD Raptor. Why not put two of them in Raid? Maybe there are some newer 10k drives out there. There may be some newer models out... oh, and I hear those Samsung drives with 2gb of Flash built-in for Windows Vista are just around the corner.

[Snatch]

All the other 10k drives I could find were SCSIs. Putting two Raptors in Raid would be nice but a bit expensive. I don't need a lot of storage space, so what would work better than my current specs?

[Gord]

ATI's Crossfire is a better route for pairing off graphic cards as they don't have to be of the same type. SLI requires the GPU to be the same and runs at the speed of the slower card. Plus SLI historically hasn't done well with the super-crazy-high-end compared to Crossfire as it has to share the data going between the cards with the rest of the machine through the PCI-e bus.

DDR2-5400 is pretty much entry level these days at 667mHz. All CoreDuo's support up to 1066mHz factory standard I believe, so going with faster RAM will get a slightly improved machine.

My research has concluded that 10% of Antec cases will catch on fire within a year of purchase. And I'm not just a researcher, but a customer where 10% of my Antec cases have caught on fire within the first year. (The case wiring for the display LEDs, buttons, and speaker are of a less than desired quality).

[Wrench]

Wait until april 22nd Massive price cuts from intel.

[pkang0202]

Instead of a Raptor, just get 2 400GB hard drives and raid them. It'll be less than the Raptor and you'll have plenty of space. Also, the performance is still excellent.

I would also recommend faster RAM. Also, instead of the XFX Video Card, go grab a BFG. BFG's are really good and they come with a lifetime warranty.

[hanguker]

Hey Wrench! Thanks for the heads up about Intel. There are going to be up to 40% cuts on the prices! The Motherboards will probably come down a lot at the same time. I think one could expect up to 200-300K savings depending on which CPU you buy. There will be a $90 cut on the 6600 and a massive $320 cut on the quad! I'm waiting one more month.

Maybe the Nvidia 8600 will be out by then, too.

Here's a link to some pricing info. Looks pretty reliable:

http://www.madshrimps.be/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=30534

Cheers.

[cubanlord]

i like this thread! I will be watching it closely!

[eamo]

I'll be watching closely too. I may be doing my first build soon and the OP's specs are round about mine.

[Wrench]

Also the R600 is launching on the 19th.. So expect nvidia to slash prices like mad.

[eamo]

[Snatch]

OK, ditching the raptor, putting two 7200s in raid. Is it worth getting faster RAM if I don't plan on overclocking the FSB past 333MHz?

Since I'm buying online through a Korean site my options are a bit limited when it comes to choosing specific brands. Finding a decent case that doesn't cost an arm and a leg is a nightmare. Not too keen on anything with a front door.

Hope the launch of the R600 starts a price war ^^.

[gsxr750r]

You can do RAID a number of ways. Make sure you research the different ways of doing it, and let them know what you want if you have a place build it for you.

If you go with RAID 1 for redundancy, you'll still get near-double read-times, and identical write times as just having a single drive. We spend a lot more time reading than writing to drives, generally, so that's why I feel RAID 1 is the best choice (and it always provides a backup if a drive dies).

http://www.overclockercafe.com/Articles/RAID/index.htm

EFL-Law guy built a computer several months back. He put RAID 1 in it, using two 7200 RPM drives and large caches, and it screams. Oh, and it runs off of the new Intel 2.4 Core2Duo chip, I believe.

BTW, if you go with 7200 RPM drives, make sure they have a large cache... 16 meg at least... not sure if you can get 32 meg caches, but the more drive cache, the better. I went from a 7200 RPM with an 8 meg cache to one with 16, and I noticed the difference immediately. I can't stress the importance of this.

In RAID, you'll load windows darned fast. It amazes me that people dump all of this money on a new CPU, which is great, but having 2 identical hard drives in RAID provides massive performance increases when booting, loading programs, and accessing the drives in general. Some of the newer CPUs are blazing fast, and sit around yawning, waiting on the slow single hard drives, so having two of the drives in RAID helps keep that CPU chugging along at a more useful pace at times when things are being loaded and/or saved to HD.

Those Samsung flash drives will be awesome some day.

[Snatch]

Planning on RAID 0, a bit worried about the drives going down. Will do some research on RAID 1. Will need to rip out the old FDD for the driver installation. Anybody have some experience with integrating the drivers on a Windows XP CD beforehand?

Going to build the system myself (more fun, more pain). Seems like you have to do some advance planning on cable arrangement with the Antec 900 if you don't want a mess.

[gsxr750r]

Well, there's always RAID 0+1, which adds a third HD running catch-up and backing everything up.

If you don't keep anything too important on your computer, you can go with RAID 0, but I'd still go with RAID 1 just to be safe.

We usually don't need to write much at any one time, anyway... you're not running a big server, right?