Zxian

EVGA Limited Lifetime warranty

I think that XFX actually lets you replace the heatsink without voiding the warranty. They've also go double-lifetime warranty, so if you one day decide to sell the card, the new owner gets a full warranty coverage as well.

Chances are it won't be the enclosure that kills your drive, but rather the shakes and bumps it gets from being in your bag that will kill it. I'd highly recommend Vantec enclosures. I've got a 2.5" enclosure for my laptop drive, and one for a 3.5" drive as well. Both work flawlessly, and are built well.

@X-Ecutioner - I haven't seen too many SCSI or SAS drives that come in 500GB or 750GB variants. @ceez - You could image the current storage drives onto an external drive, and then restore the image on the new array. The imaging program should be able to write all the data in the larger space, and it would retain all of the permissions as well.

Replacing the heatsink on the 8800GT is a piece of cake. There's about 12 screws to remove the stock heatsink, but once that's off, it's solidly built, and you won't have to worry about breaking it (unless you do something stupid ).

What kind of hardware are you running on now? I've got Vista installed on my laptop, which is by no means a high-performance machine by today's standards (Pentium-M 1.86Ghz, 2GB RAM, 128MB ATI X300). I find that I'm able to go about my business much faster than I could in XP, partly because of the way Vista handles multiple processes, but also because of the general layout. Many of the initial problems came from a lack of drivers. It's been a good solid year now, so if the device you're using still doesn't have a Vista driver, blame the manufacturer - not Vista. My best recommendation if you want to give Vista a shot would be to image your current setup to save a "copy" of it. Then do a fresh install with Vista, and restore only those documents that you need. Use it for a few weeks. If you get stuck, Google for the solution. Things in Vista are generally speaking the same, but some settings and options have moved. Once you find where they are, most of them make more sense than the locations of their XP counterparts.

You're suggesting a setup that's less future-proof, provides little real-world performance benefit over DDR2-800, but that costs over twice as much? I'd say stick with the 2x2GB OCZ Platinum (it's what's running in this system) and leave the other two slots for future RAM upgrades. I've easily pushed my RAM (the same as he's planning on getting) to over 900MHz with the same voltages and timings. DDR2-1066 is money gone down the drain IMO. Or he could save even more on the card, and overclock it himself - eVGA 8800GT 512MB - 512-P3-N801-AR. Take the difference in price and get yourself the Accelero S1. There's no other heatsink for the 8800GT like it. I've got it that exact video setup running in my rig here, overclocked to 700/1750/2000 (Core/Shader/Mem), and it idles at 36C, load temps in Crysis are around 50C. The Ninja is a great heatsink, only topped out by the ThermalRight Ultra 120 (and it's extreme variant). Personally, I'd ditch the included fan (or keep it for elsewhere), and get the Scythe Slip Stream 800RPM fan - heck, get four for your entire system - rear, top, front, and CPU. They're barely audible at full speed, and you can slow them down from the BIOS Q-Fan or SpeedFan. If you're worried about cooling - don't be. The P182 is about as good as it gets, and I've got a similar setup to yours with four low speed fans. My CPU never goes above 45C, and my graphics card tops out at 50C. I tried the Revolution, and just couldn't get used to it. I found it too "busy" of a mouse (compared to the included mouse with my Logitech MX3200 combo). I'd personally just get the Logitech MX518 and be done with it. It's got great tracking on just about any surface, and many people prefer it to the G5 for overall feel (yes, there is a difference).The only thing that worries me is the choice of PSU. I'd ditch that Antec PSU and get the Corsair HX620. MUCH better build quality, and it's likely noticably quieter. It's the quietest ~600W PSU that SilentPCReview has ever tested, and it's yet to be beat. I've got that PSU and it's little brother (HX520) in my systems, and they're nothing short of rock solid stable. 22dBa at 300W load with 85% efficiency is hard to beat - read the full review. I'm just curious... why the Raptor, and then a single 320GB drive? If you want to go for storage space, 500GB drives give the best $/GB ratio at the moment. I'd recommend the WD5000AAKS. Your other option is to go for the new 1TB drives that are coming out. The WD Green Power drives run a little slower than the competition, but they draw less power (i.e. run cooler) and cost less. Hope this all helps! If you stick with the setup you've chosen and some of my suggestions, the Raptor hard drive will be the loudest part of your entire setup. P.S. @ geek - I'm not trying to pick on you - I'm just giving a different point of view for the build.

That's a long list of hotfixes!!!

I was looking at those products, but neither of them would support high-def material (1080p). I doubt that they'd have the hardware capabilities for that, and judging by that as well, your support for HD-DVD/BluRay is out as well.

@Ghzsystems - I'd recommend trying the one card first, and see what kind of performance you get. If you're still not getting the performance that you want, grab a second card and then do SLI. The "extreme" network cards that you hear about don't really do much, and definitely aren't worth the money

This is a pretty dead thread... Let's liven it up again!!! Here's a screenie of my Linux workstation at work. I haven't really done much with it aside from add some of the Gnome meters to the toolbars. 751KB

I'm guessing that you bent the heatpipes on the S1 yourself to make clearance for the copper heatsinks? I know that my S1 doesn't bend down at that angle. Also... thumbnails!!! Kwikpiks generates them automatically for you. I need to get around to making a popup with a nice BBCode insert text...

On a completely side note... when I had my department's computers setup with DeepFreeze, we created a second partition and mounted that within the My Documents folder. This partition was unfrozen, so the contents remained after reboots. Any files that were stupidly saved to the desktop were automatically copied to a "Recovered Files" folder within My Documents. Have a look here. I used to hate having the My Documents folders, but I ultimately just started using them, and found that in some ways it makes things easier. You can setup the My Documents folder as a mount point for a second hard drive, so there's no worry about losing data in a format (you can even automate the mount point AFAIK).

Hehe... all of the G92 based cards are sweet. I've got almost the same setup as you did there with my 8800GT, but I'm using aluminum heatsinks instead of copper. I've got my card set to 700/1000, up from 600/900, and my load temperatures don't go much above 50C. Running rhtdribl in fullscreen mode (1680x1050, 60Hz, 4x Multisample) gets me a solid 60FPS. P.S. Boo ImageShack... you should be ashamed... you know where you should be hosting your pictures!

I'm in the same boat here. When I first saw screenshots, I thought to myself "what a waste of space". But then you realize that the "wasted space" (1) can be turned off and (2) can be useful for organizing your data. The breadcrumb layout is MUCH faster to use than anything available in XP, and in terms of overall usability everything "fits". All of the menus and options for the Vista-like programs are in the same place. Sure, it takes you a couple of days to re-learn where they are, but once you do, it's the same for all of them - Explorer, IE7, Office 2007 (Outlook is the only noticable exception), Photo Gallery, WMP11, etc etc. You now have just one major learning to do, and the rest falls into place. @thunderbolt - I personally find Vista to be much faster on my laptop than XP was. When I say faster... I say it with a grain of salt. Two major factors come into play with this. First - Vista handles my multitasking much better than XP does. I can run a simulation in Matlab and not worry about it bogging down the rest of my system (I'm still running a single-core CPU on my laptop) - switching back to another program is much smoother and there's far less delay. Secondly - I can go about my work much faster. For example, when starting a program - hit the start button, type the first few characters, press enter - *presto* - Program's opened. Before, I'd have to take my mouse or touchpad, move it to an icon or the start menu... You might laugh at this, but when you've got your fingers on the keyboard already, that extra second to move the mouse makes a difference in terms of time and ergonomics.

Java is anything but lightweight. There's a good reason why Azureus uses the 80MB+ of RAM that it does when downloading a single file... Java has horrible internal memory management. It might be simple to code in, but in terms of overall performance there are plenty of better options.

I know that the X360 isn't Intel based, but mplayer has been compiled for x86 and PPC platforms (much like VLC is available cross-platform). Both of these media players are capable of rendering a much wider variety of media formats than what you listed. Media playback isn't hardware based after all.

Thanks for the reply cluberti. I find it strange that Microsoft can't use a universal filter to decode their videos. mplayer (the underlying media player in XBMC) is fully capable of playing high-def formats - it's just that the CPU in the old Xbox can't handle it.

What kind of networking and media format support does the X360 have? I also looked at the possibility of using a gaming console to do this, but the Playstation3 just came out with a patch to support DivX-like codecs, but no H264 support yet.

Says he who has never had Vista installed on his system for more than a week. I've personally found that Vista is faster on my laptop than XP was. You could use a RAM drive or a CF drive as additional pagefile or tempfile space on your XP system if you wanted. I'm not sure about the CF card, but the RAM disk would definitely help you out.

Please contribute to the forums more before advertising for your own site. As a general guideline, we ask that members post about 10-20 posts in the forums before sharing their personal websites.

If you're building a NAS based on 100Mbps ethernet, then you're likely going to be limited by the connection speed. The only other possibility I can think of that would limit you is if you were applying linux software RAID5 on a very old or low powered CPU. What are you building your NAS out of? Would it not be possible to add a PCI Gigabit ethernet card? If you want a really solid setup that won't cost you too much (~300-400 euros for 2TB) check this out. It's a complete x86 PC in a tiny box, that draws about 40W out of the wall. Since you're in Europe, you'd likely get even better efficiency from the higher voltage you get from the electrical system.

Welcome! Thanks for contributing!

Those pictures look interesting and all... but why use a USB port? Why not make use of the security port that almost all laptops have nowadays, since it's designed to withstand stresses and strains like the one the JerkStopper undergoes? You are pulling 6lbs worth of laptop through a USB port that's designed to withstand maybe... 2 lbs or shear?

You can set Samurize up with remote performance monitors. It can also connect with SpeedFan to relay data to another computer. You end up with your remote computer's stats right on your desktop. You can see what I mean from my screenshot below. I've got the Samurize Server program on my file server relaying CPU usage, memory usage, and the temperatures of my two cores on the CPU to my desktop. 3360x1050